Beam weapons moving closer to operational reality

I’ve written several times before about the impending advent of directed-energy weapons (specifically laser beams), which promise to revolutionize anti-aircraft and anti-missile defenses. The beam moves at light speed, which essentially means that one doesn’t have to allow for the target’s motion; one can aim directly at it, and the beam will arrive so fast that the target won’t have moved more than a few feet (even at multiples of the speed of sound) before it’s hit. This makes the aiming of the weapon much simpler. If the target can be seen (whether visually or by radar), and if it’s within range of the beam, it can be hit.

Boeing announced today that it’s completed the design of the latest iteration of laser weapons for the US Navy, the so-called Free Electron Laser, or FEL. Wired magazine’s Danger Room reports:

The U.S. military is bankrolling all kinds of projects to harness the power of directed energy, from laser-equipped aircraft that can shoot down ballistic missiles to smaller beam weapons mounted on Humvees that could zap mortars or artillery shells. The Navy is no exception: It wants a shipboard laser that is powerful enough to destroy anti-ship missiles.

Defense giant Boeing now says it has completed the preliminary design of one such weapon, the Free Electron Laser, or FEL. In a news release today, the company said it had presented its FEL design, which will operate by forcing a stream of high-energy electrons through a series of magnetic fields, creating a weapons-grade blast of laser light.

If it works, it would be the holy grail of military lasers. For starters, it would able to blast though the atmosphere without losing too much strength (see explanation here). And it would have an unlimited magazine: As long as the ship provided enough electrical power, it could keep on zapping.

There’s more at the link. Raytheon is also developing an FEL prototype for the US Navy, and will compete with Boeing for its further development.

The last sentence in the extract above is key, of course. Such lasers will consume enormous amounts of electrical power – far too much for most modern warships to generate. The US Navy’s looking into an all-electric warship for future service in order to generate the required current for such weapons. If present projections prove accurate, such a vessel should be available to mount the new weapon(s) by the time it/they are ready for service.

This, of course, means that potential opponents of the US Navy have a new headache to solve. Russia had developed high-speed, supersonic anti-ship missiles, which can be launched from land, sea or air platforms, and has exported them to many nations, some of which are now developing their own, similar systems. It’s long been true that a mass attack with such missiles could overwhelm gun- and missile-based shipborne defenses: even if the latter took out up to half the incoming weapons, the rest would get through, and do enough damage to render the ship(s) combat-ineffective (if not sink them outright). However, directed-energy weapons can fire as long and as often as they have power available, and their light-speed beams are much less difficult to steer to a fast-moving target, even if it’s maneuvering wildly to avoid them.

Such weapons will most likely change the equation back in favor of the defense – until someone figures out how to mount a directed-energy weapon in an aircraft or missile, which can fire it at the ship(s) from much further away, thus minimizing the time the defenses have to shoot down the platform carrying it. So the cycle will continue . . .

Peter