US laser project encounters setbacks

Our correspondent Chen Yang

At the beginning of this year, when faced with a large number of suicide drone attacks by Yemeni Husei armed forces, the US Navy was forced to intercept with expensive anti-aircraft missiles. This "extravagant practice" has aroused widespread doubts in American public opinion: "Why don't we use cheap and easy-to-use laser weapons?" Now the answer has finally been revealed - the multimode laser weapons developed by the US armed forces are generally in trouble or have failed. Pentagon officials acknowledged that the previous judgment on the development of laser weapons was too optimistic, and the reality proved that they still faced a lot of technical problems if they wanted to put them into actual combat.

The Air Force dismounts several airborne laser weapons

According to the US Power website on the 21st, the "Self Protection High Energy Laser Demonstrator" (abbreviated as "SHIELD", meaning "Divine Shield"), which was previously touted as a "revolutionary weapon" by the US Air Force, has finally failed. It consists of three parts: the "spear" laser weapon in the charge of Lockheed Martin; The beam control system manufactured by Northrop Grumman is responsible for guiding the laser to the target; And the pod developed by Boeing and installed on the aircraft.

Simulation rendering of AC-130 equipped with laser weapons

Simulation sketch of a sixth generation stealth fighter using laser to shoot down incoming weapons

According to the US Military website, the "Divine Shield" program was first launched in 2016, when it was supposed to be a laser weapon installed on stealth fighters such as F-22 and F-35, which could intercept incoming air-to-air missiles, ground to air missiles and even ballistic missiles aimed at US troops stationed abroad. But since then, the progress of the project has been delayed. In 2017, the US Air Force had hoped to load the complete "Aegis" system onto the fighter aircraft for the first test in 2021, but in 2020, the US Air Force announced that the plan was postponed to 2025. Dr. Ted Ortiz, the project leader of the US Air Force Research Laboratory, confirmed in an interview with Military website that: "The Aegis project has ended and there is no plan for further testing and evaluation. The US Air Force has not installed this laser pod on the fighter test platform." The report said that, This means that the US Air Force has actually abandoned the plan to complete relevant research and put it into use. "After years of development, the latest airborne laser weapon attempt of the US military seems to be heading for the scrap yard".

The laser weapon project of the US Air Force with a similar outcome also includes the airborne high-energy laser weapon (AHEL) developed for AC-130J special operations aircraft. Since 2015, the USAF Special Operations Command has been seeking to install high-energy lasers on fixed wing aircraft. Lockheed Martin won the contract to equip the AC-130J with this laser weapon in 2019. In 2017, Lieutenant General Brad Weber, commander of the US Air Force Special Operations Command, said: "Under the firing of such high-altitude laser weapons, without any impact, explosion or even the drone of aircraft engines, key targets will be permanently disabled. The enemy will lose communication without detection..." But similar to the "Divine Shield" plan, The related testing work has been delayed repeatedly. The latest plan announced at the end of last year was that the relevant test would begin in January 2024. However, in March this year, the spokesman of the US Air Force Special Operations Command confirmed that the system encountered "technical challenges" after completing the important "end-to-end high power operation" in the open-air ground test, making it unable to integrate with the AC-130J special aircraft system in time, At present, the US Air Force has suspended the funding for airborne test of this project, and will focus on ground test in the future to improve its operation and reliability, "so as to transfer equipment and related achievements to other institutions".

The website "Power" also mentioned that before that, many airborne laser weapons projects of the US military had also been dismounted or stalled, for example, the project of launching high-energy laser interceptors against ballistic missiles using modified Boeing 747 airliners was cancelled in 2011; In 2019, the directed energy missile defense project involving space-based particle beam weapons will be dismounted; In 2020, the assumption that the US Missile Defense Agency will launch high-energy lasers by unmanned aerial vehicles to carry out anti missile missions was also rejected. In addition, the airborne small laser weapon developed by Raytheon for the Apache helicopter gunship was tested in 2017, but there has been no following since.

Army R&D is not progressing smoothly

Not only has the US Air Force suffered setbacks, but similar weapons of the US Army have also stalled. According to the website of US Sudden Defense, with the popularity of cheap UAVs, the US Army is facing the heaviest anti UAV task. In theory, laser weapons have extremely low single shot cost and almost unlimited launch times, which are more advantageous than expensive air defense systems in service. Therefore, the US Army also places high hopes on laser anti UAV systems. However, Doug Bush, the Assistant Secretary of the US Army in charge of procurement, logistics and technology, recently issued a less optimistic report on the field test results of the US Army's "directional energy mobile short-range air defense missile" system.

It is reported that the "directional energy mobile short-range air defense missile" system is a 50kW laser weapon installed on the Stryker armored vehicle, which is mainly used to destroy small unmanned aerial vehicles and incoming rockets, artillery shells and mortars. It is also equipped with air threat detection, tracking and targeting equipment, which can operate independently without accompanying support vehicles, and provides air protection for other mobile forces. As of March this year, the US Army has sent four prototype vehicles to an undisclosed location in the Middle East for testing. At a recent congressional hearing, Bush acknowledged that integrating a 50 kilowatt laser weapon into a vehicle that must constantly move faces a series of technical challenges.

In addition to these technical problems. Bush also talked about the field maintenance problems faced by the actual deployment of laser weapons. "In more challenging environments (such as extremely hot and cold places), these problems will become more complex". Army Lieutenant General Daniel Cabler, the then commander of the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command, also said last year that the US Army encountered new obstacles in the application of high-energy laser air defense weapons, including low maintainability of laser weapons in remote areas; There is a shortage of technical talents in laser weapon related operation and maintenance; The opportunity of using laser weapons on the battlefield cannot be accurately grasped, and the understanding of the combat scene of laser weapons application is vague; At present, the manufacturing cost of high-precision directional energy weapons such as laser weapons is high. In particular, he stressed that "the laser equipment is very complex. This is not a Hummer parked in the garage. You will not have a supply room or maintenance office full of repair parts in the wild."

US Army Prototype Vehicle Carrying Laser Weapons (Data Map)

The Navy is widely criticized

The US Navy has invested the most in the field of laser weapon development and deployed the first in actual combat. In 2014, the US Navy's "Ponce" amphibious landing ship was equipped with a prototype of a 30 kilowatt class shipborne laser weapon, which destroyed drones and speedboats by emitting high-energy laser beams invisible to the naked eye. In August 2022, the destroyer "Prebell" was the first to be equipped with a high-energy laser and integrated optical glare monitoring system (HELIOS). Its power is 60 kilowatts, which can be further improved to 150 kilowatts in the future, and can destroy small UAVs and speedboats.

However, in the Red Sea escort operation earlier this year, the US Navy was widely criticized for its delay in putting these laser weapons into practice. Lieutenant General Brendan McClain, commander of the US Navy Surface Fleet Command, acknowledged that the slow pace of development of these new concept weapons was "frustrating". He asked, "Ten years ago, when I was the commander of the 50th destroyer squadron in Bahrain, the Amphibious Lander Pangsai was equipped with laser weapons. Ten years later, why do we still have nothing to deploy?"

It is reported that the Pentagon spends about $1 billion on at least 31 directed energy projects every year, but few of them can actually fight. The website "Dynamics" noted that as the laser weapons of all military services have suffered setbacks, the Pentagon's argument that laser weapons will "bring revolutionary change" is also cooling. In 2020, Mike Griffin, the then deputy secretary of the US Department of Defense in charge of research and engineering, said: "I am very doubtful whether we can install large lasers on aircraft and use them to shoot down even close enemy missiles." He said that the first problem is that lasers need high-power energy input to produce destructive beams, It is a major engineering challenge to make the pod carried by the fighter generate such high power; Secondly, even if enough power can be generated, the air flow change caused by the fighter in flight makes it almost impossible to keep the laser beam focused on the opponent's missile in flight for a long time. Dr. Rob Afzal, senior researcher of laser and sensor systems at Lockheed Martin, further explained that the high-energy laser emitted by laser weapons will be affected by many factors in atmospheric transmission. The atmosphere with different densities will distort the transmission of the laser beam, so it is necessary to measure the distortion of the laser in the atmosphere transmission in time, and then compensate it to ensure that the laser can still focus on the target after passing through the atmosphere, which involves a series of technical problems that are difficult to overcome in the short term. Even for large platforms such as ships, finding enough space to support laser weapon systems is still a problem.