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<\/p>\nEl Departamento de Defensa de EUA est\u00e1 finalizando contratos con 3 empresas, para el desarrollo de Sistemas de Armas LASER de 300Kw de potencia. En los \u00faltimos a\u00f1os, las Armas de Energ\u00eda Dirigida (DEW) han tenido un enorme impulso, con el objetivo inicial de neutralizar peque\u00f1os drones de baja velocidad. El ambicioso objetivo impuesto a los sistemas L\u00c1SER de 300kw, es la destrucci\u00f3n de Misiles de Crucero, principal amenaza hoy de las Fuerzas Navales de superficie.<\/p>\n
PENTAGON: The Army, Air Force, and Navy may be only three years away from a 300-kilowatt laser weapon, one powerful enough to shoot down cruise missiles \u2014 using the same basic technology as the checkout counter at your local supermarket.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe are in the process of negotiating contracts with three different performers for three different electrically powered laser concepts,\u201d Thomas Karr, who works for Pentagon R&D chief Mike Griffin as assistant director for directed energy, said. (DE includes both lasers and high-powered microwaves). These will be demonstration models for testing, not prototypes of operational weapons, he emphasized in an interview with Breaking Defense<\/em>.<\/p>\n Industry has proposed several designs that \u201chave all been demonstrated at lower power levels, 50 to 150 kilowatts,\u201d Karr said. Those power levels are enough to burn through drones and rockets, but not larger, faster and tougher targets like cruise missiles.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to have a 300-kilowatt laser by 2022. We\u2019d like to get up to 500 kilowatts by 2024,\u201d he said, \u201cand then, if we still haven\u2019t hit the limit of anything, it\u2019s on to the megawatt class.<\/p>\n From Tanks of Chemicals to Commercial & Competitive<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThose are aggressive objectives,\u201d Karr acknowledged, \u201c[but] we have high confidence that one or more of these different fiber or slab approaches will scale up to 300 or beyond. I don\u2019t think we\u2019ve seen the limit yet.\u201d<\/p>\n The Pentagon actually flew and test-fired a one-megawatt Airborne Laser in 2009-2011, but that system required a 747 full of toxic chemicals, hardly practical in a war zone, not to mention a very easy target,. By contrast, today\u2019s designs build on widely available and rapidly advancing commercial technologies.<\/p>\n \u201cThe electrically-driven lasers we\u2019re scaling up exploit a lot of commercial technology,\u201d Karr told me. \u201cThey\u2019re all pumped by semi-conductor diodes, which is a multi-billion dollar industry. It\u2019s not just off-the-shelf. It\u2019s not the semiconductor laser that\u2019s in your supermarket scanner, but we\u2019re building off that huge investment in commercial industry.\u201d<\/p>\n Two of the three demonstrators Karr plans to build use bundles of fiber-optic cables \u2013 like the ones probably connecting your computer to the internet as you read this \u2013 to channel beams of coherent light, which are then combined into a single powerful blast. \u201cThere\u2019s a large commercial industry in these fiber lasers for cutting, welding, material processing,\u201d Karr said, \u201cand they\u2019re up to kilowatts and very good in quality.\u201d<\/p>\n The third demonstrator will use small lasers to \u201cpump\u201d energy into slabs of specially formulated material that amplify their power. \u201cAgain, that\u2019s been scaled up to the point where we think we\u2019re ready to go,\u201d Karr said. \u201cWe believe we can add additional amplifier stages and each amplifier adds more power [and can] still maintain the beam quality.\u201d<\/p>\n Karr made clear he doesn\u2019t need all three designs to work. In fact, the project might survive all three failing, because he\u2019s put out another request for proposals for designs in the 300-500 kW range. \u201cWe have three good proposals to start with,\u201d he said, \u201c[but] we think we will add additional contractors in the future.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have enough money to fund multiple competing technical concepts, as well as multiple performers,\u201d Karr said. (The effort\u2019s 2019 budget was $70 million; the 2020 budget remains in limbo). \u201cThe POM [five-year Program Objective Memorandum] number is adequate to carry multiple contractors over the finish line to 300 [kW] level.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we do reviews, every performer will see, on the key performance metrics, where they rank compared to their competitors,\u201d Karr said, although no competitor will get to see details of its rivals\u2019 performance. \u201cYou\u2019re in the green zone or you\u2019re in the red zone\u2026. It will stimulate competition.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of my career has been in the private industry, more in private industry than in government. I love competition,\u201d he said. \u201cI like the fact that we have lots of competition in this program.\u201d<\/p>\n Joint Coherence<\/strong><\/p>\n While Karr is encouraging industry to compete, he\u2019s also getting the armed services to cooperate. \u201cIn the past, every service that wanted to scale up a laser, it picked the laser and it invested to try to scale that up,\u201d he said. \u201cNow\u2026 we have for the first time a unified laser scaling program that\u2019s led by OSD [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] with the concurrence and participation of all the services.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s much more efficient,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe it\u2019s not one size fits all. Maybe there\u2019s two or three sizes, but there\u2019s a limited number of government-controlled interfaces\u2026 common standards that all of the services could agree to,\u201d governing such things as how to couple the laser to its external power source and cooling.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things that OSD wants the whole community to move towards is a more open architecture for all these systems, so that there are interchangeable or at least similar major subsystems, instead of everything being custom designed,\u201d Karr told me.<\/p>\n There are definitely opportunities for the services to share, he said. \u201cThey face a lot of similar challenges,\u201d he said, \u201cso there\u2019s a lot of exchange of information between Army, Navy, Air Force, and DARPA or SOCOM [Special Operations Command].\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the nice things about sitting in OSD is I can look down the stovepipes to all the services and see there\u2019s a lot in common,\u201d Karr said, \u201cparticularly in beam control\u201d \u2013 the difficult science of getting the laser beam from the weapon to the target without losing power or focus. \u201cThere\u2019s room for a joint beam control experiment [that] everybody can spin off.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time, there are definite differences between putting a laser on an airplane \u2013 as the Air Force and SOCOM plan to do \u2013 versus a ship or a vehicle.<\/p>\n \u201cThe airflow over these systems introduces some special challenges that the Air Force Research Lab is moving on,\u201d he said. \u201cThe absorption of the beam in the maritime environment\u201d \u2013 with lots of humidity and salt \u2013 \u201cis different than you would have in a land environment.<\/p>\n \u201cSize, weight, and power efficiency requirements are most stressing for the airborne cases,\u201d he summed up. \u201cIt\u2019s somewhat easier on land vehicles and on ships, but it still is not a trivial issue.<\/p>\n But the military\u2019s existing aircraft, ships, and vehicles were never designed to carry weapons that suck up hundreds of kilowatts of power in seconds and emit much of that as heat. \u201cWe\u2019ll learn how to manage that,\u201d he said, but it will require a customized solution for each ship, plane, and ground vehicle.<\/p>\n Military lasers have made major advances since the Navy field-tested its Laser Weapon System (LaWS) aboard a ship in the Persian Gulf five years ago. The 30-kilowatt LaWS was basically six commercial lasers bolted together, their six separate beams converging on one spot. Today\u2019s lasers are still built of multiple modules, but they combine the beams from those modules into a single coherent laser, and their overall power is much higher.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have laser technology getting onto platforms in the 50-60 kilowatt class,\u201d Karr said, such as the Navy\u2019s HELIOS, the first laser fully integrated into a warship\u2019s combat systems. \u201cThose are adequate for engaging small boats, small UAVs [drones], bringing those down or blinding the sensors.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, in cutting edge experiments, he went on, \u201cwe have electrically powered lasers in the 150-kilowatt class. One has just been lifted onto a ship in San Diego harbor[:] the Laser Weapon System Demonstrator.<\/p>\n \u201cThe next level of targets is harder, faster things like cruise missiles,\u201d Karr continued. \u201cThey move a lot faster, you have to engage farther away. So you need, we believe, a 300kw class [laser] \u2013 that\u2019s sort of a consensus across the services\u2026 to start doing those harder, longer range missions.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s why everybody agreed, let\u2019s try for 300 kW in 22,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere will be some challenges to cleverly handle all of this additional power,\u201d Karr acknowledged. \u201cYou\u2019ve got more heat, you\u2019ve got more thermal loading, [and] typically the way people deal with that is that they\u2019ll make stuff bigger. We don\u2019t<\/em> want to grow the size and mass of things arbitrarily. We want to keep things small and compact as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n As OSD and the services strive to scale up electrical lasers, will they hit a point of diminishing returns, beyond which further power increases are unaffordable or impractical? At some <\/em>point. But Karr thinks he get to viable missile defense lasers first.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I look back over multiple decades, [across] many different concepts \u2013 starting with CO2 Laser, CO lasers, chemical lasers, free-electron lasers, chemical oxygen-iodine,\u201d Karr said, \u201cevery one of those\u2026 at some point we hit a level where problems were very, very challenging.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know where that will be with electrical lasers,\u201d Karr said. \u201cWe haven\u2019t hit that yet.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"MDA](\"https:\/\/sites.breakingmedia.com\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2015\/08\/Airborne-Laser-ABL-MDA-photo-ablspur-1024x683.jpg\")
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