The Department of Defense continues its quest for the ultimate (or at least a working) ray gun, asking small businesses last week to submit ideas for lasers that sense, communicate, illuminate targets and shoot missiles out of the air.
No surprises here -- the military wants 'em small, light, efficient and devastatingly powerful. To date, real-life ray guns are still too big, bulky and complicated for the battlefield, even when they're powerful enough to blow things up.
Take the lethal-yet-unwieldy Airborne Laser, which shot down a ballistic missile in midair last February. The laser weapon took up every last corner of a tricked-out Boeing 747, but according to the Missile Defense Agency the megawatt-class chemical laser is "too large and expensive to field in large numbers on many operational airborne platforms." (Pictured above is the jet the Airborne Laser uses as a target in practice blasts.)
One way to lighten the payload is with a chemical laser that uses gas instead of liquid to store energy. The all-gas-phase-iodine-laser (AGIL) could be as powerful as the Airborne Laser's chemical-oxygen-iodine-laser (COIL), but lighter and easier to manage, the Missile Defense Agency hopes.
Of course solid-state, or "electric" lasers are much more compact than liquid or gas lasers, and with an energy supply that "is rechargeable and clean," according to the Air Force. But they're typically 100 to 1,000 times less powerful.
Still, they are considered "the laser of choice in the long term," especially the fiber-optic laser, "which integrates well with other sensors and electro-optical elements in the aerospace environment," according to the proposal solicitation. It asks for companies to come up with novel ways to combine fiber lasers up to the kilowatt-class level -- far short of the 100-kilowatt power level considered entry-level dangerous.
Eventually, a 100-kW fiber laser system could be compact enough for shorter-range tactical missions on something like a fighter jet. The Air Force is "exploring and developing several aircraft mounted high energy laser (HEL) systems for precision strike and self-defense missions."
Any aircraft-mounted laser system also needs a laser-beam stabilization system to help compensate for aircraft vibrations, which is the focus of one Air Force program. A separate effort calls for development of a system to account for atmospheric distortions. These have been around for a while, so make sure your idea is 10 times better than anything else out there. According to the description, the program seeks to "extend the capabilities of adaptive optics by a factor of 10 over the current state-of-the-art for adaptive optics."
Darpa also wants one of its programs to achieve a factor-of-10 improvement on existing systems, asking for a "fiber-coupled diode laser system with brightness that is at least 10 times higher than the current state-of-the-art."
Other new ray-gun programs include a Navy one to use lasers to foil heat-seeking missiles, an Air Force call for a 100-kW "Magnetron" -- a high-power microwave weapon to stop improvised bombs -- as well as a program to harden its own weapons to "against electromagnetic threats, including HPMs, employed by adversaries."
Photo: USAF
See Also:
- Meet the MEDUSA Ray Gun
- Navy's Drone Death Ray Takes Out Targets at Sea
- Airborne Laser is Chemical Ray Gun
- Zombie Laser Plane Returns to Haunt Washington
- Video: Laser Jet Blasts Ballistic Missile in Landmark Test ...
- 50 Years of Real-Life Ray Guns
- 'Flying Lightsaber' Faces Disintegration
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