alt Hacker NewsIron Beam: Israel's first operational anti drone laser system
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A lot of comments decrying new weapons tech, but I think drone defense tech is particularly critical right now and going to save a lot of lives. Put another way, I don't think we would be against new clothing that made bullets less effective, even if it remains terrible that such clothing is needed.
Especially as AI becomes better and cheaper and suicide drones become more nimble and autonomous. If you have seen any of the horrifying footage out of Ukraine you will understand how badly we need more effective and cheaper drone defense as soon as possible.
The thing that worries me isn't the drone/anti-drone escalation. It is the fact that these weapons aren't actually limited to anti-drone use. Recently we have seen clear examples of countries, including Israel, that will use automatic id technology to mass tag a population. If you then have tools that can automatically track and mass kill, which this type of weapon represents, then we have reached a type of warfare that is new in the world and deeply scary. It isn't hard to imagine a scenario where person x is killed since they are marked as a 'bag guy' and as part of being marked every person they were next to for the last few days was also marked as likely enough to be bad guys to kill as well. All that has to be done is push a button. It is a scary, and unfortunately all to possible, future if not now.
Israel saw over 16,000 rocket attacks last year from fundamentalist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and Yemen. The Iron Dome intercepted ~90% of them, resulting in thousands of lives saved.
Iron Beam is the newer incarnation of this technology that uses lasers to intercept incoming rockets and drones with precision and much lower cost. Wonderful technology.
From Rafael’s site: https://www.rafael.co.il/system/iron-beam/
100kW laser is nothing to joke about, but seems a good application for anti drone tasks. Fiber lasers are pretty snazzy.
Paid for by American taxpayers who don’t have universal healthcare.
https://quincyinst.org/research/u-s-military-aid-and-arms-tr...
Drone tech will adapt, as it has been in the russia/ukraine conflict.
A small, fast, autonomous drone flying between trees and buildings, avoiding obstacles and not flying in a straight line could destroy such an expensive system with very little explosive.
Or a cloud of such drones.
Or launch your attack on a foggy/rainy day.
So will we get drones coated in mirrors and temperature sensors that automatically move them away from these weapons quickly? Or is the laser just too powerful?
Someone should give people in Gaza or the West Bank or Lebanon the same tech.
I think systems like this will turn drones (or at least, drone swarms) into nothingburgers. We're just one layer deeper into rock paper scissors now
Probably a dumb question, but could a ploy drone fitted with a directional mirror redirect the beam back to the source to damage or destroy it?
I'M A' FIRIN' MAH LAZER!!
There isnt much information here. What is the total power per m^2 and what is the frequency (range). As we know the sun alone is 1kW/m^2 over quite a range.
I wish they would make a demonstration
I guess they could use railguns too.
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100 kW. That's a lot. I wonder how many kW will be needed to save them from God's wrath
This article is here to marshall sympathy for an apartheid state.
Someone will find a reflexive material to put on the drone. Then you have a multi kw laser that hits randomly anywhere when intercepting drones.
Also I wonder why it is not common to run interception drones that automatically fly towards incoming drones and captures them mid air. Like a wasp is capturing other insects.
So pretty much like the iron dome but not with single use rockets but reusable drones instead.
Laser weapons appear to be advancing rapidly. Once we get to the single digit MW power range, MAD will deteriorate as the ICBM becomes a non-viable nuclear delivery mechanism.
What effect would that have? Will nukes start getting used in wars? Will we see deployment of multi ton NEFP[1] warheads that can strike targets with nuclear-propelled kinetics?
[1] <https://toughsf.blogspot.com/2017/05/nuclear-efp-and-heat.ht...>
Personally I think that defensive technology like this is fantastic. It means that innocent citizens will be protected from constant bombardment or thread of bombardment by cheap mass produced rockets or drones. Israeli civilians have faced bombardment by tens of thousands of rockets from Gaza for the last 20 years [1].
Outside the Middle East there's many areas threatened by combatants with similar cheap missiles. Perhaps Ukraine is an obvious one. We're seeing rises in conflicts across parts of Africa, Cambodia/Thailand, Pakistan/India. Many governments are looking into buying these to protect their countries.
This technology hopefully can protect populations from destabilizing forces funded on the cheap by foreign powers. Machine guns changed warfare [2] and drones have been a similar massive change in warfare making it cheaper and easier to attack and destabalize regions. Though of course there's downsides as well [3].
1: https://www.mideastjournal.org/post/how-many-rockets-fired-a... 2: https://online.norwich.edu/online/about/resource-library/how... 3: https://claritywithmichaeloren.substack.com/p/iron-dome-part...