alt Hacker NewsIsrael, United States, United Kingdom, China and Russia have HEL high-energy lasers that can shoot down fast drones. Several other countries are working on HEL development. The numbers of operational HEL systems are still very small but growing. I believe that Israel have the most of them in operation today developed primarily by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. 10kw to 50kw on trucks, 100kw ground based. Range: 7-10km, shorter in fog or rain. Dwell time: 4 to 5 seconds. Cost per shot: $2–$3.50.
Targets: UAVs/drones (including swarms), short-range rockets (Qassam-style), mortars, artillery shells, cruise missiles, and potentially other low/slow-flying threats. It excels against cheap, high-volume threats where kinetic interceptors are uneconomical.
The US is working on a megawatt version that will be mounted on ships to take down full sized aircraft, hyper-sonic weapons and ballistic missiles. Timeline: 2030. Even at 30-50 kW (e.g., the earlier AN/SEQ-3 LaWS on USS Ponce), lasers can target helicopters or manned aircraft to cause crashes by frying sensors or engines. Scaling to hundreds of kW extends range and lethality against faster, larger aircraft.
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I was thinking about this the other day when watching a video about Chernobyl.
They flew countless helicopters over the exposed reactor core and because this was 1986, helicopters didn't have a million sensors or electronics in it. It was entirely mechanical. Effectively all in-use aircraft nowadays could not complete such a mission as the electronics would be rendered null almost instantaneously, even with ECC, etc.
Do these high energy lasers fry the electronics, or are they able to simply ignite and burn holes through the aircraft?
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Cost per shot including the development and unit costs amortized over the service life of the weapons system? Or is that just the cost of the energy that got pumped into the laser?