Lockheed Martin is Going to Build Laser Weapons for U.S. Fighter Jets

The Air Force Research Lab Self-Protect High Energy Laser demonstrator program plans to have a solid-state laser system that can be mounted on an aircraft by 2021. Lockheed is going to adapt the laser system they provided to the Army to enable an aircraft to defend itself from ground-to-air and air-to-air missiles. If this technology works out it won't matter if an aircraft has stealth or not since it will be able to shoot down anything launched against it. This just goes to show sci-fi turns into real science more and more often as time goes by.

If Lockheed can deliver, the Air Force gets a weapon that’s not just lighter and (likely) cheaper than equivalent missile and machine gun systems, but one that could change how it deploys its fighters. If you’re packing a missile-killing laser, you can go places and do things that now demand the sort of extremely expensive stealth tech of the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning.

Jet will run out of fuel after firing it just twice.

And the recharge time/cooldown time will be way worse than conventional ordnance.

defaultluser said:

Jet will run out of fuel after firing it just twice.

And the recharge time/cooldown time will be way worse than conventional ordnance.

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Most of these fibre lasers are designed for industrial use and can run continuously. There is no cooldown.
That said they will not be getting them small enough for jets any time soon, 100kW stuff is 10ft container sized currently. By jets they will be meaning bombers.

I spoke to someone a few years ago working on 50kW lasers and they said it's possible to make plasma in midair at the focal point.

I know what lasers can do on the ground with unlimited cooling and unlimited power.

You'll still have limited power generation onboard an aircraft, unless you want it to drop out of the sky. Even on a bomber with a ton of engines there's limits to how often you can fire the weapon, since you probably can't get enough instantaneous power output for the laser from the generators. So you wait around charging caps. Not to mention those LARGE caps will take up extra space in the aircraft.

And cooling on an aircraft is also detrimental to it's BASIC PURPOSE (being a body with low coefficient of friction). You add fins and airflow, you compromise the maneuverability and maximum speed of the aircraft. And cooling is kinda important for lasers, which are extremely inefficient.

So are you starting to see now how this would be not such an amazing idea? Lasers are better mounted on ground and sea craft.

Conventional ordinance's destructive power is self-contained and needs very little power from the aircraft to do what it does. And you can fire it at a pretty impressive rate.

Not sure how viable these lasers will be, since they operate on a superheating principle for disabling their targets a reflective surface paired with high heat isolation material/solutions would/should render these basically pointless. Especially for things like missiles where you in most cases only have the front tip exposed to the laser.

SIR! The enemy's equipment is all too shiny! SIR!

SIR! Our puny weapons are worthless! SIR!

defaultluser said:

I know what lasers can do on the ground with unlimited cooling and unlimited power.

You'll still have limited power generation onboard an aircraft, unless you want it to drop out of the sky. Even on a bomber with a ton of engines there's limits to how often you can fire the weapon, since you probably can't get enough instantaneous power output for the laser from the generators. So you wait around charging caps. Not to mention those LARGE caps will take up extra space in the aircraft.

And cooling on an aircraft is also detrimental to it's BASIC PURPOSE (being a body with low coefficient of friction). You add fins and airflow, you compromise the maneuverability and maximum speed of the aircraft. And cooling is kinda important for lasers, which are extremely inefficient.

So are you starting to see now how this would be not such an amazing idea? Lasers are better mounted on ground and sea craft.

Conventional ordinance's destructive power is self-contained and needs very little power from the aircraft to do what it does. And you can fire it at a pretty impressive rate.

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Agreed - I don't think lasers are a good idea on aircraft yet for this power level and efficiency. They have had reasonably powerful ones for laser jamming and warhead jamming already though. Latest ruski designs use this also. Ships, ground craft, yes definitely though.
These fibre lasers are over 40% efficient, some are with pumping efficiencies of 60%, the heat load isn't as bad as you think, that said 100kW output giving 60kW cooling, is a radiator or so with high speed airflow... not too bad and really minimal. We are not talking few % efficiency of co2 lasers etc. There was a laser developed by DARPA, I beleive called the 'shiva star' which lead to MARAUDER. It went black quickly though. When I was digging into this on more obscure sources (my business is based around lasers..) they found once you exceed 60% efficiency, the heat begins to be dumped out of the beam, seriously whacky quantum effects occur then, that is very hard to find info on though, it was mostly used as an ASL weapon. It was also supercooled and super conducting. I have verified frequency shifting begins to get rather interesting with much lower power lasers around -20 - -40°c, so can only imagine what happens at few ° kelvin..
If you want I can PM you some of the lasers used for ground based laser weapons. They are not really any different to industrial offerings, just packaged slightly different. Funnily enough, US mil uses lasers supplied by a Russian owned company.

eneq said:

Not sure how viable these lasers will be, since they operate on a superheating principle for disabling their targets a reflective surface paired with high heat isolation material/solutions would/should render these basically pointless. Especially for things like missiles where you in most cases only have the front tip exposed to the laser.

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This.
There are coatings that can significanly impair the functionality of a laser of this nature, with current technology. That said, with enough power (e.g. shiva star/marauder levels) you have equivalent of 5lbs of TNT hitting your missile when that plasma hits.. that'll disintegrate any coating. So unsure if this is viable when it gets that serious. Also guided/seeker head missiles would be particularly vulnerable, they cannot be coated over the seeker/tip.

read up on the Air Born Laser. It's real, they tested it in NM at the air base I used to work at

Didn't realize we were over the 40 percent efficiency mark. That's a lot closer to viable, even if there's still some issues putting it on an aircraft.

defaultluser said:

Conventional ordinance's destructive power is self-contained and needs very little power from the aircraft to do what it does. And you can fire it at a pretty impressive rate.

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Yo do realize this is intended as a Phalanx/CIWS type of system for an aircraft, it's not intended to replace missiles or cannons on them. It's just to provide for missile defense for the individual aircraft. So it's this or 12K Lbs of CWIS gun... Seems like the laser might be more practical than people want to give it credit for.

N4CR said:

Snip.

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Neither Shiva Star nor Marauder were lasers though.

It is intended to be used as an offensive weapon...in time. The long term goal is to be able to disable even armored vehicles on the ground....

Some primers here on the power/thermal questions-

1: Few things can provide current like a god***n jet engine with a sizable dynamo element in the turbine, this means capacitor needs are workable and recharge time are optimal for the class. The f-22 and f-35's engines and systems are both designed with this use in mind, with massive excess generation capability specs for these planned future upgrades.

2: The lasers will be cooled by a system that pumps fuel to the outer skins of the aircraft, which is then burned (pre-heating the fuel actually increases efficiency to boot) , this method is also used to cool the leading edges of the aircraft to keep the stealth coatings from degrading.

When it comes down to it, a jet fighter is actually highly optimal as a platform for early full weaponized energy weapons.

Dollars to donuts this new weapons system vaporizes dollar bills 1,000x as effectively as it does missles.

DyNamiC. said:

Neither Shiva Star nor Marauder were lasers though.

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Yeah but similar energy delivery/storage systems as later lasers used e.g. NIF etc. As I said 'I believe' and I obviously don't have the correct name, but these lasers were developed from the shiva star based research efforts. If you know what they are I'd love to know as it was a long time ago when researching this.
They managed to get the weapon to output waste heat, to a point it became a feedback - more energy = more heat output via the beam.. you can see where that is going, 60% efficiency was the magic turning point. May have been speaking with one of my laser oldfag associates, information about this is very hard to come by (for some strange reason ).
When they reach this level for conventional fighter jets, viable laser weapons replacing most ordinance are possible. Currently though they are too bulky at 40% for fighter jets.

Awesome, keep spending those tax dollars on worthless shit. What're we up to now annually, 700 billion? More than the next 10 countries combined.

I think all we want to know really is... is it going to make Starwars laser sound when it fires?

Reality said:

Awesome, keep spending those tax dollars on worthless shit. What're we up to now annually, 700 billion? More than the next 10 countries combined.

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Of the top 30 countries in military spending, the US and its allies spend $1.127 trillion. Our chief concerns in the list, China, Russia and Iran, spent a combined $297 billion. The remaining 8 countries which are marginally aligned spent $92.5 billion.

Of course, those numbers don't even include interest paid for the Iraq and Afghanistan adventures (estimates are around $40B/year) or the Dept of Veterans Affairs, $180B/year.

Web4Life said:

I think all we want to know really is... is it going to make Starwars laser sound when it fires?

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That's a premium upgrade, you'll have to pay for that.

defaultluser said:

I know what lasers can do on the ground with unlimited cooling and unlimited power.

You'll still have limited power generation onboard an aircraft, unless you want it to drop out of the sky. Even on a bomber with a ton of engines there's limits to how often you can fire the weapon, since you probably can't get enough instantaneous power output for the laser from the generators. So you wait around charging caps. Not to mention those LARGE caps will take up extra space in the aircraft.

And cooling on an aircraft is also detrimental to it's BASIC PURPOSE (being a body with low coefficient of friction). You add fins and airflow, you compromise the maneuverability and maximum speed of the aircraft. And cooling is kinda important for lasers, which are extremely inefficient.

So are you starting to see now how this would be not such an amazing idea? Lasers are better mounted on ground and sea craft.

Conventional ordinance's destructive power is self-contained and needs very little power from the aircraft to do what it does. And you can fire it at a pretty impressive rate.

Click to expand...

Keep in mind, the Laser would likely be fitted as an external pod and used only when necessary (specifically, when a missile is incoming).

If missiles are incoming often enough where heat/power becomes a problem, then something else has gone badly wrong up to that point.

gamerk2 said:

Keep in mind, the Laser would likely be fitted as an external pod and used only when necessary (specifically, when a missile is incoming).

If missiles are incoming often enough where heat/power becomes a problem, then something else has gone badly wrong up to that point.

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They might be hoping to send a few drones out to eat up all the surface to air missile systems. That could make things interesting if other aircraft come in for the second punch after things clear a bit.

This will not work on multiple incoming anytime soon. Having a plane that costs this much with no stealth technology is absurd.

Lets just all skip this foreplay and join the Q Continuum. All we have to do then is just "finger snap" our enemies to death.

Crimson said:

Lets just all skip this foreplay and join the Q Continuum. All we have to do then is just "finger snap" our enemies to death.

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Quantum weapons are already widespread, at least 20 countries have them. Their proficiency on the otherhand is where the real question is.
Most of these conventional technologies are for normalfag wars and scaremongering. A real war will be silent.

If these things are meant for defense then there should be any worry about firing it more than one or two times, just to buy enough time to bug out fast. If they wanted them as offensive weapons that they want to use multiple times per mission then I understand some of the arguments.
A lot of missions flown don't have any contact with SAM's anyway in current conflicts.