SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow8317
[...] This weapon, cobbled together from a half-dozen industrial cutting and welding lasers to produce a total power of only 30 kilowatts, was hardly the megawatt monster military scientists dreamed of decades ago to shoot down ICBMs. But it's a major milestone, advocates say, toward a future in which directed-energy weapons are deployed in real military engagements.
[...] Pentagon officials think the technology for high-energy lasers, like the one tested on the now-decommissioned Ponce, can serve a variety of roles on land and at sea: zapping the cheap rockets, artillery, drones, and small boats loaded with weapons that insurgents have deployed in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, destroying an insurgent rocket costing around a thousand dollars can require a tech-laden Patriot interceptor costing $2 million to $3 million. By comparison, a laser shot from a fiber-laser weapon would cost only $1 in diesel fuel, officials claim.
[...] "The Defense Department has wanted a laser weapon system ever since the laser was invented," says Robert Afzal, senior fellow for laser and sensor systems at the defense contractor Lockheed Martin, in Bothell, Wash. "The key element has been to build this high-power electric laser small enough and powerful enough that we can put it on Army trucks, Air Force planes, and Navy ships, and not take everything [else] off" to make room for it.
Source: Fiber Lasers Mean Ray Guns Are Coming
(Score: 2) by Bobs on Monday April 09 2018, @09:42PM
Another big challenge is scaling up.
Supporting 1 300-KW laser is a challenge - supporting 5 or 10 is a much bigger problem because of scaling the power plant(s) to drive them.
Adding 10-20 machine guns doesn't have as much of an impact on the underlying power infrastructure, as the energy is coming from the chemical bullets, and it is much easier to scale.
Having a laser that can shoot down one to a few drones is one thing, but shooting down a swarm of hundreds or thousands of targets is completely different, and we will probably be using multiple conventional machines guns to do that for years to come yet.