Directed Energy Weapon R&D: LASER MASER Particle-Beam etc.

[Bhartiya Sainik]

We can showcase & discuss all the DEW R&D around the world here.
Nuke is considered a deterent but it will result in MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) & ruin the entire planet for decades to centuries if used.
DEW might become ultimate deterent & supplement SAMs, AAMs, AGMs. It might compel to reduce size of forces, or at least humans in forces.

Every weapon has +/- points.
> Kinetic unpowered weapons like bullets, shells, etc or Kinetic powered weapons like rockets, missles, etc can be short to long range, can be guided in non line of sight mode. Sometimes the kinetic energy is enough to disable or destroy target. at other times additional explosive, thermal, etc kind of effects are needed.
> But they take time to reach target, can be deviated by strong wind & under constant effect of gravity in unpowered state, need precise projectile calculations. Unpowered bulletes & shells are reltively easier & cheaper to produce. Guided weapons are costlier.

LASER was invented in 1960 & since then it has been massively researched. Since then people imagined laser guns, tanks, jets, satellites, etc both in Sci-Fi movies & for future military.
MASER & Particle beams were also researched.
> Radiation travels at speed of light & reaches target instantly. Depending upon type, power from KW to MW, it can be short to long range & used against soft to hard targets.
> But the platform setup is usually big, R&D cost is also big, it requires line of sight. Hard, big target requires very high power to disable or destroy. It takes time to basically heat, punture, break the target. R&D is still going on to make it compact, cheaper. At long ranges & higher altitudes the air molecules scatter & diffract the ray requiring higher power to compensate.

 

[Bhartiya Sainik]

NOTE: I'm going to share few things by our DoD/DRDO, so this reply is not SPAM.

C'mon Sir, please don't do this to me
At this point it feels like you're doing it intentionally
View attachment 18631

I said before that just bcoz i am techie doesn't mean i should expect everybody to be tech savvy & nobody knows all aspects of engineering - mechanical, civil, electrical, electronics, compters/IT, biotech, etc, hence i use pics, diagrams, calculations, acronyms with expansions as much as possible, i suggest & request you do the same.
Google search doesn't mention that unless a very specific search is made w.r.t. research, engineering, production & manufacturing. In my B.E./B.Tech. books of CT/IT (2 decades back) i never came across this acronym bcoz like i said it is very specific. May be at ME/MTech it applies.

Yes Sir, I'm well aware with everything from SHiELD to LANCE to STRAFE.

See even after requesting, you're still not learning to use expansion of acronyms for the audience.
SHIELD = Self-Protect High-Energy Laser Demonstrator
LANCE = Laser Advancements for Next-generation Compact Environments
STRAFE = SHiELD Turret Research in Aero Effects
Then you must be knowing that DRDO, BARC, IIT, IISc, HEMRL, etc, etc are also working on DEW, etc.


Why don't you share this kind of pics, diagrams before questioning audience?

But are you aware that most of these programs are either in hold or under review citing multiple technical issues?

> It is a simple R&D lifecycle, every new thing requires pauses, testing, reviews, issues, re-engineering, etc. Since 1990s i'm aware through Discovery Channel about SDI (Strategic Defence Initiave) / STAR WARS, focussing on DEW (Directed energy Weapon) which started in 1983. It has been 40 years since. Many documentaries mentioned many kinds of initial challenges. Is it stopping the world or our DRDO?
And today's media is also used to mislead/discourage the global rivals.
In last few decades, just like START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) there could be some diplomatic agreements b/w super powers not to start a new high tech arms race, but now it seems it is falling apart.
With global progress now a new race seems inevitable.

I'm giving you two specific scenarios, please answer in the constraints to those.

Now this is definitely like test paper

1. Loss of power due to attenuation
Using Beer-Lambert Model (in GPT) to calculate the loss of power for a 1kW Infra-red laser fired at an altitude of 12km (typical for fighters) at a distance of 10km...it comes to 18%. So a kW laser would be roughly 800W at 10km. Which in turn means you'd need to pump a surplus of power to account for this attention, which in turn would mean a heightened SWaP requirment.

We don't live in a lossless world. There are losses in every/most physical, chemical, biological, mathematical aspects of nature. But that has not stopped technology advancements in any domain. Those losses are considered in R&D. You'are talking about 1KW laser while USA has disclosed 300+KW laser for 6gen fighter jet. Then imagine what is the classified spec.
For the audience, here is a small collage of what i'm aware of superficially, some slides are 8yo from 2016 or before perhaps, you must be aware of it obviously when you mentioned SHIELD, LANCE, STRAFE:


I hope the NGAD finds that F-16 1st

2. Reaction time
Let's say two Meteors are ripple fired at a target equipped with a laser pod. The time delay is 1sec so the gap should be around 500m (max Mach 4). At 10km from impact the fighter starts illuminating the leading missile. (The reason I'm using 10km is because it's what the typical maximum range for way more powerful land based lasers are, for airborne it'd be less). During endgame a missile like Meteor easily reaches Mach 4 so 10000/(4*340) = 8sec; 8 seconds is the time the laser would have to heat the missile enough to cause a malfunction. But let's say you're lucky and the laser somehow illuminated exactly where the warhead is and in just 5 seconds it detonates. But during this whole time the trailing missile was also there so now you've just 3 seconds left to acquire this second missile and start heating it.
This is one of the key inherent challenges of a laser weapons, it's not a fire-n-forget system like missiles
Click to expand...

Excellent thinking. You're going the right way but 1 aperture/pod may not be enough. So the obvious next step of thinking in design would be to have multiple apertures.
USA & EU so far advertise just 1 aperture shooting multiple ripple fired missiles.


but i speculate that to counter multiple SAMs+AAMs in nightmare scenarios they may develop at least 3 or 4 DEW apertures. May be they will produce the laser in center of airframe, tranfser to apertures by mirrors & lenses & fire out the gimbaled turrets.
IDK Russia's progress on DEW but the day they'll minimize the system then the DIRCMs on Su-57 wil be replaced by DEW.
The following is a 14yo fan art from Deviantart website, IDK if it has anything to do with NGAD, but those blended bumps with yellow patches above & below could be DIRCM or DEW apertures either in this CAD or at least we can refer to it conceptually.