The United States is using laser technology to shoot down drones and cruise missiles in the Strait of Hormuz region in its war against Iran, the NY Post reported, citing sources from the Department of War. The technology is said to have already been tested before on the southern border of the United States to shoot down drones from Mexican groups linked to drug trafficking.
According to the newspaper, the project to harness the military potential of lasers has been in development for 50 years. “We can track and target drones very specifically and position the point exactly where we want, whether to disable their sensors or to explode the drone itself,” Mark Neice, president of Directed Energy Consultants who collaborates with the military, told the Post.
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Basically, laser technology works by drawing energy from generators or batteries, which is then converted into particles of light called photons. The photons are then concentrated into a single beam, which is only visible under infrared light, not to the naked eye. They heat the surface they are directed at until it explodes or melts.
“It is an armed light that spends several seconds of what we call the ‘dwell time’ on the target to bring it down,” said Jared Keller, who publishes the Laser Wars bulletin.
“Now it really makes sense to take them out of a laboratory and into real-world environments. The most significant development is the Army awarding a half-billion-dollar contract to build war-ready lasers that focus photons on a target to cause catastrophic and destructive effects,” he added.
Read also: The Pentagon weighs use of anti-drone lasers in Washington, NYT says
One curiosity pointed out in the report is that laser weapons are operated by soldiers using reconfigured Xbox console controllers.
“The video game industry has figured out what the best controller is, and now the U.S. Army is saying: why reinvent the wheel with a specialized control system where you can simply use an Xbox controller or something similar to do the job? If you have fired a Spartan laser in ‘Halo’, you probably can fire one of the most advanced weapons in real life,” Keller said.
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Regarding the use of the technology against Mexican drug trafficking – at least 11 drones have been shot down so far – Brent Ziarnick, a senior defense studies researcher at the American Foreign Policy Council, said the equipment seems to be quite effective.
The technology used by ships in the Middle East and on the southern border, as far as experts know, has not been used against human targets at this time.
Regarding an evolution toward equipping soldiers with laser backpacks, that is not expected to happen anytime soon, according to the experts cited. The reason is that lasers deployed in the Middle East are large and heavy, requiring them to be mounted on battleships.
These systems, which look very much like speed cameras, are known as High-Energy Laser Systems with Integrated Optical Vision and Surveillance (HELIOS), which allegedly focus a 60-kilowatt high-energy laser to destroy objects.
Images captured so far show the lasers being tested or used on smaller drones, but Boeing recently announced a CLWS (Compact Laser Weapon System) that can destroy Group 3 drones, which weigh up to 1,300 pounds (589 kilograms).
In June, Pete Hegseth, the U.S. Secretary of War, reportedly took part in a laser weapons demonstration at White Sands [Missile Range in southern New Mexico], Keller said. “Secretary Hegseth managed to take control and shoot down a drone with, I think, only a few minutes of training.”
Although lasers are powerful, there are drawbacks. They require a clear sky to operate effectively and have difficulty defending against drone swarms.
Another drawback is that lasers consume a lot of energy and have difficulty penetrating fog, dust, smoke, and materials with anti-laser coatings.
But as experts have noted, lasers remain a valuable tool in the military arsenal because, unlike a traditional weapon, they do not run out of bullets.
Tests
Military laser testing by the U.S. has been publicly acknowledged for more than 10 years. The Department of War previously stated that the Navy installed a 30-kilowatt laser aboard the USS Ponce, an amphibious transport ship, in 2014. And that the laser had been widely tested and authorized for defensive use.
The Army, for its part, admitted in 2016 to installing a 10-kilowatt laser, which was mounted on a Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Vehicle — tested during an integrated maneuver-fire experiment at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in April of that year. The laser reportedly downed several unmanned aerial vehicles, drones, also known as UAS.
In February and March 2017, the U.S. Army Space and Missile Command downed several UAS with a 5-kilowatt laser mounted on a Stryker during the Hard Kill Challenge at the White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico.
