Israeli-U.S. Mobile Laser Scores First Success

Middle East Newsline ^ | 12/23/2002 | Middle East Newsline

[grimalkin]

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- A mobile laser weapon developed by Israel and the United States has scored its first success.

In its first test, the Mobile Tactical Higher Energy Laser laser weapon destroyed an artillery shell traveling at supersonic speed. The trial on Tuesday took place at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico and launched the demonstration phase of the mobile system.

Officials said Israel and the United States are expecting to complete a mobile version of the laser by 2006. A stationary laser system was considered too bulky for the Israeli military.

"The MTHEL tracked, locked and fired a burst of photons on an artillery projectile," a statement by the U.S. Army Space Command said. "Seconds later, at a point well short of its intended destination, the projectile was destroyed."

[sonofatpatcher2]

Can Light Sabers be far behind?

[is_is]

and fired a burst of photons

ughhh....Captain Kirk......

[SandfleaCSC]

Thank you Gipper. We won't be needing any of those messy and expensive missiles for missile defense. All your Death Stars are belong to us.

[pfflier]

They keep telling us that this is not technically feasible!

[Free the USA]

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list

[dts32041]

And a bumble bee and a F-4 aren't suppose to fly.

God Bless the Gipper

[Hunble]

Having worked at WSMR for 14 years and being involved with these projects, I know more than I could ever talk about.

However, even this amazed me!

[ChadGore]

woooohooo

[Swingj]

Somebody Set us up da bomb

[cmsgop]

Will they be Shipping Orders Just In Time for Christmas...???

[Hunble]

Watch what happens if we finally attack Iraq. This should be very interesting to watch.

Seriously, hitting an artillery shell in the air is rather remarkable, since it is such a small target.

[hoosiermama]

Wonder why they are talking about this. (Not a secret weapon.) Could there be some psychological one-up-man-ship going on here?

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

This is a fantastic accomplishment. Can you cite a more direct source? Some questions:

What was the wavelength? Visible light doesn't propagate through rain, fog and dust. Was it long wave IR?

Was it radar cued? Lasers sort of suck for searching.

Tropospheric distortion limits the ability to focus lasers, dry desert air is probably the least challenging test. Could this be applied to missile defense? High in the atmosphere, from an aircraft, there is practically no impairments. With enough energy you could burn-up incoming warheads. The enemy might try to cover them with mirrors, but presumably a powerful enough laser would just burn through the mirror. What if they launch corner reflectors on the same trajectory? Just speculating.

Any Freepers care to comment?

[Mariner]

6 or 8 of these things in geosynchronous orbit should take care of the anti-missle defense eh?

[Young Werther]

Several months back I posted an note from Aviation Week about F-16 simulators being modified so that pilots can practice employing their laser weapons during air to air and air to ground engagements.

Yeah, Saddam come get my Predators! I gottsa lil ol' surprise for you,.... and your little NK brothers too!!!!

[Citizen Tom Paine]

Fire control radars installed on US Navy ships in the early 50s could track projectiles, come up with a fire control solution using mechanical special purpose computers, and shoot several rounds at a projectile in flight.

I would judge today that improved existing systems have a high probability of hitting and destroying an incoming supersonic target.

What have you done for the fleet today?

[Rummyfan]

Is this for real? We're in Star trek territory here!

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

...and shoot several rounds at a projectile in flight.

The Iraqis shoot at everything in the sky. So far they're one for last decade, on a drone using manned aircraft. Shootin' and hittin' are two different things. All successful air defense fire-control systems today are "closed loop", either the round has sensors that are fed to a navigation system to continuously reduce aiming errors, or the firing system continously corrects its aim on a moving target.

The WW-II era SCR-584 was something of an exception, it would track V1 "buzz bombs" and predict their position at the time that a radar fused AAA shell would arrive. -It was a predictor, rather than a closed loop system, sort of like a submarine torpedo. The V1 flew a straight, level and low course that made it an easy target. Alfred Price's book Instruments of Darkness contains an interesting example of a photo plate used by the Germans to track a V1. They couldn't understand why so many of them mysteriously disappeared after crossing the channel. Of course they used radar fused shells which the Germans didn't know about. The shell was fragmentation type, it would explode sending thousands of small projectiles into the path of the V1. It still took about five shells on average to bring down a V1.

It's relatively easy to track a target with a laser in clear weather. The hard part is generating very high power and focusing it on a moving target through an inhomogenous atmosphere. As a pure guess, it probably takes about 10 -100 kW applied for several seconds to "damage" an artillery shell. On the order of the amount of power delivered by a blowtorch. If it was easy, anyone could do it.