Four Star General Carlton Everhart, head of Air Mobility Commmand (AMC), told Air Force Times he wants to begin exploring this capability on a KC-135 refueling tanker in 2018. He took steps to get a KC-135 to the Air Force Research Laboratory by the summer of 2018 to start testing the concept. The researchers at …
Physicists at Imperial College London can now produce a continuous maser beam in room-temperature conditions. The set-up involves shining a laser light through a diamond, sapphire and copper apparatus to create the microwave emission. The sensitivity of existing microwave amplifiers had been limited by background noise. The latest technique “pushes the noise of these amplifiers …
US Air Force Chief of Staff David Goldfein has added urban warfare to his list of top focus areas. * The US Air Force may not be well equipped to handle precise urban warfare. * 80 percent of humanity will live in cities by 2050. And megacities, those with more than 10 million people. will …
Lockheed has released a video of the 30-kilowatt Advanced Test High Energy Asset or ATHENA laser. The footage is from a test in New Mexico last month, where ATHENA took out 5 unmanned drones during target practice. And if somehow that doesn’t impress you, just look at what it can do to the hood of …
The UK showed a mockup of a 50 kw Dragon Fire combat laser mounted in a turret. Dragonfire system will be a 50kW class directed energy weapon designed for use on both land and sea. Laser weapons have key advantages over traditional systems: the munition is potentially unlimited, and it operates at the speed of …
Boeing modernized its 1980s-era Avenger air defense system to answer the Army’s call to fill its Short-range Air Defense gap within the maneuver force. The Avenger first came off the production line at Boeing in 1987 and is known for defending the National Capitol Region. The old systems used Stinger missiles, which are passive infrared …
A truck-fired 50 kW laser weapon — an upgrade of the lumbering HEL-MTT — will be test fired in 2018. A 100 kW weapon on a more mobile vehicle — perhaps an 8×8 Stryker or tracked Bradley — will be test-fired in 2022. Currently the army is testing 5 to 10 kilowatt weapons on trucks …
Air Force Chief Scientist Greg Zacharias told Scout Warrior in an exclusive interview that the AFRL (Air Force Research Lab) is already working on experimental demonstrator laser weapons able to bolt-on to an aircraft. The AFRL is working on externally-mounted POD with sufficient transportable electrical power. Air Force Research Laboratory officials have said they plan …
5 kilowatt combar lasers were placed on a Stryker armored vehicle and shot down drones in a test fire exercise. A Mobile Expeditionary High Energy Laser was used shoot down an 18-by-10-inch drone at a distance of 650 yards. In 2013, a 30-kilowatt High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator on a large truck shot down dozens …
The US Navy is making progress developing unmanned systems and directed energy weapons. Congress would like to see more effort operationalizing and fielding these technologies. The Navy has done a good job getting test versions of the laser weapon system and electromagnetic railgun out to sea ahead of full development: in the case of railgun, …
The combat laser for the AC-130J gunship is “rapidly moving” from the concept to the practice according to General Brad Webb, commander of Air Force Special Operations Command. Webb recently visited MIT Lincoln Labs to view its advancements, and saw Naval Sea Systems Command Dahlgren’s latest efforts to network all of the various components within …