United Kingdom armed forces will receive its first 15 KW laser weapon in October 2023. A subsidiary of RTX’s Raytheon UK, the high-energy laser weapon system will be integrated into the UK’s Wolfhound armored vehicle. The UK Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) Land Demonstrator Program has developed a 15-kilowatt laser to prevent aerial threats from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
The Wolfhound is a six wheel truck. This heavy-duty vehicle is part of the Tactical Support Vehicles (TSV) group. The TSV fleet accompanies front-line patrols and transports supplies such as water and ammunition. It brings large quantities of supplies to build forward bases and serving as a gun tractor and gun limber for the Royal Artillery’s 105 light gun. It has a 7.62 general-purpose machine gun (GPMG) self-defense weapon and standard radio and electronic equipment.
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Question to GoatGuy – can you churn the numbers and guestimate what would the maximum power of a laser mounted on a fighter jet, assuming that:
1. It is cooled by SABRE-engine like cooling system – copied 1:1 from the current design, no up/down scaling. It should be possible to calculate cooling capacity, making assumptions about the quantity of liquefied air needed for the SABRE engine, unfortunately my brain is not up for the task.
2. It can “shoot” 10 sec. continuous laser pulse every 30 seconds.
Curvature of the earth limits the range of a laser weapon to twenty miles. Missiles and first person kamikaze drones are a better investment.
Missiles and kamikaze drones have to get far closer to a laser-protected target than 20 miles. One defends against the other, they serve different purposes entirely.
50-100kW industrial metal cutting fiber lasers are off-the-shelf technology now. Can’t be that hard to change the optics and make them mobile.
its a blindingly good weapon.
Right
I was thinking that laser weapons are for eyeball frying contests than damaging anything other than the sensors on the enemy’s equipment
Looking at Ukraine, this is probably aimed at defending against small FPV drones and quad copters, which we are seeing can inflict hard and mission kills on soft skinned and even armoured vehicles.
Using these kind of drones to attack logistics, supply and patrols is – as we are seeing – highly effective.
15kw seems weak for defending against more high end threats like artillery or missiles, but it ought to be enough to destroy a quad copter quickly and cheaply – which is what you need to be able to do when they cost a on the order of $100