THEL - Tactical High Energy Laser
THEL will be a transportable laser weapon system which will be used by both the Israeli Defense Forces and eventually will have applications for the U.S. Army. The U.S. Army Space and Strategic Defense Command and the Israel Ministry of Defense are managing the program and the test program is conducted at the High Energy Laser Test Facility (HELSTF) in New Mexico.
The military began exploring the combat potential of lasers in the 1960s. At that time, researchers focused almost exclusively on chemically activated lasers. Tests at the High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility (HELSTF) here at White Sands have produced impressive results ever since. As early as 1978, a chemical laser blasted through a tethered helicopter. "MIRACL is a very capable laser," says HELSTF director Tom Hodge, referring to the Mid-Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser, the workhorse of military laser research. "It is also roughly the size of the power and light plant down the road. It isn't a combat system. It is a testbed." Thus far, the most compact chemical laser to score a kill is the Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser (MTHEL), shown here. A few weeks before PM's visit to White Sands, MTHEL became the first laser weapon to track and destroy multiple artillery projectiles in flight at the missile range. The Air Force is using similar chemical laser technology for its Scud-killing airborne laser, which fits inside a modified Boeing 747-400 freighter.
Zeus makes a sharp break with the past. Instead of using highly reactive chemicals to create a laser beam inside a plume of hot gas, Zeus performs its magic inside a special type of glass. Its operating principle is the same as that of all solid-state lasers, including those in CD drives and DVD players. Basically, light from a beefed-up flashbulb sends a stream of photons into nine neodymium-doped glass discs. Inside the discs, the light, which can be thought of as a rabble of raw recruits, becomes organized into a crack drill team--what physicists call a beam of coherent, monochromatic light. Gaining strength as more light is pumped in, the colorless laser beam bursts out one side of the crystal with enough power to heat steel at 200 yards. Add a control system to keep the beam on target and a database that tells the beam which part of the munition to focus upon, and you have the perfect tool for safely defusing unexploded ordnance.
However, Zeus is currently stuck in development because no one in the army wants to "own" it and pay for manufacturing it. While destroying unexploded munitions is an engineering task, Zeus-HLONS was developed by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command. Development is continuing, including the use of a more powerful laser. One thing the engineers would like to see is some way for Zeus to destroy buried munitions and land mines. But the laser cannot penetrate earth very effectively. As things stand now, Zeus-HLONS will remain on the sidelines until someone decides it's important enough to spend money on and adopt as another item of equipment.
After 40 years of work, the Pentagon may have a solid-state laser in its arsenal within a decade, reports the Oakland Tribune. Compared to the chemical lasers now in use by America's military, solid-state lasers would be compact and efficient ? perhaps running off the engine of an Army Humvee or an Air Force F-16. Solid-state lasers would also be deadly. In a recent demonstration at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory ? one of three sites of research on a solid-state laser ? a test-fired laser emitted 400 pulses of light in two seconds, drilling through
an inch of steel, the Tribune reported.
Once fully developed, the Tribune reports, solid-state lasers could shoot down mortars and artillery shells, explode ordnance in enemy depots and even wipe out ballistic missiles 500 miles away. They would strike with incredible speed and could be retargeted instantly. Contrary to science fiction, the lasers will not be visible streams of light. Instead, targets will simply explode. Troops will not point and shoot lasers, because they will most likely have to react to dangers and targets moving too fast for a human response. Nor will lasers be holster-sized .
Making lasers smaller is one reason for moving from chemical lasers ?
which require a larger mass of chemicals to generate more power ? to solid-state lasers, which use electricity to generate a beam. According to the Tribune, Northrup Grumman is trying to reduce the size of one laser to fit in a single C-130 cargo plane. But once the technical problems are solved, strategic issues will loom large, posing questions that, so far, the Pentagon has not answered. For example, it is unclear if the U.S. would use the laser to target people or restrict its use to hitting inanimate targets. It is not known whether lasers would be employed to defend or attack satellites.
How will U.S. doctrine accommodate a weapon that can strike without detection possibly hundreds of miles away at relatively little cost? Since no other country is anywhere near developing a militarized solid-state laser, under what circumstances would the U.S. use it in a war? In most cases, the "law of war" requires discrimination and proportionality. While a laser could do a better job of discriminating between troops and civilians, it is unclear that its use could be proportional to any enemy threat. The military already uses several types of lasers. Some guide bombs and missiles. An experimental system, the Tactical High Energy Laser, has been used to shoot down missiles in demonstrations.
The national missile defense system includes work on an Airborne Laser that would be mounted on a freighter aircraft and used to shoot down ballistic missiles in flight.
The United States military has already created combat laser weapons that have been tested and work, and is now hustling to get some of these designs refined and rugged enough for troop use. In a program created by Congress, as a way to force the services to pool money for laser research and development, the U.S. Defense Department's High Energy Laser Joint Technology office (JTO) expects to demonstrate three different 25 kilowatt solid-state laser system designs by December. Solid state lasers only require electrical power to operate, so they are much more desirable for battlefield applications than chemical-based lasers (which consume exotic and corrosive chemicals to crate their laser light). More importantly, chemical lasers are limited, by the chemicals they carry, to a limited number of shots. Since both the Army and Navy are moving to hybrid-electric and electric systems in vehicles and ships, a solid state laser weapon could simply be plugged into a power source on the battlefield.
The ultimate goal is to build a 100 kilowatt demonstration model by 2012, a laser weapon that would be powerful enough for missile defense and a variety of other applications. In the next few years, a 25 kilowatt system is being developed as that would weigh about 3300 pounds. Such a laser weapon would use whatever supply of electricity it could find in the combat zone.
Army, Navy, and Air Force participants all agree that creating the JTO got them to work together and get faster results than they would have on their own by spending their individual smaller funds. JTO was started in August with $30 million, combining separate funds from the Defense Department, Army, Air Force, and other organizations. The Navy hasn't joined up, but has people carefully watching the effort. The program is designed to have technology transfer "off-ramps" to take the core research and move it into service-specific programs once concepts are proved. For instance, the Army may take a 25 kilowatt system into field experiments to determine how effective such a system would be in destroying materiel such as tents and wooden ammunition boxes. Ultimately, the Army anticipates they would need 100 kilowatts to have an effective ground-based system capable of
countering short-range missiles, artillery, and RPGs, as well as having secondary uses against unarmored targets like communications antennas.
The Air Force would like to have a 25 kilowatt system next year in combination with a relay mirror to demonstrate techniques and test effectiveness for shooting down cruise missiles. In addition, the Air Force is making noises they would like to look at putting lasers on B-1 and B-2 bombers for defense against surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles. Such a laser would also be powerful enough to use against cruise missiles and soft targets on the ground, such as fighter planes parked on an airfield. ? Doug Mohney
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