By Jim Morris, Warrior Vice President, News
The Pentagon has looked at arming fighter planes with lasers. Now, the US is one step closer toward fielding an air-to-air laser – this time on a drone.
Earlier this month at the Sea Air Space 2025 exhibition in National Harbor, Md., General Atomics displayed a new airborne laser pod that would be used on its MQ-9B drone. The company’s booth at the exhibition had a display of an MQ-9 with a laser pod firing at Shahed-style attack drones approaching a warship (the Shahed is an Iranian-designed unmanned aircraft sometimes referred to as a kamikaze drone).
According to Naval News, the pod holds a 25kW distributed gain laser with a ram air intake for cooling. Distributed gain technology uses material that amplifies light through which the light source passes. It requires a smaller cooling system than a bigger gain medium – making it more practical for use on an airborne platform.
“The system’s large optical aperture and efficient cooling offers significant reductions in size and weight to suit air, land and sea-based platforms,” General Atomics said in a news release.
If development is successful, an airborne drone could be major step forward in defending warships. It could be an effective way of fending off drones and missiles with high accuracy and at a low cost.
The idea of airborne lasers has been kicked around for years. Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman were the prime contractors on one project, known as SHIELD (Self-protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator). The companies looked into installing a laser demonstrator on aircraft such as the F-15 and F-16, but the program as cancelled last year without any flight tests.
Still, the Air Force Research Lab said that “significant advances” in laser technology were made and “we continue to mature (high-energy laser) weapons technology for the operational needs of today and tomorrow.”
A story in The Aviationist speculated that some of what was learned in the SHIELD program may end up being used in the MQ-B laser pod.
The MQ-9B is a next-generation drone that is a larger version of the MQ-9, which made its first flight in 2001. It first saw combat in 2007, flying missions in Afghanistan and Iraq and firing Hellfire missiles at targets. Many of the drones pilots are based at Creech Air Force Base outside Las Vegas. A command transmitted from there can reach a drone flying over Afghanistan in a little more than a second.
