F-35 & J-20 Fighter Jets Priming to Unleash Laser Weapons

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By Kris Osborn – President & Editor-In-Chief, Warrior Maven

A Chinese government-backed newspaper is floating the idea that the People’s Liberation Army Air Force J-20 might soon fire laser weapons to incinerate opposing aircraft and ground targets.

While the story in the Global Times mentions little to no specifics regarding the maturity of such a plan and does not offer any detail on testing, prototyping or development, it certainly seems realistic that the PLA Air Force would be working on this.

Lasers are a great tool for aerial interception because there is no time delay, but it requires a large amount of energy to be effective and that is the issue that must be addressed for it to be mounted on an aircraft.

Questions regarding progress with integrating laser weapons onto fighter jets are largely centered around the need for scalable, transportable sources of mobile power. 

J-20 & F-35 Fired Lasers 

Should sufficient power to generate scalable power for laser weapons exist in a small enough form factor to integrate onto a fighter jet, then J-20 fired lasers are indeed realistic. How soon is the operative question, as the US Air Force Research Laboratory has been making rapid progress on this issue for many years.