AUSA: Lasers versus drones: It’s the cool versus awesome, ninjas versus pirates matchup of future warfare. The Army’s already experimented with a 10-kilowatt laser on a heavy truck, Boeing’s High Energy Laser – Mobile Demonstrator (HEL-MD), which could shoot down mortar rounds in flight. Now, while Lockheed scales up the truck-mounted laser to a whopping […]
HUNTSVILLE, ALA.: The Army is entering a new Cooperative Research & Development Agreement (CRADA) for a laser weapon with defense titan Lockheed Martin, the head of Space & Missile Defense Command said today. The service’s ultimate goal is lasers light, compact, and capable enough to protect advancing troops. The Lockheed agreement, not yet formally announced, will lead […]
Knowing when to build on commercial systems and when to develop something new can be the difference between parity and information dominance.
HUNTSVILLE, ALA.: After 14 years of guerrilla war, the Army has underinvested in defeating high-end threats, the service’s acquisition chief said today. That puts a premium on modernizing missile defense despite tight budgets, from upgrades to the venerable Patriot to new offensive missiles to revolutionary technologies like lasers. “We need to enable ourselves to operate […]
CRYSTAL CITY: In three years the US military could have a prototype laser weapon blasting out 300 kilowatts of energy, a jump that could ignite a revolution in missile defense, a Lockheed Martin engineer told me today, A 300-kw laser could kill cruise missiles. For comparison, that’s 10 times the power output of the Laser Weapons System […]