Laser weapons home in on military utility
The Joint High-Power Solid-State Laser (JHPSSL) system developed by Northrop Grumman is to be tested by the US Army within the next two weeks, in a further sign that high-energy lasers are maturing as a future weapons technology.
And that future may arrive sooner than may realize. Mark Neice, director of the Albuquerque-based High-Energy Laser Joint Technology Office (HEL-JTO), told delegates at SPIE Europe’s Defence + Security symposium in Edinburgh, UK, that such systems were “not something that’s five years out, not ten years out, but we hope that within the next couple of years we will demonstrate significant military utility of this laser weapons capability”.
That’s despite a large decrease in the overall funding for laser weapons development in the US, which has fallen from more than $1 billion per year while the expensive Airborne Laser Testbed was being funded, to around only $300 million per year in the near term.
Plenary speaker Neice, a retired US Air Force colonel who previously worked on the Airborne Laser Testbed, said that now was an exciting time for high-energy laser technology advancement, and that the HEL-JTO had high hopes in particular for the Robust Electric Laser Initiative (RELI), a project seeking to increase the electrical efficiency of laser weapons systems to make them more practical for deployment by the US Army, Navy and Air Force.
