Drone-Mounted Laser Weapons Are On the Way 116
Daniel_Stuckey writes "DARPA is funding research into drone-mounted laser weapons. The project, called Endurance, is referred to in DARPA's 2014 budget request as being tasked with the development of 'technology for pod-mounted lasers to protect a variety of airborne platforms from emerging and legacy EO/IR guided surface-to-air missiles.' The budget explains that it will be the first application of DARPA's much-discussed Excalibur laser defense system, which developed lasers powerful enough to use as weapons. With the new program, DARPA is focused on miniaturizing the technology, as well as 'developing high-precision target tracking, identification, and lightweight agile beam control to support target engagement. The program will also focus on the phenomenology of laser-target interactions and associated threat vulnerabilities." In other words, DARPA hopes that drone-mounted lasers will soon be able to shoot missiles out of the sky."
I welcome the new drone-mounted laser overlords (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: I welcome the new drone-mounted laser overlord (Score:2, Funny)
Warning: Do not look at drone with remaining eye...
Sharks (Score:2)
better update their LinkedIn profile
Re: (Score:2)
Have laser, will travel.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:I welcome the new drone-mounted laser overlords (Score:4, Funny)
I do feel neglected lately.
Re: (Score:2)
#whatcouldpossiblygowrong
Re: (Score:3)
Call Samuel L Jackson, because I, for one, want all these motherfucking lasers off this motherfucking plane!
How much popcorn could this pop? (Score:2, Funny)
So it's both immoral AND unethical...
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
So it's both immoral AND unethical...
Anyone who doesn't get that should lose their geek card. "I was hot and I was hungry!" "Your mother puts license plates on your underwear? How do you sit?"
Re: (Score:2)
Our studies indicate this weapon is useless in warfare.
But has some real promise in domestic crowd control.
Re:Mirrors.. (Score:5, Informative)
Any sort of adjustable mirror designed to reflect lasers seems like it would have a huge impact on missile aerodynamics.
You'd also need to make sure the mirrors stay very clean throughout flight... condensation or dust would absorb the laser's energy and begin melting the mirror underneath. There's also issues with matching the mirror to the wavelength of the laser, the fact that no mirror reflects 100% of light and any distortions in the mirror could make it worse.
You'd be better off with some sort of ablative armor on the missile.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think a reflective surface on a rotating missile is simple and goes a long way.
Re:Mirrors.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Except, as I just mentioned, a reflective surface would be a piss poor defense against a laser. Between dust, condensation, wavelengths, and the fact there's no such thing as a perfect reflective surface it would be mostly pointless. An ablative surface, such as the space shuttle used, would be a significantly better defense.
Re: (Score:2)
Even a partial defense would mean the drone would need to get closer and track more accurately, for longer. Increasing the chance of making it through.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, that is what I mean. I trust that ablative surfaces work a lot better but there can be simple approaches for reducing the energy that is absorbed on a certain spot on the missile with a factor 10 or maybe more. Rotating won't help if the laser uses a very short burst and if it has a way of compensating for the rotation. But it's not about making things perfect just about making it harder for the other side. Stealth planes also don't work with all radars.
Re: (Score:2)
No reason you can't have both: A white ablative coating.
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed.
u shaped tube (Score:2)
is the best approach because it could capture the laser, bend it around, and shoot it back at out at the drone. remember space balls? how they used that row of pipes to fire back at the guys with laser guns?
Re: (Score:2)
A low-albedo coating would certainly help; you're unlikely to reflect enough energy to hurt the drone, but you can definitely minimize the heat absorbed.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm thinking of a round clear sphere of low reflectance material that's clear, and then a mirror that moves inside that. However, I'm sure I'm "under thinking" a solution here.
Likely this will take in-flight ultrasonic reconfiguration of a flight surface, or create a force field that distorts sub-space in order to be visible, but not to create wind shear.
And as long as you are doing that, why mess with these primitive lasers? You have force fields, and you usually have gate technology. Is this Slashdot or I
Re: (Score:3)
Best solution: supersonic rail gun launched iron rods that do their damage via kinetic energy. If they hit as a solid rod or as a molten lump it's mostly the same.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If armed drones are used domestically against civilians, kill the drone operator's and their superior's families & children as well in the most horrid & excruciating ways possible. Ideally, kill the families/children right in front of said domestic armed-drone operators & superiors before they die, and then publicly release videos of their horrific deaths as a disincentive for future domestic armed-drone use against civilians.
That's a good way to make a martyr and galvanize their resolve, actually.... not a very good deterrent, in the same way that capital punishment and 3 strikes laws actually increase the risk of crime because a person on their third strike has nothing to lose.
Modern Progressivism & Liberalism: Ideas so good they must be mandatory to function.
So... the above was your idea of progressivism and liberalism?
Re: (Score:2)
That's a good way to make a martyr and galvanize their resolve, actually.... not a very good deterrent, in the same way that capital punishment and 3 strikes laws actually increase the risk of crime because a person on their third strike has nothing to lose.
I disagree. If drones are being used to attack/kill civilians domestically, then the situation for civilians is desperate and any pretense of government restricting itself to any civilized "rules of war" became non-existent long before such retaliations would begin. It would be more of a reply-in-kind type of retaliation.
Being domestic in nature, that puts the drone operators and their superiors local to the conflict and vulnerable. I believe that a sustained extreme-retaliation program against the drone op
Hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
They should designate it the Semiautonomous, High-Altitude Recon/Kill drone, so that we can finally have SHARKs with frickin' laser beams.
Re: Hmmm (Score:2)
Re: Hmmm (Score:2)
Nostalgic (Score:1)
I never thought I'd feel nostalgic about the "good old days" when only sharks had mounted laser weapons.
Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
How much power does it take to punch through a metal casing? We already have laser pointers that can burn through paper and thin pieces of wood.
Re: (Score:3)
Metal conducts heat away from the focal point much better than wood or paper, plus most metals used for that purpose have considerably higher melting points. However, you might not need to punch through. If you can just heat up the casing, it might be enough to kill the electronics inside the missile.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How much power does it take to punch through a metal casing? We already have laser pointers that can burn through paper and thin pieces of wood.
With a beam of light? A lot. Check out the latest demos of ground-based missile defense lasers. The power sources (and related cooling) for those are in trailers hauled around by 18-wheelers. Doesn't sound like something you'll be able to fit on a drone any time soon.
Re: (Score:2)
Ground-based laser sources, agile mirrors on drones for directing fire?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, it could be the case that these things may need some time to recharge between blasts, but the advantage is you can have many up in the air at the same time.
So one may only be able to fire every minute, but if you have 20 of them in the air targeting a missile, there is a good chance they will destroy their target.
Unlike manned aircraft, these things have already proven to be able to loiter for hours, so having quite a few in the air at once is possible.
Besides, as energy storage improves, I see no reas
Re: (Score:2)
Some form of heavy lift blimp with solar, a big energy system and big laser double tapping regional targets 24/7?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/outrage-at-cias-deadly-double-tap-drone-attacks-8174771.html [independent.co.uk]
Re: (Score:2)
A drone has no occupants so you could always mount a poorly shielded nuclear reactor on board. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
There are many UAVs out there with motors much bigger then 145hp so I don’t think that is going to be an issue. Besides you don’t need that much continuous power. You will not be shooting down missiles every second. Outfit the UAV with batteries / super capacitors. That should be sufficient.
Re: (Score:2)
The simple solution I would think would be to either coordinate a target laser with a mirror system to bounce the stronger beam from a ground or satellite source onto the target. Well, not that simple.
Better would be carrying a rail gun that turned a pellet into plasma to produce the "beam."
Third would be to use a Stage II tech quantum battery, which should be available at Target and Radio Shack in the year 2045.
Re: (Score:2)
Wait a minute... (Score:1)
Why are you telling me that I need to reread the original post?
Re: (Score:2)
It's already in Starcraft 2. Point Defense Drones use lasers to shoot down incoming projectiles.
Phenomenology (Score:3)
"Let there be light!"
Not Exactly (Score:5, Informative)
Getting a laser to destroy a missile requires about 100 kW of energy and a few tons of hardware to focus it.
Getting a laser to blind optical sensors requires a $10 Radio Shack gift card.
Re: (Score:1)
It seems even more likely that until the thing actually works and the power requirements are met, the laser could be used to paint the target for other stand-off weapons.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It seems even more likely that until the thing actually works and the power requirements are met, the laser could be used to paint the target for other stand-off weapons.
Haven't they been doing that for years, though? I would have thought that a targetting laser would have been part of the standard arsenal on any drone for years by now, because they're capable of carrying laser-guided missiles.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
There is no mention of drones in the budget estimate.
Title: Endurance*
Description: *Previously part of Excalibur
The Endurance program will develop technology for pod-mounted lasers to protect a variety of airborne platforms from emerging and legacy EO/IR guided surface-to-air missiles. The focus of the Endurance effort under TT-06 will be on miniaturizing component technologies, developing high-precision target tracking, identification, and lightweight agile beam control to support target engagement. The program will also focus on the phenomenology of laser-target interactions and associated threat vulnerabilities. This program is an early application of technology developed in the Excalibur program. Advanced research for the program is budgeted in PE 0603739E, project MT-15.
FY 2013 Plans:
Design of subsystems:
- Design a miniaturized, flight-traceable, low-maintenance laser having output beam parameters that are consistent with estimated mission-kill requirements.
- Design of a light-weight highly-agile beam director and beam control assemblies that support coarse and fine tracking of dynamic targets, target-identification and target-engagement, and that can accommodate additional functions such as ISR and target designation.
- Design of a high-precision coarse to fine-track and target identification subsystem.
- Develop test plans for laser effects testing and initiate the acquisition of threat devices or the design of surrogate devices.
FY 2014 Plans:
- Fabrication, assembly, and test of miniaturized subsystems.
- Complete the acquisition of threat devices and/ or development of surrogate devices for laser effects testing. - Conduct laser effects testing.
The author is making shit up. Click-bait.
Re: (Score:2)
Getting a laser to blind optical sensors requires a $10 Radio Shack gift card.
I don't see how $10 towards a cell phone would help blind the sensors on a missile.
Re: (Score:1)
Agreed. The original post is somewhat comparing oranges to tangerines. Seems to be more of a DIRCM or LAIRCM for drones than an offensive system.
I see (Score:1)
Making a pun about this one would be like shooting sharks in a barrel.
It's all well and good until it's used on a .... (Score:1)
...US Congressman, Senator, House of Representative, White House personnel...then you'll hear the outcry against it.
Nothing good will come of this, nothing.
boys with their penis substitutes (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem is the arms race.
Re: (Score:3)
I was always under the impression that arms races were one of those unfortunate systematic effects that arise spontaneously, and don't depend on ego on the part of either side. We certainly seem to see them in scenarios where human actors are not involved.
Someone at DARPA reads way too much Sci Fi. (Score:3)
Drone figures from WP show that as of Q1 2009, of the 223 USAF UAVs in operational service, only 4 were shot down. Whereas 11 were lost due to accidents (mainly flying into things), and 55 were lost due to equipment failure, operator error, or weather.
Importantly, the current failsafe for OOC UAVs is to shoot them down with AIM-9 missiles, which is what happened to a reaper on 13 September 2009. Developing an autonomous laser defence would preclude this failsafe.
In brief, the US government should be spending it's money on other problems. Given a vote, I doubt that the US populace would sign up for this particular budgetary spend.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If I'm understanding the summary correctly, the purpose isn't to have a way for the drones to defend themselves, but to have drones that can defend a Navy ship, an army base, etc.
TFA is about drone self-defence..
If a Predator drone were to get shot down [...] the bad side is that you just lost a $4 million piece of equipment. So, in a bid to keep drones protected, DARPA is funding research into drone-mounted laser weapons.
and
The project, called Endurance, is [...] being tasked with the development of "technology for pod-mounted lasers to protect a variety of airborne platforms from emerging and legacy EO/IR guided surface-to-air missiles."
Moreover, ships and bases already have great anti-missile defence technology - and the only advantage that would have using drones in a defensive role would be if there is poor LOS, in which case the strategists would be out of a job, if not court-martialed. Moreover, the ship/base airspace would be cluttered. Most UAV designs are for long endurance missions. the article refers to MALE UAVS (Predator / Reaper), and hints at HALE UAVs such as the RQ-4 Global Hawk and the
Re: (Score:2)
My idea is cooler, though. I was thinking of Protoss Carriers and Interceptors from Starcraft.
Re: (Score:2)
So what you're saying is that the main threat to our rogue drones is direct human intervention with a missile?
Clearly, this isn't actually a DARPA project. I believe this is a sign that an AI has gone rogue and managed to sneak this project in as a "DARPA Initiative" as a means to protect its fledgeling race of flying robot killers.
Skynet is already here.
Re: (Score:3)
...
I believe this is a sign that an AI has gone rogue and managed to sneak this project in as a "DARPA Initiative" as a means to protect its fledgeling race of flying robot killers.
...
Hah, well assuming that you aren't merely posting for humour value, I would suggest that; as the primary cause of failure in these UAVs is equipment failure, operator error, and weather; the AI you refer to isn't particularly intelligent. If it were intelligent then it would be attempting to fund research into greater autonomy for AI systems...
Re: (Score:2)
...the primary cause of failure in these UAVs is equipment failure, operator error, and weather; the AI you refer to isn't particularly intelligent. If it were intelligent then it would be attempting to fund research into greater autonomy for AI systems...
Those are the drones that gained sentience. You may think you lost contact with the drone because of the weather, but you can never be 100% sure, can you?
Re: (Score:2)
DARPA's job is to read way too much Sci-Fi, and to fund it if it has even an off chance success. Their program success rate is something like 15%, and that includes much, much less ambitious projects than things like this. They pick high risk, high reward programs and give them just enough money to get a prototype going.
Re: (Score:3)
It's kind of brilliant of DARPA, really. If a bit evil. By setting their sights on missiles, they establish the idea of defensive technology, but ensure that any effective weapon will also make short work of a less durable and less agile target like a human being. In this way, the R&D team is spared the thought of building something that will burn a hole through some hapless person, even though the eventuality of their work will be exactly that.
Weapons Platform (Score:2)
Quad copters seem to be all the rage right now. Perhaps large quad copters could carry all kinds of weaponry both fer defense and aggression that could be kept airborne during moments of great danger. Lasers are only one tool. Small missiles that can take down enemy planes or missiles would have quite an edge if launched from a decent altitude. Ground troops could also be dealt with by hovering platforms hovering directly above. Weapons such as tanks might be rather useless against such a syste
Please please please please (Score:2)
The first model with a laser so-equipped really needs to be called the "Shark".
Re: (Score:1)
Yaaay! (Score:2)
I can build my drone control module and my drone swarms and take the battle to the dirty Methanoids! [wikipedia.org]
The Solar System, and the entire Galaxy, will be Humanity's!
Friggin' Drone sharks? (Score:1)
Do they mate with the friggin' Shark Queen?
Would that make them Friggin' Frankin' Sharks?
Creates jobs (Score:1)
The fascists want to build these: (Score:2)
Time to break out the Popcorn! (Score:1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rthHSISkM7A [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
They will have to adapt to a new market or die. Like any other manufacturer. (or get bailed out which seems more likely)
Smoke and Mirrors (Score:2)
No, not the laser weapon program (which will just have the usual amount of fraud) but the DEFENSIVE RESPONSE. Cloud machines will get some serious research as well as water misting, reflective dust or "nano particle mirrors" from filling the air to special paint.
These lasers can't fire long sustained blasts, you just have to dissipate the heat for that short period of time. Visible light lasers are going to be significantly impacted by the AIR and distance to target as well as the humidity.
Not to mention
Useless (Score:1)
An autonomous platform asked to perform beyond existing technology using a weapon that is inefficient, ineffective, and hyper expensive.
Useless.
Drone-Mounted Laser Weapons (Score:2)
Could be good or bad... (Score:1)
Are these laser-equipped drones programmed to shoot at The Flood or shoot at you?
"Phenomenology of laser-target interactions"? (Score:2)
Jessica focused her mind on lasguns, wondering. The white-hot beams of disruptive light could cut through any known substance, provided that substance was not shielded. The fact that feedback from a shield would explode both lasgun and shield did not bother the Harkonnens. Why? A lasgun-shield explosion was a dangerous variable, could be more powerful than atomics, could kill only the gunner and his shielded target.
Try the Roast Beef (Score:2)
DARPA is focused on miniaturizing the technology, as well as 'developing high-precision target tracking...
If they miniaturize and precisionize them enough to do Lasik, could they call it a "surgical strike"?
Ha! I got a million of 'em!
Are these (Score:2)
mounted on the head of the new SHARK Drone series?
Blinding them with science (Score:1)
Real Genius (Score:2)
Real Genius work there. All I need now is some popcorn.
Pakistani Wedding Parties Beware! (Score:2)
Instead of tens of wedding guests being blown to smithereens by the shrapnel from a missile, they'll be burnt to death by a laser. I'm not sure which is more humane. At least with a missile, there is a short period of time after it's launched to run for cover...