The Russian Ministry of Defense has decided to resume development of a combat aircraft laser capable of hitting aircraft, satellites and ballistic missiles.
The Almaz-Antey Air Defense Concern, the Beriev Aviation Concern, and the Khimpromavtomatika company will be working on the creation of the Russian "death ray". The United States abandoned the development of an aircraft laser in 2011, calling the project inapplicable in practice and too costly.
The development of combat lasers in the USSR began in 1965. In 1973, a special design bureau was established for these purposes. The first airborne laser system was placed on the A-60 aircraft, created on the basis of the Il-76 transport aircraft. The A-60 made its first flight with a laser on board in 1983. Already in 1984, Soviet pilots hit the first air target with a combat laser.
In the 1990s, tests of the combat laser were frozen due to a lack of funding. Work in design bureaus was actually carried out on the personal initiative of employees. Yuri Zaitsev, acting academic advisor to the Russian Academy of Engineering Sciences, announced the resumption of the development of an aircraft laser in 2009. As it became known in the summer of 2010, it was all about the same A-60 aerial laboratory, where the "blinding laser" was placed.
The task of such an installation was to influence the optical homing heads of ballistic missiles and observation systems on satellites. However, there is no information about whether the engineers have made any progress in the development of a blinding laser. In 2011, the project was again left without funding, and the equipment from the A-60 aircraft was partially dismantled.
According to the representative of the Russian defense-industrial complex, to whom Izvestia refers, financing of laser developments in the interests of the Ministry of Defense has resumed. Moreover, a more powerful laser will be installed on the A-60 (so far only one of two similar aircraft, created in 1991, has survived). According to the newspaper, we are talking about new units of the 1LK222 unit, developed by Khimpromavtomatika together with Almaz-Antey.
The ground-based installation called Sokol-Echelon is already ready and will begin testing in 2013. In particular, the laser cannon will be tested for efficiency under pressure drops, temperatures and overloads. To accommodate the new laser installation A-60 on board in 2013, it will undergo modernization.
According to Izvestia, the Defense Ministry has not yet decided on which aircraft it is planning to install combat lasers in the future. Military transport aircraft and bombers are being considered among the possible options. However, it is still too early to talk about the use of aviation lasers on combat aircraft. First, the military will have to make sure that the promising installation is working.
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In theory, a new aircraft laser should have sufficient power not only to blind air targets, but also to destroy them directly. “The laser will burn through the enemy with a high release of thermal energy. It must operate in air and airless spaces. Lasers are viewed as a promising weapon for unmanned hypersonic aircraft or space platforms, Izvestia's source said.
To provide the laser with the necessary combat effectiveness, Russian engineers will need reliable and powerful energy sources. The quality of a combat laser is also directly dependent on high-precision guidance and beam stabilization systems to keep it on target. In addition, the power of the laser beam depends on the atmospheric conditions - after all, the laser beam is just a concentrated beam of light.
So, the range of the laser is actually limited by the line of sight. With increasing distance, suspended matter in the air and atmospheric phenomena reduce the beam power. In addition, the so-called "breakdowns" can occur in the beam itself, drastically reducing its power, and if an installation is too powerful, there is a risk of the laser beam self-focusing in space.
The Americans have already faced these and other difficulties, having abandoned the development of a combat aircraft laser in 2011. The Pentagon called the project of an air-based laser installation unrealizable in practice and too expensive.
Experiments with an aircraft laser gun in the United States were carried out on the basis of a modified Boeing 747-400F cargo aircraft, which received the YAL-1 index. The first test of an airborne laser beam on a ballistic missile took place in 2009. It was not possible to shoot down the target, although the systems located on it confirmed the exact hit.
The first successful tests by the Americans of a combat air laser took place in February 2010. Two ballistic missiles were used as targets - solid-propellant and liquid-propellant. The laser cannon installed on the Boeing YAL-1 fired in three stages. First, infrared sensors detected the rocket while accelerating, then an auxiliary (less powerful) laser aimed at the target and assessed the state of the atmosphere. The main laser with a power of one megawatt was used to hit the missile. In total, the operation to destroy the first missile took about two minutes. The second target was shot down in the same way an hour later.
Despite abandoning the development of aircraft laser cannons, the United States continues to develop ground-based combat lasers. In general, the Pentagon pays special attention to promising military technologies. For example, in the interests of the US Navy, Boeing and BAE Systems are developing a stationary 10-kilowatt laser system, combined with a conventional 25-mm cannon. In addition, BAE Systems is developing an electromagnetic cannon (railgun) for US Zumwalt-class destroyers.
The German division of MBDA in September 2012, in turn, reported on the successful tests of a 40 kilowatt laser cannon. As noted, the installation burned through a mortar shell and a steel plate 40 millimeters thick in a few seconds. The previous 10 kilowatt cannon successfully hit targets at a distance of 2.3 kilometers and an altitude difference of 1000 meters. Israel has announced its intention to equip a new generation of Merkava main battle tanks with laser (or electromagnetic) installations.
In Russia, the development of ground-based lasers was also carried out, but little is known about its fate. In particular, in the early 1990s, a prototype of a mobile laser cannon based on the Msta-S self-propelled howitzer was created. The project, which was named 1K17 Compression, was based on a multichannel solid-state laser. According to one of the versions, an artificial cylindrical ruby crystal weighing 30 kilograms was grown specially for the "Compression". According to another version, the body of the laser was yttrium aluminum garnet with neodymium additives.
After the collapse of the USSR, the project "Compression", like many similar bold undertakings, was frozen. However, given the increased interest of the Ministry of Defense in promising developments, both ground and air laser systems can now well get a second life. Just for such purposes, in October 2012, on the initiative of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, the Advanced Research Fund (FPI) was created. And the government, apparently, will not spare money for "high-risk research and development".