Solid State Laser News

[Grey Havoc]

Still Unhappy With Progress On Directed Energy Weapons, SWO Boss Wants More Land Based Testing To Speed Use On Ships - Defense Daily

Laser and high-powered microwave systems are key to increasing magazine depth aboard ships to defend themselves and other assets, but the technologies are

www.defensedaily.com

 

[Forest Green]

Wonder if particle beams would be more effective?

 

[bcredman]

Still Unhappy With Progress On Directed Energy Weapons, SWO Boss Wants More Land Based Testing To Speed Use On Ships - Defense Daily

Laser and high-powered microwave systems are key to increasing magazine depth aboard ships to defend themselves and other assets, but the technologies are

www.defensedaily.com

The article at the above link is behind a pay wall. Here is a link to a similar article that is free to view: https://defensescoop.com/2024/01/09/navy-swo-boss-frustrated-by-shortage-of-directed-energy-weapons/

 

[bcredman]

Wonder if particle beams would be more effective?

For what application/mission?

If your question is in response to the article Still Unhappy With Progress On Directed Energy Weapons..., the answer is No, particle beams would not be more effective than lasers or microwaves for the shipborne or land based air defense since particle beams cannot propagate very far in the atmosphere because of scattering. A possible way around the particle beam scattering in the atmosphere problem is to use a very high peak power pulsed laser to form a plasma channel that confines a charged particle beam to the plasma channel. This has been demonstrated with propagating electron beams in the atmosphere. However, the technology readiness level of such particle beam weapons is much lower than that of solid state laser and microwave weapons, so they would not solve the issue discussed in the article of the transition of laser weapons from R&D to operational fielding being too slow to meet the present need for air defense.

If your question is about the use of particle beams instead of lasers for clearing orbital debris by slowing down the debris so that it re-enters and burns up, my guess is perhaps if the particle beam system is deployed in orbit, but it would not work from ground to space as proposed for the laser system, unless the laser induced plasma channel technique discussed above is used to prevent the particle beam from being scattered by the atmosphere.