Vehicle-based laser weapons inch toward reality

Raytheon will conduct work to develop a vehicle-based laser weapon device under an $11 million contract announced on 13 August. The work will be carried out as part of the Office of Naval Research’s Ground Based Air Defense (GBAD) Directed Energy On-the-Move Future Naval Capabilities programme.

The contract will see Raytheon develop and demonstrate a short-range laser device capable of being mounted on a Humvee that can defeat low-flying threats such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). With a minimum power output of 25kW, the laser weapon system will be packaged to meet the size, weight and power requirements of the US Marine Corps.

The work will draw on Raytheon’s planar waveguide (PWG) technology, which is capable of generating sufficient power to effectively engage small aircraft.

Bill Hart, vice president, Raytheon Space Systems, said: ‘Raytheon’s laser solution generates high power output in a small, light-weight rugged package ideally suited for mobile platforms.

‘Our PWG laser architecture is scalable: we can achieve increasingly higher power levels with the same compact design we’re using for GBAD. Raytheon is paving the way for fielded directed energy weapon systems in the very near future with the demonstration of a marine Humvee-based high energy laser.’

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