The Air Force Is Putting Death Rays on Fighter Jets. Yes, Death Rays.
The U.S. Air Force envisions placing laser weapon systems on fighter jets by the mid-2020s.
The service is working on a own laser weapon, SHiELD, a pod-mounted laser that will protect
fighters from incoming missiles. The system will likely be used at first,
anyway to protect older fighters that can’t take advantage of stealth to hide from the enemy.
The system is called SHiELD, or Self-Protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator.
National Defense reports SHiELD is envisioned as a pod-mounted laser developed by the Air
Force Research Laboratory, with support from Lockheed Martin. Mounted on the fuselage or
wing of a fighter jet, TALWS could shoot down incoming air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles.
Lockheed Martin is working on a separate weapon,
Tactical Airborne Laser Weapon System will use program data from SHiELD.
Today’s fighter jets are largely limited to passive defenses against incoming missiles.
Pilots can take evasive action to try and fly outside an incoming missile’s sensor arc,
launch flares to distract an infrared missile seeker, or spread strips of aluminum foil,
known as “chaff,” to confuse a missile guided by radar. A laser would be the first real
“active” anti-missile defense in the world of air combat, actively trying to shoot a missile down.
SHiELD and TALWS will be pod-mounted systems,
meaning they will take up a station on a fighter jet typically reserved for bombs, missiles,
or sensor pods. That makes them a bad fit for stealthy aircraft such as the F-22 Raptor or F-35
Joint Strike Fighter, as the pods will break up the plane’s carefully minimized radar signature.
That said, both planes already have a missile defense system already built in: stealth
technology. Instead, lasers such as SHiELD and TALWS will likely go on fighters unable to hide
from their adversaries, such as the Air Force's F-15E, F-15C, and new F-15EX Eagle fighters,
F-16 Fighting Falcons, and perhaps even A-10C Warthog attack jets. Trading the ability to carry
one more missile or bomb for a laser that could shoot down many incoming missiles is a no-brainer.
A laser weapon, paired with existing chaff and flare defenses,
could very well someday be controlled by an R2D2-type artificial intelligence tasked with
defending their warplanes from missile attack. Lasers will be useful airborne weapons. A laser
can be powered by the airplane’s engine, removing the need for an onboard gun magazine and providing
a theoretically unlimited number of shots. Laser energy travels at the speed of light,
removing ballistics from the targeting equation and making it impossible to dodge.
However, lasers do have a few downsides.
Atmospheric effects, particularly water moisture and smoke particles, quickly dilute a laser’s
strength. The farther a laser beam travels, the weaker it grows. Furthermore, the laser must be
focused on the fast-moving missile long enough to have an effect. Unlike missiles, whose high
explosive warheads deliver a lot of energy in a single devastating explosion, a laser projects
a steady stream of concentrated light that heats the target until something fails or explodes. A
missile traveling at ultra-fast speeds could prove a difficult target upon which to focus a beam.