SUPER LASER If tactical lasers, killer drones, and microwave jammers aren’t sci-fi enough

SUPER LASER
If tactical lasers, killer drones, and microwave jammers aren’t sci-fi enough, the Army recently posted a request for proposals for a Tactical Ultrashort Pulsed Laser.

Unlike conventional continuous wave (CW) laser systems which are mostly designed to interfere with an incoming drone or missile’s optics, the ultrashort pulsed laser (USPL) would pack enough energy into a short blast to completely disable an attacker’s electronic systems or even blow the thing out of the sky.

“USPL systems are able to neutralize threats via three distinct mechanisms,” the Army’s posting states, “ablation of material from the target, the blinding of sensors through broadband supercontinuum generation in the air, and the generation of a localized electronic interference used to overload a threat’s internal electronics.”

To accomplish this goal, the proposal indicates that the laser must operate in the incredibly powerful terawatt range (current systems only operate in the kilowatt range) and be able to fire all of that energy in a shockingly brief 200 femto-second pulse. For comparison, a terawatt is a trillion watts, as opposed to a kilowatt which is a comparatively paltry 1,000 watts, and a femto-second is essentially a quadrillionth of a second.

Packing that much power into such a short burst means this laser system will be three orders of magnitude more powerful than even the most powerful systems currently in use, and can offer an ultra-precise, ultra-potent option for forces hoping to counter the increasing threat from UAVs.