US Engineers Need Up To 3 Times More Power To Weaponize Lasers - Pentagon

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 14th November, 2018) US engineers need to reach a two to three fold increase in power to develop a laser weapon that can be deployed on battlefields which may take a few years, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Michael Griffin said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"We [the United States] can roll out 10s of kilowatts of, for example, laser power... that is within a factor of two or three of being useful on a battlefield, on an airplane, on a ship, even in space for limited purposes," Griffin said on Tuesday. "I regard it as one of my jobs to get real capability into operational hands and I think we are at most a few years from that."

Griffin said another three to four times more electric power is needed with respect to space-based capabilities. US development projects need to be dealing within the "megawatt class," to achieve that, he added.

Griffin said although engineers see pathways to a space-based laser weapon, real-world development is not expected anytime soon.

For comparison purposes, in 2013 a German defense contractor tested a 50-kilowatt laser that shot down a drone about a mile away. Laser weapons are still too large to fit in tanks with enough power to kill enemy tanks, according to a recent report in Popular Science Magazine. In 2015, Researchers at Osaka University, the report added, unveiled a 2-petawatt (two quadrillion watt) laser, the world's most powerful.

In March, Russian President Vladimir Putin in his annual address to the Federal Assembly said that Russia had developed a number of strategic weapons including the laser weapon Peresvet. In July, the Russian Defense Ministry said the Peresvet combat laser systems have already been delivered to troops and deployed in various locations.