cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11110223
Archive link: https://archive.ph/3uUVa
Israel’s Elbit Systems has revealed that it has been contracted to develop aircraft-mountable versions of its XCalibur high-power laser systems. Primarily intended for use on jets and helicopters, the idea is to provide low-cost per-shot solutions for threats such as drones and missiles.
This will overcome the main challenge of firing expensive missile interceptors to knock out these threats; the economics don’t add up. Add a few cents per shot, if a laser beam can be used instead of a $40,000 and $100,000 Tamir missile (those used in Israel’s Iron Dome), then interception becomes far less costly.
Especially when the incoming targets cost a fraction of this. If interception costs can be dramatically reduced (perhaps even cheaper than the target), then the economics of such an engagement could be flipped on its head, i.e., drones become the expensive element, not the interceptors.
This news came to light when Elbit’s President and CEO, Bezhalel Machlis, disclosed the deal during the company’s end-of-year results to shareholders. He announced that the deal was agreed in late 2025, which will aim to deliver a pod-type setup for jets and a helicopter variant called “Sting.”
“Israel”’s new “Sting” in the tail
“The advantage of the aerial laser is that it is less affected by humidity, rain, dust, and atmospheric conditions the higher you go,” Machlis told shareholders. This means that these systems will be able to operate above the clouds, for instance.
It should also mean that the system should be able to strike threats before they arrive because it can see them from the air. ” This would also be a game-changer as conventional air defense systems, like the Iron Dome, can suffer due to bad weather, line-of-sight blocking from terrain, and shorter engagement range due to ground location.
Having lasers on aircraft means you can operate above cloud level, identify and track targets earlier, and engage them sooner.
However, there are still many technical challenges to overcome before such a system can become viable for aircraft mounting; namely, cooling and size. “You need to miniaturize the elements,” Machlis added. “While moving, you need to lock yourself on a target and in a very precise way,” he explained. High-energy lasers also generate a lot of heat, which needs to be managed for obvious reasons. This typically requires a lot of cooling gear, and space is at a premium on aircraft.
Many challenges to overcome
To this end, any aircraft variant will need to have some form of compact generators and cooling systems. Having such a system on aircraft also introduces other issues, like tracking and stabilization, when the target is small and both the target and interceptor are moving.
Any solution will need ultra-precise tracking systems and adaptive optics to correct beam distortion.
But, Machlis is confident that Elbit can “overcome all these challenges,” and after “advancing with large investment, they will be operational with the air force, and I think there is a big market for this worldwide,” he added.
“I also want to add that [the] high-power laser is not just a defensive weapon. As you can understand, it has more applications,” Machlis said. As Breaking Defense points out, it is not entirely clear what he meant by this comment.
US and friends have been working on laser missile interceptions since lasers were invented but the occupation government is going to come up with the solution between Iranian strikes. They really do think they can spend their way out of anything
Basically the plot of Real Genius (1985)
They do their best work under pressure. I think it’s an ADHD thing
fun fact these lasers run an open cycle of noble gasses so they have limited ammo in that consumable too
Not to mention the energy requirements, which I imagine are comparable to conventional ammunition in weight (like, not orders of magnitude better).
I just don’t see this being very practical. Modern lasers are really impressively efficient, but still require pretty significant energy supply and cooling systems for sustained use. Having something strong enough to blast drones down like its star wars is going to require a few hundred pounds of just water, not to mention everything else involved. Maybe its negligible compared to the weight of standard munitions, but my gut says this is more bullshit sales pitch rather than real useable equipment.
It’s also only a cost saver here if the laser aircraft itself never gets shot down.
Also kinda funny how the response to “our expensive weapons are being beaten by cheap weapons” is to make a different expensive weapon.
Has Wunderwaffe ever defeated Ten Thousand Conventional Bombs?
If we’re classing Wunderwaffe as a weapon that’s just a high tech gimmick with a billion dollar price tag, no, but you could argue for drones being a Wunderwaffe because it’s a bomb that can loiter in the air for a long ass time or take a round trip detour behind your defensive line
They’re gonna spend billions on this and then we’re gonna find out later that Iran defeated it in some really trivial way like spinning the drones/missiles to spread the laser impact over a large number of surfaces instead of focused on a single point.
Also it won’t work through clouds.
Headline: Iran defeats freaking sharks with freaking lasers on their heads with the existence of basic physics.
Strap a brick of dry ice to the front, problem solved
silver spraypaint vs $10B laser
Oh no! They figured it out! Batteries and capacitors are famously light. They practically fly on their own! If they continue with this flawless plan, Iran is finished!
Tbh though there’s surprisingly powerful hobbyist lasers on YouTube that i feel like could reasonably scale up to aircraft sized at a reasonable weight (except maybe the nuclear generator it might need)
Like there’s handheld ones where it’s like “wow i don’t want to be a narc and say these should be illegal but these should be illegal”
My point was mostly that this is an engineering challenge that has so far not been attempted a lot. Most weaponized laser systems that exist or are being tested are ship- or vehicle-mounted for a reason.
Also, with how distance makes lasers less powerful, those hand-held lasers from youtube would do nothing at all to an incoming drone. Nevermind one of Iran’s rockets, those things are way too fast to get destroyed in time.
But sure, you can mount some sort of laser on a plane. I would even grant that some of the currently existing laser weapons, which range from 10KW to hundreds of KW (in many cases exact stats are unknown) could be installed on a transport plane. You’d need at least two because you cannot reload the capacitors in the air. But realistically, you need many more then two if this is supposed to be an effective defense. If Israel wants to retrofit dozens of planes with frickin laser beams and have them continuously circle, I welcome the plan because that means less jet fuel for bombing runs and less runways free for the jets and bombers carrying those out.
Like there’s handheld ones where it’s like “wow i don’t want to be a narc and say these should be illegal but these should be illegal”
I looked into high powered lasers and afaik in America using them outside of like industrial applications is already illegal, but making them is not. So if your handheld laser pointer leaves a burn mark on the projector screen you’ll get in trouble.
Yeah good luck with that champ.
Maybe it’s just decades of being inundated with techbro and corpo bullshit, but I find it difficult to take anyone who repeatedly uses the term “game changer” seriously
Also, lmao at “pwetty pwease just throw more money at us, we can absolutely hit a moving target from a moving target and overcome THE FUCKING LAWS OF PHYSICS if you just throw more money at us”
The main problem I see with this system is time. You don’t have the luxury of heating up the target over hours or even minutes, especially for the faster or shorter range ones. This means you either need an absurdly powerful laser, or limit yourself to FPVs and the like.
Maybe it can work on Shaheds too, which would admittedly be quite useful, but it’s not like Iran is limited to those, and it shouldn’t be too difficult to devise countermeasures.
So, let’s say they manage to overcome all the engineering and pesky physics obstacles. If they’re over the altitude of a drone and they miss, while over their own population… People are going to get lasered, literally.
Imagine you’re taking cover and your place happens to be at all unfortunate angle, and when the all clear signal sounds you find you’re car is cut in half and your house is on fire.
all your popcorn popped, pushing out the walls of your house
you are a Real Genius for this one
Grossly overestimating the power of these things. There is no way they are going to be able to deploy one of these functional at what they are talking about here and would not do more than a bad sunburn at very close range.
Burning oil to make energy to make lasers to protect your imperialism to get more oil
Please bro just one more wunderwaffe bro I swear it’ll save the colony from the anti imperialists bro
Inverse square law? Never heard of it
I was going to reply something about how the inverse square law doesn’t apply to lasers but I was surprised to read that due to gaussian beam divergence, even the most ideal physical laser will have it’s intensity converge to 1/distance^2 in the far field.
best case scenario is
divergence_angle = 2 * wavelength / ( pi * beam_waist )the divergence is likely quite small for these systems since they have such large beams.
I knew it didn’t literally follow it but I hadn’t done any research on what the actual calculations looked like, so thank you for bringing hard numbers to the table. I was really using that statement as shorthand for “this weapon would take an incredible amount of energy to be efficacious at practical ranges,” but I appreciate a learning opportunity. Physics isn’t my direct domain haha
They didn’t rush carapace armor first
have fun getting critted out by thin men nerdsSo for the record, while most laser systems are truck or ship mounted, the US HAS successfully tested an air mounted one, the Boeing YAL-1, a modified 747. This was back in 2011, and the system worked, but it wasn’t pursued as an option due to the limitations of an aircraft limiting the power of the laser.
I learned while looking this up that the tech is a lot older than I thought, dating back to 1980s American and Soviet military tests.
So what. “Israel” watched a Styropyro youtube video and is trying to recreate it. Big deal.
They don’t have his Arab Testosterone
Absolutely no chance this is fielded in the next decade. This is just blowing smoke up investors’ asses
