Lockheed Martin has recently released an animated video in which it had revealed how the future warfare may possibly look like.
The animated video which runs for about two minutes 50 seconds shows how a tactical airborne laser pod fitted in a F-16 fighter aircraft takes down a hostile missile fired from an enemy ship.
Lockheed Martin issued a statement in which it said,”For more than 40 years, Lockheed Martin has specialized in laser weapon development and relevant technologies, ranging from lasers to beam control technology. The systems we’re developing under contract today can defeat small rockets, unmanned aerial vehicles, small attack boats, and lightweight ground vehicles.”
The company further said that for the US Navy it will build the High Energy Laser and Integrated Optical-dazzler with Surveillance (HELIOS) system onto U.S. Navy destroyers to protect sailors and ships from attack by drones and small boats.
For the U.S. Army, the company is developing the 300 kW-class Indirect Fire Precision Capabilities High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL) demonstrator, a ground vehicle system to defeat drones, rockets, artillery and mortars.
Lockheed Martin is also developing critical components of an airborne laser pod including the high-energy laser and other subsystems that it aims to demonstrate by the year 2025.
How the laser pod will work
Lockheed Martin has partnered with industry and customer stakeholders to develop producible, low-cost tactical beam directors for use in land, sea and airborne applications. The beam director is the optical system that puts high-energy light on-target and keeps it there with high precision to defeat the threat.
The company said that it is leveraging decades of DoD investment in acquisition and tracking technologies to develop LWS-specific algorithms that enable the beam director to detect, identify, track and defeat threats.
Our beam director, consisting of a gimballed beam director assembly and an acquisition and tracking system, will first be demonstrated in a U.S. Army ground application.
Source: Mint