🇩🇪 Germany commissions an airborne laser demonstrator Germany’s military procurement agency, BAAINBw, has awarded MBDA Deutschland a contract to develop an aircraft-mounted laser pod demonstrator. The aim is to intercept drones and cruise missiles with a precision weapon. MBDA describes airborne lasers as one of the hardest challenges in defence technology. A pod has to accommodate the laser, power generation, cooling equipment, beam director and tracking sensors. Keeping the beam steady while the aircraft vibrates, manoeuvres and experiences temperature changes is a challenge in itself. Moisture, dust and turbulence can also scatter or distort the beam before it reaches the target. Germany has treated laser technology as a national defence priority since 2019, and MBDA has worked on it since 2008. Together with Rheinmetall, the company developed a naval laser tested aboard the German frigate Sachsen in 2022–2023. The system carried out more than 1,000 successful test firings against airborne, surface and land targets, including one in which it destroyed a drone. The contract does not specify a timetable, the laser’s performance or which aircraft will carry it. MBDA’s illustration shows a stealth drone with the pod beneath its fuselage. That may hint at a “loyal wingman” protecting the crewed aircraft it accompanies. For the Bundeswehr, the pod could become part of a layered air-defence system. It also fits NATO’s efforts to counter cheap drones deployed in large numbers. A laser’s appeal here is its low cost per shot: firing it consumes energy rather than an interceptor missile. The Soviet Union studied lasers for tactical aircraft in the 1980s. Its proposed gas-dynamic laser, housed in the aircraft’s dorsal spine, was intended to dazzle the infrared seekers of surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles and to blind enemy pilots. Heat dissipation was one of several persistent problems, and the approach was eventually abandoned for combat use. Today, fibre and solid-state lasers are the leading candidates for such weapons, and MBDA’s pod will probably use one of them. But Germany is still a long way from an operational airborne laser. For now, it has announced a demonstrator. Let’s see what comes of it. #info #laser #Germany
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