Combat lasers became famous long before scientists created the first working prototypes. For a long time, science fiction writers, among whom was the famous Russian writer Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy, took the rap for scientists and technical progress. His science fiction novel "The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin" was decades ahead of scientific progress. Today everything that science fiction writers wrote about at the beginning of the 20th century is becoming true. Lasers from fantastic weapons are getting closer and closer to absolutely material weapons. But even now in 2019, the question of whether military lasers have real prospects is still relevant.
Laser weapons - weapons of the future
The greatest successes in the field of creating their own laser weapons have been achieved today by Russia, the United States and China. Moreover, many countries of the world have such developments, including Israel, Great Britain, Germany, France and many other states. Many military experts call laser weapons one of the most promising types of weapons that can significantly change the tactics and course of hostilities in the 21st century. Some experts even agree that the offensive capabilities of laser weapons may be unlimited.
According to Alexander Mikhailov, head of the Bureau of Political-Military Analysis, laser weapons will become a frequently used military tool, if not in the coming years, then in the medium term. Already now, laser technologies are very widely used by the military of different countries for targeting guided air bombs and missiles, blinding optical devices and homing heads, in active protection systems and tracking threats for various military equipment, in rangefinders and sights. With the development of energy carriers and technologies, the use of combat lasers will grow, over time they will be used on land, on water, in the sky and in near space.
According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the 21st century, laser weapons will determine the combat potential of the Russian armed forces: the army and the navy. The President announced this at a meeting on military topics, which took place on May 17, 2019. Putin voiced the fact that until recently, combat lasers, which can be effectively used at a tactical level, could only be found in the pages of science fiction books, but today they already exist in practice. Also, Vladimir Putin spoke about the need for practical tests of the Russian laser complex "Peresvet", noting that the modern implementation of various projects and programs in the field of creating laser weapons in Russia is very important.
According to Alexander Mikhailov, in the future, laser weapons will open up the military capabilities to destroy spacecraft located in the orbit of our planet, disable satellites for various purposes. The possibility of using combat lasers as one of the damaging factors in air combat seems promising; this can change aviation and expand the possibilities of its combat use.
According to Russian experts, the help of lasers on the battlefield is the real future, and the armed forces, which will be the first to acquire full-fledged combat lasers, will provide themselves with a serious advantage. For example, in aviation, lasers can be used for effective defense and interception of air-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guided missiles, aircraft will eventually become less vulnerable to enemy air defenses. In the case of aviation, as well as with ground combat equipment, we can talk about laser suppression of optoelectronic missile guidance systems, not necessarily about their destruction and destruction by a laser beam. Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor Viktor Viktorovich Apollonov believes that the development of laser technologies and laser weapons is critically important, first of all, for Russia. For our country, combat lasers can become a good and effective asymmetric response to the superiority of NATO countries in the field of precision weapons and their massive use.
As simply as possible, this can be described by the fact that a more technologically advanced enemy, instead of using a huge number of blanks that fit over the areas, will use single, but more expensive and accurate ammunition, hitting pre-selected or detected targets. This principle was implemented during the strikes against Yugoslavia, during the hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. The countermeasure to this can be a laser weapon, which absolutely does not make any difference what to hit: an archaic artillery or mortar shell costing a couple of hundred dollars or a missile costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. At the same time, the amount of high-precision ammunition on board the carrier, be it an aircraft or a ship, is limited, and their total cost is hundreds of times higher than the cost of the most expensive laser shot. In this regard, laser weapons are truly a weapon of the future, a weapon that can change everything.
Problems faced by laser weapons
Certainly, laser weapons have taken a step forward over the decades. But, as before, there are nuances in the use of such weapons. Experts still call the main limiting factors for laser installations: weather conditions and atmospheric phenomena (snow, rain, heavy cloudiness, fog); heterogeneity of the Earth's atmosphere and its scattering properties; high energy consumption per shot; the ability to hit targets that are only in line of sight (no obstacles and relief). According to experts, the loss of intensity of a laser beam when it passes through the earth's atmosphere can reach 80%, depending on the specific atmospheric conditions outside the window and the laser wavelength, losses occur due to the effects of scattering and absorption. Therefore, it is very difficult to achieve high efficiency of laser installations when operating on distant objects. It is necessary to create more and more powerful lasers.
In the USSR, research was actively carried out in this area, mathematical models were created and various experiments were carried out. Much attention was really paid to the development of laser weapons; air, land and sea-based laser systems were tested. At the same time, even in those years, space was named one of the most suitable environments for the use of laser weapons. It is no coincidence that in the second half of the 1980s, the USSR was actively working on the development of the unique orbital laser platform "Skif", on board which, ideally, it was planned to install a gas-dynamic laser with a power of about 100 kW.
As Andrei Grigoriev, head of the Russian Foundation for Advanced Research, noted in an interview with RIA Novosti, the development of laser weapons turned out to be much more difficult than it seemed at first. When the work was just beginning, both in the Soviet Union and in the United States, it was believed that the new weapon could be the solution to many problems: it does not require ammunition, it quickly reaches its goal. But as a result, everything turned out to be much more complicated. According to Grigoriev, weapons built "on new physical principles" are actually weapons "on old physical principles" that were worked out half a century ago. According to the specialist, he does not expect any special breakthroughs in the field of creating laser weapons in the coming years. Grigoriev noted that the situation with combat lasers is somewhat reminiscent of the program for creating a thermonuclear reactor, on the creation of which many countries, including Russia, are working together. “As soon as the next program on the thermonuclear reactor starts, they promise to solve all the problems within the next 50 years, they are already solving for 50 years, and they are going to solve it for another 50 years,” summed up the head of the Advanced Research Fund.
True, here we should not forget that any technologies that a person works with do not turn into successful ones at the wave of a wand in a short period of time. Technologies that become truly disruptive often mature for a very long time and the process of their improvement takes decades. For example, this happened with aviation. Ideas to build an airplane and attempts to do so were carried out throughout the second half of the 19th century, but the first flight took place only at the end of 1903, and more than a dozen years passed before airplanes became a formidable weapon and an effective means of transporting goods and passengers. It is still premature to bury laser weapons, who knows how soon they will make the leap that will transfer them from the category of the first aircraft of the Wright brothers to a formidable weapon that can seriously affect the outcome of battles.
Even now, laser weapons are already quite effective, although only at a tactical level. For example, in the United States, not so long ago, they successfully tested their versions of ship-based lasers, which are able to hit small drones, as well as boats. Do not forget that laser weapons in all environments can be effectively used to blind the optics and homing heads of various precision weapon systems. For example, this is exactly how the modern Russian complex of onboard self-defense of aircraft "Vitebsk" works, which includes an active jamming station L-370-3S. The active jamming station blinds the thermal homing heads of enemy missiles with infrared laser radiation. It is on the principles of laser weapons that active defense systems of various military equipment, including ground ones, operate, which deflect ATGMs, homing shells and missiles from protected objects. Experts believe that the Russian military laser "Peresvet", which has been put into service, can be used for exactly the same tasks, only its power is significantly higher. Experts believe that the complex is able to effectively blind the optics of the seeker of various models of high-precision weapons, optical target designation and fire control systems for armored vehicles, and the optics of modern reconnaissance drones. All this gives us the right to say that laser weapons certainly have prospects. In one form or another, it has already been successfully used by the military of many countries.
