Will the U.S. Army soon start blasting incoming rockets and mortars with laser beams to protect its forward operating bases? Not quite, but according to people involved in industry and the Army, that day might not be that far off/.../
One successful program has been the Counter-Rocket and Mortar (C-RAM) Land-based Phalanx Weapon System (LPWS), which has thwarted 170 mortar and rocket attacks on forward operating bases in Iraq, while providing warning of more than 2,000 attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2005, according to U.S. Navy documents.
The LPWS is a trailer-mounted version of the Navy’s Phalanx Close-In Weapon System, which fires high-explosive self-destruct rounds at 3,000 to 4,500 shots per minute from a 20mm M61A1 Gatling gun. The system also has an autonomous target detection and engagement capability. In February, Northrop Grumman was awarded a contract from the Army that could be worth as much as $132 million to install and sustain several Phalanx-based C-RAM systems at bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While the system has been successful, some attacks still get through. And this is where advocates say solid-state lasers can do a better job. While kinetic systems have a finite number of bullets, take time to reload, and may have difficulty engaging multiple targets, systems such as the HEL MD or other solid-state technologies “have a near-infinite magazine.”
“As long as they have a source of electricity and cooling, they can keep firing,” said Mark Gunzinger, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He authored a recent report saying the time is ripe for the Pentagon to invest more in laser weapon technology, Gunzinger said, “you don’t have to wait for a kinetic weapon to fly to a target — it goes at the speed of light/.../" Gunzinger did add a caveat to his enthusiasm, however. “Directed energy weapons can’t completely replace kinetic defenses. They’re complementary,” he said. “You need both of them because lasers have limitations in bad weather and so forth.”