Being a member of the AUKUS defense pact, Australia continues to prepare for a future armed conflict with China. Apart from projecting the procurement of long-range cruise missiles, stealth fighter jets and nuclear-powered submarines, Australia is also not left behind in the adoption of laser weapons.
In addition to procuring weapons for the Dragonfire anti-hypersonic missile laser system supplied by Qinetiq, Australia is also developing laser weapons to deal with drones.
Quoted from Breaking Defense (8/5/2023), the Australian defense technology company, Electro Optic Systems (EOS), reportedly successfully tested a high-energy laser counter-drone system, which was wanted by the Australian armed forces.
What EOS has to offer is a 36-kilowatt laser gun, scalable to 50 kilowatts, housed in a standard shipping case and powered by a lithium battery pack, this laser missile system can 'deliver' more than 100 shots before needing to be reloaded.
Development began three years ago, leveraging EOS' three decades of work on lasers for tracking space debris and remote weapons stations (RWS).
Matt Jones, EOS executive vice president for defense systems, said that this is an internally funded program, started because the company saw an opportunity in the market for directed energy (DE) systems.
One laser weapon system that has had some success so far is Israel's Iron Beam, which its developer, Rafael Advanced, says will be deployed next year as part of the Iron Dome missile defense system designed to counter rockets fired into Israeli territory from Gaza and Lebanon.
The US military has also conducted several laser programs, of which perhaps the most famous, or notable, is the USAF airborne laser mounted on a Boeing 747 YAL-1 Airborne Laser and intended to target ballistic missiles in the upgrade phase. It worked but was canceled in 2011 after 16 years and cost US$5 billion. More recently, the US Army and Navy have pursued their own high-energy laser programs.
Matt Jones believes that the market gap is still wide open in laser-based weapon systems, however, he says there is no one DE system that fits all users.
"Some want them in a small package that requires less power, and they're happy with the lower range, and they're going after a specific target," he said. "The system we're working on here is really targeted at the counter-drone market, small target size."
"In recent field trials, the EOS laser successfully engaged and destroyed a small target drone at a range of 780 meters, about half a mile," said Jones.
Furthermore, EOS targets an engagement range of four kilometers [2.5 miles]. "We have a lot more work to do to achieve that."
The preparation of a viable DE weapon depended on a series of technical challenges – the huge power requirements and atmospheric-induced degradation of the beam. Furthermore, extremely precise tracking is required to hold the beam on the target for the few seconds it takes to deal 'deadly' damage.
“If you look at a laser beam in the lab, up close you can see that the beam is well distributed. But as the distance increases, after 200 meters the beam profile gets worse,” said Jones. “It swayed due to the atmospheric turbulence. That is why within our system it was required to develop a very sophisticated optical system to guarantee the best beam quality so that small divergences can be transmitted to targets at long distances.”
The EOS laser system uses a combination of optical and radar tracking developed from their long-range weapons systems program. Jones said most of the technology in the DE system is an evolution of EOS technology used for tracking and destroying debris in space.
"The active beam management that we need to allow the laser to pass through the atmosphere and be concentrated in space is the kind of technology we are implementing here," he said.
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