(Defense News) Seth J. Frantzman - Israel is planning a defensive "laser wall" that would shift from investing in costly interceptor missiles to less costly electric lasers. Uzi Rubin, founder of Israel's Missile Defense Organization, said that while the cost of defeating an incoming threat with a laser may be low, the price of acquiring and maintaining the technology could be significant. Lasers are also impacted by weather conditions, so an airborne laser system would also be needed. A further challenge is the low rate of kill for this technology, as lasers heat up a target in order to destroy it. "[With the] Nautilus laser, it took between 2-3 seconds to kill a Grad-like rocket," said Rubin. "Consider that they [the enemy] fire at a rate of two to four rockets per second; so you kill one, and several more have been launched already." "With Iron Dome...[we can] target 20, while a laser has to target each one individually." Moreover, "Laser beams have finite range....A laser beam disperses by 8-10 kilometers [5-6 miles], so it's a local defense." Pini Yungman, head of the air defense unit at Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, which makes the Iron Dome, said, "We are developing the laser to be a launcher in the Iron Dome system....You cannot rely on it [a laser] by itself; you need a combination of kinetic kill and energy, a combination of ways to intercept, otherwise you won't be able to intercept threats." In the next few months, "we will have [a] final integration test" to combine the laser system with Iron Dome. Tal Inbar, a senior research fellow at the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, agrees that air defense systems can't rely solely on lasers because of the weather factor as well as the thickness of rockets. The thicker the material, the longer it would take for a laser to destroy the threat.
2022-02-24 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive