[Ghostavo]

Northrop Grumman Scales New Heights in Electric Laser Power, Achieves 100 Kilowatts From a Solid-State Laser

REDONDO BEACH, Calif., March 18, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reaching new heights with its scalable building block approach for compact, electric laser weapons, Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) has produced the most powerful light ray yet created by an electric laser, measured at more than 105 kilowatts (kW).

A photo accompanying this release is available at http://media.globenewswire.com/noc/

The company claimed ownership of this record by completing the final demonstration milestone of the U.S. military's Joint High Power Solid State Laser (JHPSSL) program, Phase 3. The achievements included turn-on time of less than one second and continuous operating time of five minutes, with very good efficiency and beam quality. Last year, Northrop Grumman reported reaching a JHPSSL Phase 3 power level of 15.3kW in March and a power level of 30kW in September.

"Our modular JHPSSL design makes it straightforward to scale laser weapon systems to mission-required power levels for a variety of uses, to include force protection and precision strike missions for air-, sea- and land-based platforms," said Dan Wildt, vice president of Directed Energy Systems for Northrop Grumman's Aerospace Systems sector.

"This achievement is particularly important because the 100kW threshold has been viewed traditionally as a proof of principle for 'weapons grade' power levels for high-energy lasers. In fact, many militarily useful effects can be achieved by laser weapons of 25kW or 50 kW, provided this energy is transmitted with good beam quality, as our system does. With this milestone, we have far exceeded those needs."

Wildt continued, "Power scaling will be one of the game-changing features of high-energy lasers because it allows graduated responses by U.S. military services appropriate for whatever level of threat they may face. Threats vary, and so should the response."

Jay Marmo, Northrop Grumman's JHPSSL program manager, pointed out how the company's scalable, building block approach also readily enables more challenging missions that require well above 100 kW of good beam quality laser power.

"Getting to 100 kW with replicated building blocks proves we can scale to these higher power levels if required for a given mission. This watershed development, coupled with our FIRESTRIKE(tm) laser ruggedization work, unequivocally demonstrates that Northrop Grumman is ready to bring high-power, solid state lasers to the defense of our deployed forces."

For building blocks, the company utilizes "laser amplifier chains," each producing approximately15kW of power in a high-quality beam. Seven laser chains were combined to produce a single beam of 105.5 kW. The seven-chain JHPSSL laser demonstrator ran for more than five minutes, achieved electro-optical efficiency of 19.3 percent, reaching full power in less than 0.6 seconds, all with beam quality of better than 3.0.

The laser already has been operated at above 100kW for a total duration of more than 85 minutes. A government team reviewed results of the demonstration during a System Test Data Review held Feb. 10 at Northrop Grumman's Directed Energy Production Facility in Redondo Beach, Calif.

"It is notable that we were able to meet the power demonstration goal with only seven laser chains, rather than the full eight chains we can accommodate. This shows the robustness of our industry-unique approach and the ability of our lasers to deliver predicted performance," Marmo emphasized. "Adding the eighth chain will increase laser power to 120kW."

Now we can kill each other more efficiently!

[Dilmah G]

w00t

Don't they already use something like this for crowd control?

[Enigmatic Entity]

What effect does 103kW of laser beam have on:

People?
Metal?
Buildings?

[Black Wolf]

For building blocks, the company utilizes "laser amplifier chains," each producing approximately15kW of power in a high-quality beam. Seven laser chains were combined to produce a single beam of 105.5 kW. The seven-chain JHPSSL laser demonstrator ran for more than five minutes, achieved electro-optical efficiency of 19.3 percent, reaching full power in less than 0.6 seconds, all with beam quality of better than 3.0.

Oh hell yes. Death star!

[Herra Tohtori]

Get me a 1.21 GW laser and we're talking...

[Roanoke]

About time too. Now, aren't we supposed to be piloting Mecha by now ? 

[Dilmah G]

What effect does 103kW of laser beam have on:

People?
Metal?
Buildings?

Something cooooooooooooool

*Dilmah drools on keyboard, visualising some kind of beam cannon sitting on his lawn*

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Hoo boy, yet another step forward for beam tech.

[BengalTiger]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser#Examples_by_power

[Mad Bomber]

Now we can have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads! 

[Nuke]

i got to watch a laser surgery be performed when i was a kid, the light came on and the blood started flowing. it was sorta cool. from the table on wikipedia that was probibly just a 100 watt laser.

[watsisname]

Maybe I missed it but the article doesn't seem to mention anything about what wavelength laser this is. :/ I'm betting it's infrared like those used for industrial cutting but it'd be awesome if it were visible light.

What effect does 103kW of laser beam have on:

People?
Metal?
Buildings?

A 1kW infrared laser cuts through 1-inch thick steel like a hot knife through butter, so scale that up by about 100 times and imagine it hitting something.  Buildings probably not too much but a person would be sliced through pretty much instantly.  This would also depend on the size of the beam (smaller cuts better) and also wavelength light the laser emits.

[Mika]

I'm pretty sure I have a magazine of optics that talked about this couple of months ago. They had it in a airplane, ready to pulverize buildings. This should actually decrease the collateral damage, since there is no blast radius. Though I wouldn't like to get one scattered beam towards eyes.

The cutting power of a 1000 W (if this is the actual OPTICAL power) industrial level laser depends on the total amount of energy emitted and the spot size on the target, with linear dependency in the power and inversely quadratic dependency on spot size.

1 kW of optical power over somebody's frontal area (~2 m * ~0.5 m) = 1m^2
1 kW / 1m^2 = 1000 W/m^2, approximately the irradiance caused by sun. While this isn't dangerous level to human, the collimated beam can still cause problems to eyes.

Putting there 100 kW is another case, but there is not enough information to tell the minimum spot size on the target. Putting that energy to a diffraction limited spot of 5 µm is then again one...

One of my colleagues once mentioned focusing a slightly more powerful laser to a dust particle. The bang was audible to give you an idea...

Mika

[Enigmatic Entity]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser#Examples_by_power

On March 18, 2009 Northrop Grumman announced that its engineers in Redondo Beach had successfully built and tested an electric laser capable of producing a 100-kilowatt ray of light, powerful enough to destroy an airplane or a tank. An electric laser is theoretically capable, according to Brian Strickland, manager for the United States Army's Joint High Power Solid State Laser program, of being mounted in an aircraft, ship, or vehicle because it requires much less space for its supporting equipment than a chemical laser.

So now we have saaa#weak#weak beams? Surely in 300 years, they will have something better than a BFGreen, considering the rate of advancement of technology (unless humans war themselves back to a more primitive state).

[NGTM-1R]

You forget, a BFGreen is measured in terrawatts or more probably. A tank is fairly impressive, of course, but FS fighters withstand kiloton-yield blasts with ease.

[BloodEagle]

You forget, a BFGreen is measured in terrawatts or more probably. A tank is fairly impressive, of course, but FS fighters withstand kiloton-yield blasts with ease.

  kind of difficulty do you play on? 

[NGTM-1R]

]
  kind of difficulty do you play on? 

The one were I read the techroom. The Fury has a canonical yield of 3Kt. The MX-50 is 16.5 Kt.

[Flaser]

Maybe I missed it but the article doesn't seem to mention anything about what wavelength laser this is. :/ I'm betting it's infrared like those used for industrial cutting but it'd be awesome if it were visible light.

What effect does 103kW of laser beam have on:

People?
Metal?
Buildings?

A 1kW infrared laser cuts through 1-inch thick steel like a hot knife through butter, so scale that up by about 100 times and imagine it hitting something.  Buildings probably not too much but a person would be sliced through pretty much instantly.  This would also depend on the size of the beam (smaller cuts better) and also wavelength light the laser emits.

If you pump enough energy into a small enough space of matter, instead melting it will vaporize - explosively.

[Enigmatic Entity]

So we just need an auto-lens and we will have lasers that work like a continuous row of TNT exploding on the target? Nice .

[watsisname]

The problem when dealing with continuous wave lasers is once the laser hits the target, vaporized material will block/deflect the beam and lessen its effectiveness.  But maybe moving the laser across the target like a terran slash beam could overcome that.