Next Step for U.S. Military Drones: Lasers?

Northrop Grumman

One of Northrop Grunman's unmanned aerial vehicles, the RQ-4 Block 20 Global Hawk.

Unmanned aerial vehicles have been used to spy on terrorists, track insurgents, and even to hunt down and kill al-Qaida leaders hiding in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now, a Pentagon research and development arm is looking for ways to add high-powered lasers to the unmanned aircraft, which have become one of the most talked about military technologies in recent U.S. military operations.

A notice put out last week by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the arm of the Pentagon responsible for developing far-out technologies also known as DARPA, asks weapon manufacturers for proposals to develop pulsed fiber lasers that will be placed on high-flying drones. The lasers must be capable of putting out at least 10 megajoules of energy per pulse at a 24-kilohertz repetition rate, according to the announcement. This is no easy task, given that the entire system needs to weigh no more than 22 pounds so it can fit on the drone.

Over the course of a decade, unmanned aerial vehicles have gone from performing primarily reconnaissance missions to being an integral part of combat. Putting a high-powered laser on such an aircraft would no doubt expand the role of unmanned aerial vehicles into new missions.

It's not quite War of the Worlds-style aircraft shooting death beams down to Earth, however. "The system is intended to have a number of applications ranging from long-range 3D mapping and laser radar, infrared counter measures and free space optical communications," a DARPA spokesperson tells Sphere.