Ukraine unveils battlefield-ready laser weapon against drones

For decades, laser weapons have held great promise. They offer crucial advantages—relying on energy instead of ammunition that needs delivery, storage, and reloading. The laser beam travels faster than any projectile, striking its target at the speed of light.

Aware of these benefits, engineers have spent years attempting to create a battlefield-ready laser weapon. However, supplying the necessary amount of energy in a short period remains a significant obstacle.

As a result, only a few countries have managed to develop laser weapons. Even fewer have successfully used them beyond experimental or controlled laboratory settings and directly on the battlefield. Ukraine recently celebrated such a feat, and a few years earlier, so did the United States, albeit without disclosing details.

Lasers are, nonetheless, widespread in the military, where their role as weapons is just one aspect of their application. The Soviet Union was a trailblazer in developing and attempting to utilise laser weapons, as Tomasz Szulc explains in his article "Military Applications of Lasers in the USSR" published in "New Military Technology" magazine. Research into focused light beam applications is ongoing in Russia.

Lasers are extensively used in targeting systems. This includes not only the familiar laser pointer, often referred to as a "red dot" when attached to firearms, but primarily laser rangefinders, which allow for precise distance measurement to a target.

Such devices measure the time it takes for a pulse to be sent and return after reflecting off the target, using this information to calculate the light distance travelled with high accuracy.

For example, tank rangefinders employ this principle, enabling the tank to hit the target with the first shot, after considering factors such as weather conditions, without needing the time-consuming process of "zeroing in.” Soviet T-64 tanks were the first in the world to receive such rangefinders in 1965.

Another laser application is in missile "laser guidance." However, the term is somewhat broad, as it can refer to two distinct methods of directing a weapon to a target.

The first is guiding based on reflected light originating from a target indicator, which may be positioned differently from where the missile is launched. Thus, a drone, for instance, can designate targets for artillery (e.g., laser-guided 2K25 Krasnopol missiles), and a reconnaissance and sabotage team can "illuminate" a target for a bomb dropped from an aircraft to strike, such as the KAB-500L.

This method guides the missile using light reflected from the target. The missile's seeker detects this light, and based on this, the weapon homes in on the target, following the reflection.

The second method involves directing the projectile in the original (not reflected) laser beam, commonly used in some anti-tank missiles like 9M133 Kornet or 9K121 Vikhr. The target is illuminated with a laser, and the launched projectile contains rear sensors that ensure it remains within the guiding light beam throughout its flight. This beam is notably stronger, less scattered, and therefore less prone to interference than light reflected from the target.

A disadvantage of both systems is that they can be detected when a target is illuminated by a laser. This allows adversaries to counteract, for instance, by utilising a soft-kill active protection system that automatically deploys smoke grenades.

Using a laser as a weapon presents a much more complex challenge. Work on this concept has progressed for over half a century, or even longer if one considers the Nazi "death star" concept—a precursor of sorts for laser weapons, designed by Hermann Oberth. This plan envisioned an orbital station capable of destroying large sections of the planet with a concentrated light beam projected by a mirror of 9 square kilometres in size.

The simplest form of a combat laser application is as a blinding weapon—directly affecting soldiers' eyes when positioned in front of various types of lens systems used in sights or observation devices.

For such purposes, the USSR developed systems like the 1K17 Szhatie ("Compression"), often described as a "laser tank." Mounted on a 2S19 Msta-S howitzer chassis, this system sported a turret with 15 lens arrays—three for targeting and the other 12 for simultaneous laser attacks on up to 12 identified optical systems in enemy vehicles or devices.

Both detection and optical attack were intended to be automatic, with the attack potentially destroying the optical system and leading to the permanent blinding of its user. While tests confirmed the weapon's functionality, its high production costs and limited effective usage conditions meant only a single prototype was manufactured.

A portable version of this weapon was also created—the PAPV emitter, operated by two soldiers, automatically scanning for optical systems and targeting them with focused light. A drawback of this weapon was its sensitivity to interference, often targeting random pieces of glass or shiny metal.

Extensive efforts were also made to develop airborne lasers, exemplified by the A-60 aircraft produced in the 1970s. Initially, these were intended to shoot down high-altitude balloons, difficult to target with traditional firearms or various sorts of rockets.

Russians have also trialled anti-satellite and anti-aircraft laser weapons; however, despite certain successes (such as illuminating the Challenger shuttle during a flypast), the technology has not yet matured to a level viable for combat use.