Laser Weapons on the March in China

Abstract

As a preamble, Chinese President Xi Jinping, at a meeting with delegates of the People's Liberation Army of China (PLA) during the last session of the National People's Congress (NPC), demanded the introduction of scientific discoveries and innovative technologies in the army. Xi Jinping noted that new technologies are the key to modernizing the Armed Forces. The Chinese leader discussed with the military ways to achieve the goals set in the field of state defense and army construction, and the implementation of the 13th five-year plan for the development of the armed forces. Laser Weapons (LW) have become a key priority in China's defense agenda. Chinese scientists and technologists have been thinking and working on the LW problem for a long time. Since the 1970s, industry and the military have laid the groundwork for seriously figuring out how to achieve practical power levels, how to control the beam, and how to deliver laser radiation over significant distances. The Ministry of Defense officially recognized lasers as a likely weapon of the future back in that century, marking the beginning of official research and development. China, following the United States, Japan, Germany, France, and Britain, plans to equip the country's fighter aircraft with light and compact laser systems for aircraft. Two tender announcements for the development of suitable equipment and software were posted on the official PLA procurement website. According to the terms of the first tender announced by the PLA, applicants for the contract must develop an outboard aircraft container for LW. The second tender included requirements for the creation of software for managing this LO. The combat laser must protect PLA Air Force aircraft from enemy missiles and engage a range of targets, including airborne, ground, and surface threats. The Chinese military plans to receive a universal laser module, which in the future will be able to become a tactical naval, land-based and air-based missile defense system. The air defense will be able to intercept incoming missiles and engage and neutralize enemy aircraft during aerial combat. The significant advantages of LW systems over missiles and firearms make them indispensable tools for aerial combat. Aviation LW will be able to provide not only protection from missile attacks from the ground and from the air, but also air superiority for Chinese aviation during aerial engagements. Over the past few years, China has been very actively engaged in the development of LW. At the Airshow China 2018 in Zhuhai, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASIC) demonstrated the LW-30 self-propelled laser combat system designed to protect facilities from unmanned aerial vehicles, light aircraft and helicopters. The 30 kilowatt laser installed on the LW-30 is capable of hitting targets at a range of up to 25 kilometers in functional mode. The installation has reportedly been adopted by the PLA. Simultaneously, China Central Television showcased a new development, the LW mobile installation. Although the technical specifications were not disclosed, a local source indicates that the system is designed to instantly destroy targets near the coastline, and its main targets will be small boats and unmanned aerial vehicles. When installed on aircraft, this missile defense system could potentially intercept incoming missile attacks and provide superiority in close-range aerial engagements, the Global Times said in a statement. Chinese media noted that the created LW module is tactical. If it were a laser designator for targeting smart bombs, then it would be called a laser targeting module. A Chinese television program recently also claimed that China has already developed a prototype of a 100-kilowatt aircraft LW. It pointed to a document entitled "A study of energy storage and a power source for airborne weapons", prepared by the AVIC State Institute of Production Technologies and the Military Representative Office of Special Equipment of the PLA Missile Forces. It is important to note here that many other countries are working on the problem of creating missile defense. For instance, Russia recently announced that a next-generation fighter jet could be armed with a missile defense system, and a project announced by the United States called the "Self-protection High Energy Laser Demonstrator" would consist of a laser, a power and cooling unit, and a beam control system to focus the missile defense system on a target. In February, at the International Defense Exhibition and Conference in the United Arab Emirates, China demonstrated its Silent Hunter laser system, which is capable of disabling vehicle engines at a distance of one mile and has a power of up to 70 kW. This information raises a reasonable question, what is in China's arsenal in the field of law, if they openly show such complexes at international exhibitions. For comparison, the current LW complex on the American ship "Ponce" has a capacity of 33 kilowatts. Earlier, China presented at the exhibition in South Africa and another ground-based mobile complex "Low Altitude Guard II" based on a conventional military truck and with a 30kW laser installation for destroying drones and helicopters. Recently, foreign and Russian media have again begun quoting material from the Chinese Optics magazine, where leading Chinese scientists in the field of military lasers proposed putting a five-ton chemical laser into orbit by 2023, which would disable US satellites. The same scientists said that back in 2005, China conducted successful tests to disable its own orbiting satellites using a ground-based laser with a power of up to 100 kW. For the Chinese army, air-launched lasers are more than a potentially useful weapon for destroying enemy aircraft or protecting their aircraft from anti-aircraft missiles. LW can also be a key component of ballistic missile defense. Chinese media acknowledge the difficulty of creating LW air complexes. "This type of weapon has not yet become widespread due to the remaining technical difficulties, including problems with power sources and insufficient power output of the lasers themselves due to their large weights and dimensions." A striking example of how an on-board laser does not need to be developed for China is the test bench for on-board lasers "YAL" of the US Missile Defense Agency. This ambitious attempt to turn a Boeing 747 airliner into a flying LW has ended in failure. Armed with a giant chemical laser powered by an environmentally hazardous working fluid, the YAL was designed to destroy ballistic missiles. However, it turned out to be so expensive and the tactical ranges so short that then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates abandoned the project in 2009. However, the YAL concept originated in the 1980s, alongside ambitious initiatives such as Ronald Reagan's 'Star Wars' missile defense program. Currently, Chinese military efforts focus on a more compact and more practical air defense system that can be mounted on a land or sea vehicle, as well as on a suspension carried by an airplane. According to the Chinese military, the tactical air defense based on modern solid-state technology is approaching its final reasonable appearance. Currently, the leadership of the PLA Armed Forces is actively exploring how to integrate laser systems into existing weapons systems. Although lasers have existed nearly as long as rocket technology, it takes a sufficient amount of time for modern armed forces to deploy nuclear weapons effectively. The problem in previous years was that these laser systems were too bulky and heavy. They were physically too large to be used effectively for tactical purposes, or on a truck, or in an airplane, or even on a ship, without taking up large carrier spaces. Naturally, certain limitations exist regarding the compatibility of systems with different delivery platforms. Not all media can support 100 kW - 150 kW class systems. Since solid-state lasers are powered by electricity, they can function continuously until energy depletion. Solid-state lasers can effectively track and engage fast-moving targets with high precision and offer the necessary variability that can be used for various types of impacts, from simply observing targets to causing serious or unacceptable damage [1-6].