By Ann Roosevelt
Northrop Grumman [NOC] says it set new industry records in all aspects of high-power solid-state laser production, demonstrating the readiness of these compact, portable, speed-of-light weapons to take their place on the battlefield.
The company demonstrated the third critical milestone for the U.S. military’s Joint High Power Solid State Laser (JHPSSL) program, Phase 3.
Operating from Northrop Grumman’s one-of-a-kind laser factory, the system:
Raised its demonstrated lethality by precisely combining two laser chains to produce record power–30 kW–in an excellent beam–beam quality of 2.1 times the theoretical limit;
Operated at this performance level for more than five minutes continuously and more than 40 minutes total; and
Achieved electrical-to-optical efficiency of greater than 19 percent.
“Our march towards providing compact, electrically powered, operationally scalable and affordable laser weapons for U.S. military services continues to produce world-leading results,” Dan Wildt, vice president of Directed Energy Systems for Northrop Grumman’s Space Technology sector, said.
By the end of the year, the JHPSSL is expected to complete two more milestones: one combining laser chains to produce more power, and a 100 kW test.
“We are completely confident we will meet the 100 kW of power level and associated beam quality and run time requirements of the JHPSSL Phase 3 program by the end of December, 2008,” Bob Bishop, a Northrop Grumman spokesman, told Defense Daily.
JHPSSL Phase 3 Program Manager Jay Marmo said: “We believe this sets a new solid-state laser record by simultaneously demonstrating tactically significant power and beam quality for more than five minutes.”
As it had in two previous milestone tests, Northrop Grumman’s JHPSSL Phase 3 laser demonstrated its third milestone ahead of schedule, he said.
“We’ve achieved all of our major milestones ahead of schedule as we continue to rev up the power and capability,” Marmo said. “By demonstrating our ability to combine two identical, modular laser chains into a single, high-brightness beam, we have proven all aspects of our scalable design for 100kW.”
In December 2005, Northrop Grumman received a 36-month, $56.68 million contract for JHPSSL Phase 3 (Defense Daily, Jan. 11, 2006).
JHPSSL Phase 1 addressed risk reduction of the technologies necessary to obtain high power and beam quality simultaneously. Phase 2 took the technologies and scaled them to greater than 25 kW, and showed further scalability to 100 kW and beyond (Defense Daily, March 12).
The JHPSSL program is funded by the Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command, Huntsville, Ala; Office of the Secretary of Defense-Joint Technology Office, Albuquerque, N.M.; Air Force Research Laboratory, Kirtland AFB, N.M.; and the Office of Naval Research, Arlington, Va.