DECADES TO ‘ZAP’


KEEP A SAFE DISTANCE


The Zeus-High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle provides laser capabilities for unexploded ordnance and mine-clearing operations. The solid-state laser system allows Soldiers to stay up to 200 meters away as they clear suspected hazards. (U.S. Army photo)


just cheap quadcopters but also aircraft, cruise missiles, armored targets and, someday, ballistic missiles (tricky, since ballistic missiles bear a heat-resistant coating to prevent them from burn- ing up when they re-enter the atmosphere).


What’s coming in 2018? Lasers on big vehicles, lasers on medium-sized vehicles and presumably more lasers on helicop- ters, for the Army. In FY18, the High-Energy Laser Mobile Test Truck, a converted 34-foot-long Heavy Expanded Mobility Tac- tical Truck, should have a 50-kilowatt laser aboard and ready for demonstrations. By the end of FY17, the Army expects to select a contractor to mount a 100-kilowatt laser weapon on a more mobile vehicle like a Stryker or Bradley—a request from Soldiers in the field—for testing by 2022. Te Air Force and USSOCOM plan to test a directed-energy weapon mounted on an AC-130 gunship by the end of the year.


By 2020, General Dynamics Land Systems, which builds the Stryker vehicle, expects to be able to fire a 30-kilowatt laser from a Stryker. Considering that 30 kilowatts currently requires a 570-foot-long ship with four electrical power generators to sup- port, that’s quite an advancement. Leaps in capability don’t just happen, though; they take decades of research and development.


152 Army AL&T Magazine October-December 2017


CONCLUSION Money spent in the 1970s now looks likely to pay off in the 2020s, in terms of a product in the field. Research conducted with the massed forces of the Soviet army in mind now looks like it will be most useful, at least in the short term, against cheap, low-flying drones, often flown by nonstate actors.


A ready force requires an acquisition and technology commu- nity capable of responding to “we need it now” requests like the mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle and the up-armored High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, while sustaining much longer-term thinking. Te lesson is one most observers of the defense scene already know: It can take a long time and some expensive failures to move from promising idea to pro- gram of record, from a technically possible capability to a tool in the warfighter’s hands.


For a historical tour of Army AL&T over the past 57 years, go to the Army AL&T archives at http://asc.army.mil/web/magazine/ alt-magazine-archive/.


—MS. MARY KATE AYLWARD


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