Chinese researchers have said they have overcome the biggest challenge for laser weapons, potentially giving Beijing a military advantage of concern to the West.
Beijing is developing laser weaponry that might be able to replace existing air defenses and neutralize missiles, drones and fighter jets. High-energy laser systems can disable unmanned aerial vehicles such as war drones, but they produce a lot of heat that limits performance, a major technical challenge.
However, a team from the National University of Defense Technology in Changsha, Hunan province, said they have solved this problem, reported The South China Morning Post, an English-language newspaper based in Hong Kong.
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The researchers developed cooling technology that can extract heat from the laser’s interior, while minimizing turbulence as well as vibrations.
This offers the potential for the continuous firing of laser beams without interruption making the laser weapons much more viable for combat scenarios.
“This is a huge breakthrough in improving the performance of high-energy laser systems,” said laser weapon scientist Yuan Shengfu in an August paper for the Chinese-language peer-reviewed journal Acta Optica Sinica, The Beijing Times reported. “High-quality beams can be produced not only in the first second but also maintained indefinitely.”
Operating lasers without needing to take a break will increase their range and military potential while reducing maintenance and repair issues, The Beijing Times reported.
First developed in the 1960s, laser weapons transform kinetic energy and project it at the speed of light. Over the last six decades, there have been many laser types developed, with the U.S. at the forefront of developments.
But the range was restricted to a few miles. To harness its destructive potential, it has to operate continuously for extended periods.
High-energy laser beams work when atoms or molecules within a medium—like a crystal or gas—are excited to a heightened energy state. In reverting to their baseline state, photons are released and are magnified through optical feedback.
But when a laser beam travels, it heats surrounding gases which causes turbulence, making it less precise, an issue that the team at the National University of Defense Technology says it has solved.
It comes as China’s technical developments are attracting attention in the U.S. In August, the White House issued an executive order out of concerns for Beijing’s military and intelligence advancements.
President Joe Biden has enacted measures to stop some U.S. investment from investing in Chinese companies involved in microelectronics, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing.
As the Wall Street Journal reported in March citing an Australian think tank report, China is ahead in 37 out of 44 critical technological sectors. The newspaper added that China had twice as many registered patents as the U.S, citing a U.N. agency. Furthermore, Chinese research has overtaken U.S. research in terms of appearances in the top 1 percent most-cited scientific publications between 2018 and 2020, according to a tally by a Japanese government institute.