- Armies around the world are testing high-energy laser weapons to intercept targets.
- If successful, the weapons could change warfare, as they travel near the speed of light.
- China said it has found a way to cut the cooldown time, suggesting theirs could fire indefinitely.
Chinese scientists claim they have found a way to build a laser weapon that can be fired indefinitely, dramatically increasing its effectiveness over other laser weapons.
If their claims are true, it would mean that China has leapfrogged ahead of the US in developing high-energy laser weapons that could be used on the battlefield.
The capability China's military scientists claim to have developed, however, has not yet been seen in action.
According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), researchers at the National University of Defence Technology, a military research institution in Hunan, have developed a cooling system that allows high-energy lasers to remain powered up without getting too hot.
The system is a "huge breakthrough in improving the performance of high-energy laser systems," the scientists said in a paper published in Acta Optica Sinica, a Chinese-language peer-reviewed journal, on August 4, the SCMP reported.
"High-quality beams can be produced not only in the first second but also maintained indefinitely," they added.
Laser beams can heat up gas in the air, which can reduce the quality of the beam and cause damage inside the laser chamber, according to the report. To bypass this issue, the National University of Defence Technology scientists said, they developed a system that blows clean gas through the chamber and removes waste heat.
This allowed them to make the laser more compact and efficient, per the SCMP.
"So far, many advanced designs and research progress on dynamic air-blowing thermal management in China have not been reported," the scientists said, the SCMP reported. "This is the first time that some of the designs and test results [have gone] to the public," they said.
China and the US, among other nations, are looking to develop combat-ready high-energy laser weapons that can generate beams strong enough to melt steel.
High-powered laser weapons have the potential to be game-changing technology for warfare and defense because they could shoot targets like drones, missiles, and small aircraft at near the speed of light at lower costs than interceptor missiles. A challenge, though, has been cooldown time.
In a tweet about the reports, former British military official Steve Weaver said that if the news on the achievement by the Chinese scientists is true, it would put China ahead of the United States in more ways than one. "This is a big breakthrough considering the US failures in this area," he said, highlighting a section of the SCMP report pointing to US military systems that didn't quite meet expectations.
Major defense companies in the US have also been pushing forward the development of laser-based weapons as part of projects like the US Department of Defense's High Energy Laser Scaling Initiative. The beams could be used to defend sites from incoming threats.
And the US military has in recent years embraced these systems.
The US Army, for example, has mounted 50-kilowatt lasers to its Stryker armored fighting vehicles while the Navy's amphibious warship USS Portland, building on earlier testing, has tested a 150-kilowatt laser against a surface target. The Marines have tested a Compact Laser Weapons System in the range of 2 to 10 kilowatts, and the Air Force has received high-energy laser pods for its fighter jets.
Lockheed Martin announced last year it had delivered a 300-kilowatt laser to the Defense Department. It is now working on a more powerful 500-kilowatt laser, per the company's website.
While there has been renewed interest in this technology, there are major limitations to its use.
Laser weapons are usually less powerful the further away they are from the target, and can be foiled by bad weather like fog and storms, which can reduce the beam's range and quality, per the US Government Accountability Office, which also noted that cooling requirements can also limit their effectiveness.