Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) : News and Updates
- Thread starter Ashwin
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Another anodyne interview for those interested.
Very interesting specs. What is this from ?
They are using water for cooling. Then the laser must be a Solid State laser. Water cooling is very risky & complicated business for Gas Dynamic lasers. Solid state lasers have an efficiency ~40%. That means 40% of the supplied power is converted to laser, the rest 60% is waste heat.
69kW is heat load of the laser. Assuming total power supplied to the laser source is "x". Then :
69= 60% of x
x= (69*100)/60 = 115kW
Therefore power of laser = 40% of x = (40*115)/100= 46 kW
A 46 kW Solid State Laser is pretty good for many military uses. The scalability of Solid State Lasers makes it very desirable for military applications.
A dehumidifier integrated into the laser cooling system. Interesting.
It seems DRDO assumes the system will see prolonged deployments in very humid environments. May be the LORDS will become a component of coastal security in the future.
Naval use I assume. And I believe it’s the right approach considering that naval vessels do have sufficient power and space for such a power hungry weapon.
Another concern for naval application is space. Solid State Lasers take up the least amount of space.
From tender I think it's the same 50kw laser system which drdo chief revealed about. And yes it will have ship motion compensation.
For the reference AN/SEQ-3 Laser Weapon System of USS Ponce is 100 kw solid state laser and scalable energy weapon for CIWS role
It’s scalable from 30kw to 100 kw depending on the target.
30 kw is just for what is called laser dazzling of small uavs.
Full 100 kw power will be used against larger threats like choppers,Aircrafts etc
From the looks, the current 50 kw is just the first phase of the DE-LWS project and is suitable only for protection against small UAVs and possibly the low flying cruise missiles. For bigger threats like jets and chopper is 100 kw is the threshold.
A laser is highly scalable. If you have a 30KW laser, it can be scaled to any number you want by simply adding more of the lasers. It works no different from TRMs in an AESA radar. All the separate beams can combine into one. Only space and power are the limiting factors as long as heat is taken care of, which is not very difficult on ships and trucks.