To match with advanced military technologies, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), of developed countries are working on, priority basis, to develop Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs).
DEWs are ranged weapons that damage the target with highly focused energy, including laser, microwaves, and particle beams. They are among the next group of military technologies that can potentially end future wars before they begin. DEWs can quietly disable enemy drones or missiles temporarily or permanently, without leaving physical debris. They can destroy enemy missiles, aircraft, and advanced weaponry based on electronic circuitry.
Features of DEWs
According to G. Satheesh Reddy, Secretary, Department of Defence, the DEWs will play a major role in future warfare. DEWs produce a beam of concentrated electromagnetic energy. Based on high-powered lasers and microwaves, DEWs are anti-personnel and anti-material. While the former can cause intolerable burning of an area in the body and blindness, the latter can be used to destroy missiles, ships, UAVs, and circuitry of equipment deployed in a battlefield. The anti-satellite missile (ASAT) killed an orbiting Indian target satellite and left hundreds of small pieces as debris for a few months, in a test conducted by DRDO on March 27, 2019. DRDO also successfully tested 1-kw laser weapon system mounted on a truck towards August end. The laser beam hit a target located 250 m away and took 36 seconds to make a hole in the metal sheet. Two DRDO laboratories are currently working on developing the source for generating the laser, which is imported from Germany.
Challenges Ahead
The first and foremost challenge is to develop the source for generating the laser. Besides, developing a cooling mechanism for the system that heats up when the laser beam is fired, ensuring a focused beam towards a distant target and optoelectronics, or optronics, which also include lenses to create focus, are other challenges. DRDO also intends to test a higher-powered laser, 2-kw, mounted on a truck against a metal sheet, located at a distance of 1 km.
The organisation has been working for the past three or four years and aims at developing 10-kw or 20-kw weapons.
Currently, the DRDO is working on fighter plane projects—the light combat aircraft (LCA) and advanced medium combat aircraft (AMCA). It would look at pilotless hardware such as combat drones or unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs) as well as swarm drones that fly in tandem for surveillance, attack, or intelligence gathering.
Other Organisation and Countries
As per a senior official at Kalyani Group, a private company, Kalyani Centre for Technology and Innovation, is in the initial stages of developing DEWs. The company is identifying two segments, i.e., ‘lethality’ to kill and ‘survivability’ to destroy incoming missiles. A lab is being set up in Pune.
Apart from India, the US, Russia, and China are the other countries known to be developing DEWs.