South Korea is beginning the mass production of a low-cost laser weapon that has successfully shot down small drones during testing, the country’s key arms agency said Thursday.
Imagery supplied by the agency appears to show a weapon around the size of a shipping container with a laser mounted on top and what appears to be a radar or tracking device mounted on one side of the platform.
Radar emissions are easily detectable.
This is an old problem and traditional cold war era SAMs for example have an alternative optical tracking mode to try and counter this for example.
Radar is a type of electromagnetic emission, and this weapon would also emit EM radiation. I think they mean that the SAMs have an illuminator, and the SAM operation principle is that it works in conjunction with another operator stationed away from itself to illuminate the target using EM for the launched missile to lock. The vulnerability here is that the operator with the illuminator is vulnerable to being detected and targeted by anti-radiation missiles. Similar missiles can be reused in this case, since the only difference is that they would need to home in on a different wavelength of light rather than radar. The reason the switch to optical won't work is because the principle of operation of this anti-drone weapon seems to be fundamentally based on high-power EM radiation. I may be misunderstanding their point, though.
I think you’ve got it exactly right. Anything putting out kWs into the air is gonna light up the sky in its spectrum. Now, an ideal laser would be fully coherent with a perfectly planar wave and next to no spread. But even that would ionise the air in its beam, and with a very distinct fingerprint at that. I can’t really think of a way to make it truly invisible.
And you made a really good point that at this point you’re back to using cheap drones to expose and destroy million $ equipment
Radar emissions are easily detectable.
This is an old problem and traditional cold war era SAMs for example have an alternative optical tracking mode to try and counter this for example.
Missed the fact that it has a radar attached.
Wouldn't the same solutions work here, though?
Radar is a type of electromagnetic emission, and this weapon would also emit EM radiation. I think they mean that the SAMs have an illuminator, and the SAM operation principle is that it works in conjunction with another operator stationed away from itself to illuminate the target using EM for the launched missile to lock. The vulnerability here is that the operator with the illuminator is vulnerable to being detected and targeted by anti-radiation missiles. Similar missiles can be reused in this case, since the only difference is that they would need to home in on a different wavelength of light rather than radar. The reason the switch to optical won't work is because the principle of operation of this anti-drone weapon seems to be fundamentally based on high-power EM radiation. I may be misunderstanding their point, though.
I think you’ve got it exactly right. Anything putting out kWs into the air is gonna light up the sky in its spectrum. Now, an ideal laser would be fully coherent with a perfectly planar wave and next to no spread. But even that would ionise the air in its beam, and with a very distinct fingerprint at that. I can’t really think of a way to make it truly invisible.
And you made a really good point that at this point you’re back to using cheap drones to expose and destroy million $ equipment