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In many ways, the war in Ukraine has become the world’s first full-scale drone war and the first AI war. Technology is playing a central role in this particular theatre; even Ukrainian citizens are using it to aid the armed forces by recording the position of Russian vehicles in apps. But in Israel, a different order of technology is now being developed – laser missile defense systems.
It may sound like something from science fiction, but this new system is expected to become the first operational example in its class at a time when nations across the world are trying to develop their own versions for military purposes. As laser technologies advance, it is therefore worth understanding how these systems work and what they are used for.
Iron Beam
The new defense system is officially known as “Shield of Light” but is often referred to as “Iron Beam”. It is a 100-kilowatt class High Energy Laser Weapon System (HELWS) that was first unveiled by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, an Israeli defense technology company, in 2014, and may be operationally deployed next year.
According to the company’s website, Iron Beam is designed to quickly and effectively engage and neutralize “a wide array of threats from a range of hundreds of meters to several kilometers.” It is essentially a missile defense laser, with a practically “unlimited” magazine. Although an infinite magazine is impossible, as parts and energy supplies will eventually run out, Iron Beam has an extremely deep magazine when compared to traditional systems that rely on missiles to intercept incoming attacks.
Iron Beam has been designed to work as part of Israel’s existing Iron Dome multilevel missile defense system.
War is HEL, among other things
Israel’s new system is an example of a directed energy system, a type of weapon that uses directed beams of electromagnetic radiation to achieve some military objective (in this case, shooting missiles from the sky). Generally speaking, this can be achieved through a number of ways, including the use of particle beams, high-power microwaves, or high-energy lasers (HEL). The latter two are more often desired for their potential strategic use, while HEL systems (like Iron Beam) seem to be the most common type receiving military applications.
HEL systems are based on solid-state lasers that use crystals to convert electrical energy into photons. These high-powered solid-state lasers produce photons that are in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, so they are invisible to
