A military laser set a record by reaching 105 kilowatts, Northrop Grumman Corp. [NOC] announced.
The company used a scalable building block strategy in the test, which was the final demonstration milestone of the Joint High Power Solid State Laser (JHPSSL) program, Phase 3.
The achievements included turn-on time of less than one second and continuous operating time of five minutes, with very good efficiency and beam quality, Northrop stated.
Last year, Northrop Grumman reported reaching a JHPSSL Phase 3 power level of 15.3kW in March and a power level of 30kW in September.
Dan Wildt, vice president of Directed Energy Systems for Northrop Grumman’s Aerospace Systems sector, described the significance of the test.
“This achievement is particularly important because the 100kW threshold has been viewed traditionally as a proof of principle for ‘weapons grade’ power levels for high-energy lasers,” he said. “In fact, many militarily useful effects can be achieved by laser weapons of 25kW or 50 kW, provided this energy is transmitted with good beam quality, as our system does. With this milestone, we have far exceeded those needs.”
Military missions can be envisioned that would require such high laser power.
For building blocks, the company employs “laser amplifier chains,” each producing approximately15kW of power in a high-quality beam. Seven laser chains were combined to produce a single beam of 105.5 kW. The seven-chain JHPSSL laser demonstrator ran for more than five minutes, achieved electro-optical efficiency of 19.3 percent, reaching full power in less than 0.6 seconds, all with beam quality of better than 3.0.
The laser already has been operated at above 100kW for a total duration of more than 85 minutes. A government team reviewed results of the demonstration during a System Test Data Review held Feb. 10 at Northrop Grumman’s Directed Energy Production Facility in Redondo Beach, Calif.