Military leaders are eager to have the precision of a directed-energy weapon — yet plenty of legal and practical obstacles remain.
The coalition airstrike that recently killed more than 100 civilians in Mosul underscores a familiar challenge of dense, urban warfare: how can the military more precisely hit targets from the air? Lasers represent the apogee of precision and the Pentagon has several ongoing programs that will reach readiness in the coming years. The head of Air Force Special Operations Command recently said that lasers should absolutely be “part of the discussion” about how to hit terrorists — but so should the significant legal and practical obstacles that remain.
The military already uses low-power lasers to guide its weapons, from missiles to small arms. But recent advances in solid-state fiber lasers have renewed Pentagon interest in high-energy weapons that might do the damage by themselves, firing from everything from trucks to experimental helicopter drones.
When commanders and military leaders talk about how they will use such lasers, they are careful to describe them as primarily defensive, useful for disabling enemy drones missiles, and even vehicles. Yet there is also considerable discussion about how, when, and why they might be used against enemy troops as well.
That emphasis on targeting the enemy’s stuff rather than enemy troops was the case on Wednesday. Lt. Gen. Marshall B. Webb, the head of Air Force Special Operations Command, laid out an operational scenario: pilots on a dangerous raid might use a laser mounted on an orbiting gunship to take out an enemy truck and a drone. Webb has said that he wants to test a laser aboard an AC-130J within a year.
Webb, who was speaking at the Direct Energy Summit in downtown Washington, D.C., was asked about targeting humans.
“My intent right now is to prove we can do a demo and do some specific things with this: control the beam; contain jitter,” he said.
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