Ares: A Defense Technology Blog

Laser Guns Still Out of Reach

For years folks have touted lasers as the next big thing in high-tech weaponry. So-called directed-energy weapons might shoot down ballistic missiles, zap mortars and rockets before they hit your troops and even replace cannons aboard the latest fighter jets. But for all the hype, no one has quite gotten a military-grade laser to work. Old-style chemical lasers capable of truly destructive power rely on fuels that are just too volatile; solid-state lasers are still too weak to actually kill anything.

But Northrop Grumman remains bullish. And on January 16, the firm announced the opening of the world’s first full-service laser production plant in Redondo Beach, California. Here workers will build and test-run tactical lasers from 10 to 100 kilowatts in power, an order of magnitude short of the delicate megawatt-class laser that the company is building to shoot down ballistic missiles. The facility was built to support the Joint Solid-State Laser Program and will also produce hardware for the Tactical High-Energy Laser, or THEL, which aims to shoot down mortars and rockets.

“Laser weapons are really moving out of the laboratory onto the battlefield,” says vice president for lasers Mike McVey. That’s a bit of an overstatement. Just a couple directed-energy weapons -- THEL and Raytheon’s Laser Area Defense System -- have actually hit anything in tests. Everything else is a weapon only in theory.

Ethiopian Air Power Proves Decisive in Somalia

Ethiopia's tiny air force, which just four years ago was in danger of implosion, spearheaded last month's assault into southern Somalia to drive out Islamic Courts and their militia forces. Beginning on December 24, Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker fighter-bombers hit strategic targets and even struck ground troops while at least 3,000 Ethiopian soldiers – 8,000 according to the United Nations – supported by T-55 tanks, Mil Mi-24/35 Hind gunship helicopters and artillery darted more than 150 miles to surround Mogadishu in just seven days. By the first week of January, Islamic forces had fled to the southern tip of Somalia and a jungle enclave and were being tracked by U.S. aerial drones flying out of Djibouti. On Jan. 8, the last Islamic holdouts came under assault by U.S. and Ethiopian forces, signaling the imminent end of large-scale Islamic military resistance.

This is only the latest victory for a storied air service. The Ethiopian air force, then backed by Russia, defeated the powerful Ukrainian-supported Eritrean air force during the two nations' 1998-2000 border conflict. But the service suffered in post-war political crackdowns. Two senior officers, Major Daniel Beyene and Captain Teshome Tenkolu, were abducted by government security forces and reportedly held for years on suspicion of disloyalty. Beyene died last year, apparently assassinated, while Tenkolu and more than a dozen other pilots and technicians defected several years ago, Tenkolu while at the controls of an Aero L-39 jet trainer. Meanwhile, Ethiopia's MiG-21 Fishbed and MiG-23 Flogger fighters were becoming obsolescent.

But an improved Ethiopian political climate and a concerted effort to re-equip the air force and its sister services preceded the Somali fighting. Between 1998 and 2004, Ethiopia received around 16 Flankers plus a handful of Sukhoi Su-25 Frogfoot attack planes from Russia as well as several dozen Hinds and other helicopters. The army, for its part, bought around 100 pristine T-55 tanks from Bulgaria in addition to Russian- and U.S.-built self-propelled howitzers; these would arm the invasion force and likely inflict the majority of Islamic casualties. But it was Ethiopia's new fighter jets that elicited hysterical comments from Islamic Courts leaders in the days before the Ethiopian invasion. "I hope God will help us shoot down their planes," Sheik Mohamoud Ibrahim Suley told the Associated Press in December.

The Sukhois are the backbone of operations in Somalia and are the only jet types mentioned in press reports from the fighting. Jeffrey Gettleman of The New York Times claimed a jet even strafed the Mogadishu airport on Dec. 25. Hinds, too, have featured prominently in journalists' dispatches. One Hind was reportedly shot down on Dec. 25. Professor Abdiweli Ali from Niagara University, who claims to have contacts with pro-Ethiopian Somali commanders, told Pajama Media that the Islamic Courts were armed with Russian should-fired surface-to-air missiles but had failed to hit the mostly high-flying Ethiopian aircraft. It's not clear what brought down the Hind.