Has Iron Beam, Israel’s laser weapon, been used in the field?
Increasingly sophisticated aerial threats – including mortars, rockets and UAVs, as well as swarms of mini-UAVs – are being faced by both military forces and population centers. Because current Kinetic interception systems are expensive and not always sufficient to counter some of these threats, powerful new solutions are needed that meet the needs of this new reality.
Israel's solution
To respond to this problem in anti-aircraft defense, the directed energy Iron Beam system, i.e. anti-aircraft defense with laser beams, was developed by the Israeli company RAFAEL. Any multi-layered air defense deployment consists of a number of different types of interceptors. The HEL system, i.e. laser, was supposed to be complementary to the Iron Dome, the missiles and based on two systems: Iron Beam and Lite Beam.
Lite Beam is a 7.5 kW HEL interceptor for light drones and ground targets such as booby traps. Iron Beam, on the other hand, is a real 100 kW laser beam for anti-aircraft defense.
Iron Beam was supposed to be developed between now and 2025, but the ongoing war changed things and the Army command decided to bring it online well in advance . The flop of Iron Dome on the first day of the war, against the saturation attack from Hamas, highlighted the defense problems. However, it was thought that it was a joke or, at most, training in a real operational environment, but it seems that this is not the case and that it was actually used. The following video was published on Telegram
If real, it would be the first use of a laser beam in a military environment for the destruction of a flying object. A step forward in what man does best: war.
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The article Iron Beam, Israel's laser weapon, was used in the field? comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/iron-beam-larma-laser-di-israele-e-stata-impiegata-sul-campo/ on Mon, 16 Oct 2023 05:30:28 +0000.