Chinese laser weapon development
- Thread starter maozedong
- Start date
Skyshield laser anti-drone system developed by CETC successfully shot down 21 (Houthies) drones while defending Saudi Arabia's PAC-3 battery, shot down 36 drones in total in various countries, achieving a 100% first-time interception rate
"The command, electronic reconnaissance and jamming, radar, and laser interception capabilities of the protection systems have been fully tested."
"The command, electronic reconnaissance and jamming, radar, and laser interception capabilities of the protection systems have been fully tested."
Last edited:
Anyone else startled by the sheer size of the drones intercepted? I recall tech specs for Silent Hunter stating that they can handle drones with wingspan/radius under 2m. Some of the ones intercepted must be at least 4m or more in wingspan. Is this another case of China purposefully understating specs again?
Wingspan isn't really a particularly useful way of determining target set/complexity to begin with.
I could design a 6m wingspan drone made of balsa wood and paper powered by a lawnmower engine, versus a 2m wingspan drone made of heat resistant ceramics powered from a modern ducted jet. I have a feeling the 6m drone will be an easier target than the 2m drone.
So I would say that those original specs were just based on a strange metric. I wouldn't read too much into it.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
It’s not so strange if you think about it logically.
The core design and test/pass criteria for anti-drone lasers would be their ability to take down basically any drone it might reasonably be expected to encounter within a (very short) set timeframe.
The most conservative and easily measurable test of the laser’s ability to destroy a drone is to assume that the laser beam is hitting the main structural support of a drone, which is made of aircraft grade aluminium, and destruction of the drone is achieved by undermining the structural integrity of that core fuselage component.
From that, you can easily and systematically grade and test the effectiveness of your laser by building a table of aluminium thickness of the thickest structural components for various class of drone by weight, which can then be approximated as wingspan. Then all you need to do is see what thickness of aluminium plate your laser can burn though in the allotted time and you have the class of drone the laser can reliably be expected to be able to take down.
All of this will be validated with real world testing, but those will really be for proving and validation, and in many of the testing videos released, you see the drones are taken down when their wings or fuselage fail and fold/collapse rather than have the drone dramatically blow up in a big Hollywood fireball.
But to answer the original question, I would say that the wingspan of the drones the lasers are quoted for are based on drones being built to a specific (military maybe) standard, where you can expect to take that drone down so long as it is in range and you can keep it illuminated for more than the minimum time specified. You can certainly take down bigger drones if they are not built to such high standards in terms of structural strength; if you can keep it illuminated for longer; or if you get lucky and hit it in a soft spot like fueltank, critical electronics, explosives payload etc; or you just hit a weaker critical load baring structure etc. But all of that is situational and cannot be easily modelled for, so it’s logical to use the toughest part of the target as a measuring stick for your ability to reliably kill it. Similar to how body armour penetration and tank armour penetration is tested and graded. You can kill someone in level 4 plate with a 22lr round if you hit them where they are not armoured, but that doesn’t mean you can label 22lr as able to defeat level 4 plates.
I could be wrong but most of the suicide drones are not made with aluminum even in supporting structure but rather fiberglass and/or composites. Lasers allow for precise targeting and as long as you can stably train the spot, you can definitely target weak points like rotors and/or payload.
There is also the possibility that the Silent Hunter variant exported to Saudi Arabia is tailored made to their needs. I recall reading posts from informed members from an Arab defense forum back in 2022 that Poly/Norinco uprated some of the specs for the laser they sold to Saudi Arabia. Is it nationalist boasting or is there a kernel of truth to this? We simply don’t know.
My point is that "wingspan" is not a useful way of categorising drones susceptibility to weapons like DEWs.
What you've described are a whole bunch of additional factors in addition to wingspan, which if held consistent and conveyed, would combine with wingspan to be a useful metric.
... But in isolation, wingspan is useless, and thus it is also useless in context of wondering about their demonstration of effectiveness against larger wingspan drones in the raid on the Saudis because:
1. We don't know what circumstances/factors the original "wingspan" spec sheet was measured against, if any.
2. We don't know what the circumstances/factors the drones they defended against had.
So the idea that they were "underselling" the effectiveness of the system is silly -- the more important takeaway is that wingspan in isolation without knowing other factors, is a nigh useless parameter.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Those anti-drone lasers won’t really have been tailored made or rated for suicide drones and DJIs. Rather I think the primary target those lasers are meant to take out are military grade recon drones, which are much harder targets to kill since they don’t pack explosive payloads you can easily touch off and are usually built to last.
But then they wouldn’t really have to be rated against suicide drones if they can take down military grade drones. Just as if you have a round that can reliably penetrate level 4 plate out to 400m, you are not really going to be bothered if in the real world your target is just wearing a shirt.
Yes, you can in theory target weak spots, but that would likely mean you will be sacrificing engagement range and/or rate, as it’s more time consuming to aim for a small specific spot on a drone as opposed to just putting the laser beam on its centre mass.
I think if part of the system does need refinement to deal with suicide drones and DJIs/FPVs, it would be the track rate of the motors that drive the laser turret. It’s one think to target a relatively stable flying conventional fixed wing recon drone, but it will be much harder to get the laser beam on target against much smaller FPVs zipping about. The sensors might also needs upgrading to be able to pick up smaller targets.
Indeed, I think the biggest technical bottlenecks for using lasers to counter FPVs would be target tracking and laser aiming.
You can build more precise and faster motors and actuators, but I think the problem won’t be fundamentally solved until you can develop some sort of electronic beam steering similar to AESA radars. Indeed, it might actually be easier to develop microwave based anti FPV hard kill defences using AEAS beam forming tech as opposed to developing something that can work in a similar way for lasers.
FPVs are actually easier to counter for lasers since to boost their speed/agility they’ve stripped down any excess weight they could without compromising aerodynamics. It takes a lot less beam exposure to damage critical components on FPVs.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
They are easier to kill, provided you can hit them. That’s where the difficulty lies.