«Today, we can already shoot down planes at an altitude of more than 2 kilometers with this laser“. Monday, December 16, Vadym Sukharevskyi, commander of Ukraine’s drone forces, caused a sensation during a conference on military cooperation. This is in fact the first time that a Ukrainian official has mentioned the use of this type of weapon on the battlefield since the start of the conflict with Russia, as noted by our Reuters colleagues citing the agency local press, Interfax.
«It really works, it really exists», insisted the leader, without however giving details on the manufacturers involved in the production of this weapon. The name of this laser weapon: Tryzub, otherwise known as “the trident” in Ukrainian, symbol of the country’s desire for independence.
Impossible to verify the information at the moment, but it is nonetheless credible. Emerging from laboratories in the 1970s and in their infancy until the 1990s, laser weapons – included in the family of directed energy weapons – are reaching a point of technological maturity making their operational use imminent. The conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have recently accelerated its use. From simple jamming to outright neutralization, they offer an ultra-effective and inexpensive way to combat, in particular, drone attacks that are now omnipresent in war zones. Added to this with lower maintenance requirements than conventional weapons, lasers are the subject of growing interest.
Investments are pouring in to improve the performance of these laser weapons, particularly in terms of range and sensitivity to atmospheric disturbances. If the United States is unsurprisingly in the lead, other countries are also in the game, such as Russia, China, the United Kingdom, Israel, Germany, South Korea, without forgetting the France. The European Talos 2 project is supposed to lead to the development of a high-power 100 kW laser by 2030, with the tricolor nugget Cilas lasers (owned by Safran and MBDA) as coordinator. Although the project has fallen behind schedule, it should help ensure that Europe does not fall behind in this key technology.
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