The British Ministry of Defense has shown a video of the DragonFire laser weapon against air targets, including drones and mortar shells. It costs about £100 million, but each shot has the potential to can cost less than UAH 500, which is much less than traditional air defense systems.
DragonFire has been under development since 2017, and details about the 50 kW laser are kept under wraps, transmits NewAtlas. It is known that this is a solid-state laser consisting of beams of doped glass fibers, the output of which is converted into a single beam using a British-designed beam combining system. Mounted on a tower, it also has a secondary laser and an electro-optical camera for target acquisition and beam correction.
A video released by the UK Ministry of Defense provides more information about its design. It shows the acquisition and targeting system in action, tests of the laser on static bench targets, and footage from January field tests at the British Army’s Hebrides Range in Scotland, where it tracked and hit various targets.
The video also included animations showing DragonFire in action aboard a warship, where it disables a boat, blinds a drone, and shoots down another drone. In addition, the Ministry of Defense released an image of a mortar shell that was burned through by DragonFire.
Despite the fact that the tests were successful, DragonFire will not be adopted by the Royal Navy and the British Army as a standard weapon. Its function is to act as a technology demonstrator that will provide data for the development of a larger, second-generation weapon system that has not yet received funding.
The advantage of a practical laser weapon is not only the ability to hit a coin-sized target at a distance of one kilometer at the speed of light. It can replace missiles that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars at short range. Excluding equipment, a shot costs about 10 pounds, and the «ammunition» is virtually unlimited.