Partnership with DRDO to develop High Energy Laser System (HELS)
Recently SFO Technologies has partnered with DRDO to develop High Energy Laser System (HELS).
Under this partnership, collaboration has been done with DRDO’s Center for High Energy Systems and Sciences (CHESS). This collaboration will lead to the development of a 2kW single-mode continuous wave fiber laser.
CHESS is a defense laboratory under the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) for research and work on HELS.
HELS
- HELS weapons emit substantial thermal energy. This energy can render a target directly ineffective without using a conventional warhead.
- These weapons can hit targets in the air, land, sea and space.
- HELS is a laser weapon. It belongs to the Directed-energy weapon (DEW) category.
- DEW is a broad term. It is used to denote all technologies that can generate focused electromagnetic energy or a beam of atomic or subatomic particles.
- The weapon that India is developing in this area is named Directionally Unrestricted Regan Array (DURGA II).
- Other Projects: Kilo Ampere Linear Injector (KALI), Project Aditya and Air Defense Diesels.
Advantages of DEW :
- These weapons provide speed of light engagement. This makes the response and tracking very fast. ‘Stealth weapon system-like performance (quiet and invisible beam).
- Targets can be penetrated with precision for both lethal and non-lethal applications.
- Their cost per shot is less.
- Russia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Israel and China are operating strong programs to develop DEWs.
Source – The Hindu
