The Navy is rethinking what a laser weapon looks like

This article is republished with permission from Laser Wars, a newsletter about military laser weapons and other futuristic defense technology. The U.S. Navy has a unusual proposition for the U.S. defense industry: take your high-energy laser weapons and break them into pieces. In a draft request for solutions (RFS) published on August 12 through the National Security Technology Accelerator (NSTXL), the Office of Naval Research (ONR) detailed plans to explore the development of “distributed” laser weapons, where a system’s laser source and the beam director that actually delivers effects on target are not bolted together in the same apparatus, but instead connected through a specialized optical fiber spooled across a ship, base, or battlefield. For this particular project, dubbed the ‘Universal Optical Transport for Distributed Laser Weapons’ and valued at $10.25 million, ONR is seeking prototype connectors and fiber capable of transmitting 10 kilowatts over 10 kilometers with minimal power loss and high beam quality. “The shift to distributed laser weapons allows for significantly expanded geographic coverage and multi-sector force protection” in support of ex…