WASHINGTON —\u00a0While the Pentagon continues to pursue directed-energy weaponry, the building’s top weapons buyer wants to temper expectations.
Kendall was clear he believes directed energy could be a benefit to the Pentagon going forward, and that the department is dedicated to spending prototyping dollars over the next three years to see if the technology can continue to mature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We have a number of prototype programs in directed energy, different technologies going, and they culminate in the next three years, roughly,” he told reporters Sept. 7 after the annual Common Defense conference in Washington. “At that point we\u2019ll be able to make a decision on what to take forward in the directed-energy world.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, he warned, there are serious limitations that could make it unlikely that a directed-energy weapon is ever truly effective enough to be used in combat. Those limitations go beyond the long-standing question of how much power such a system would require to be effective, and the hurdles of employing it outside controlled laboratory conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“There are limitations with lasers because of weather. There are limitations of lasers because of behavior, beams of light in the atmosphere, and the possibility that [an enemy] could harden against them,” Kendall explained. “They are not a panacea.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, one area in which Kendall said a laser weapon could be “very helpful, potentially,” is countering small, commercial unmanned aerial systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“They\u2019re being used by ISIL, they\u2019re being used by Russia in Ukraine for targeting and sometimes for delivering lethal mechanisms. That is the type of target that is relatively soft to a laser, and it\u2019s also short-range in most cases, so you don\u2019t require as much power,” Kendall explained.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Directed energy may be ready in the future, but Kendall is tempering excitement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":35299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":7,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"4":{"categories":["your-air-force","news"],"primary_category":"your-air-force"}}},"categories":[7,11,12,49,19,48],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3378],"class_list":["post-17057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air","category-global","category-industry","category-techwatch","category-pentagon","category-the-americas"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"4HUBMIQJSBCAJFK6I5YCBG3N6I","arc_canonical_url":"\/air\/2016\/09\/09\/kendall-throws-cold-water-on-laser-hype\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n