The iron beam is showing its power. Is the short video of "laser shooting rockets" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict true?

Let me start with the conclusion. The video of laser weapons shooting down rockets in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that circulated on the Internet is most likely from video games; Israel's Ironbeam laser defense system with similar capabilities is very close to actual combat deployment; short-range laser defense systems used to defend against drones, unmanned ships, mortar shells and simple rockets have made significant progress in recent years; my country has the world's advanced level in the field of laser weapons, and laser weapons exported overseas have achieved actual combat results; high-power long-range laser weapon systems being developed by countries around the world still face many technical problems that have not yet been overcome.

Determining the authenticity of a video

The video clip circulating on social media claiming to be "Israel's iron beam laser weapon shooting down Hamas rockets" can be traced back to a game video of the war sandbox game "Armament 3" (ARMA3) uploaded on October 11.

On October 16, Marek Španěl, CEO of Bohemia Interactive Studio, the production company of Arma 3, confirmed on his personal social media that the video was indeed a screen recording of the game, and warned people to be careful about using various game videos to falsely claim that they were real war footage. [1]

The research and development organization of the Iron Beam system stated in 2022 that it would take another 2-3 years for the system to be deployed in actual combat.

Screenshot of a video circulating online showing Israel using laser weapons to intercept rockets during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

What is Iron Bundle?

In early 2014, Israeli arms giant Rafael Advanced Defense Systems demonstrated the Iron Beam directed energy air defense system at the Singapore Air Show.[2]

The so-called "directed-energy weapon" is a non-ballistic weapon including lasers, ion beams, high-energy microwaves, etc. The iron beam uses high-energy lasers as its killing method. The system was funded by the Israeli Ministry of Defense and developed by Rafael and Lockheed Martin of the United States.

Components of the iron bundle. Image source: Rafael official website

At the time, Rafael announced that the Iron Beam would enter service with the Israeli Army in 2015. However, by early 2022, then-Israeli Prime Minister Bennett still stated that the Iron Beam would be put into use within the year. [3] At the end of 2022, a Rafael executive said in an interview that the Iron Beam would be deployed in actual combat within 2-3 years. He also said that the Iron Beam system did not have major technical difficulties, but only needed to solve some "engineering" obstacles. [4]

To talk about the iron dome, let’s talk about the “Iron Dome” first.

Israel faces tremendous pressure on its national air defense. The imaginary enemies include a variety of targets, including medium- and long-range surface-to-surface ballistic missiles with a range of several thousand kilometers that can carry nuclear, biological and chemical warheads, medium- and short-range tactical surface-to-surface ballistic missiles and cruise missiles with a range of hundreds of kilometers, various types of rockets with a range of several thousand to hundreds of kilometers, low-cost simple rockets, mortar shells, military drones and simply modified drones.

To this end, the Israeli military has built an air defense system consisting of multiple layers of air defense weapons. The outermost layer of air defense consists of Arrow 3 exoatmospheric interceptor missiles with a combat radius of more than 2,000 kilometers; the second layer is Arrow 2 missiles with a combat radius of hundreds of kilometers; targets within 100 kilometers are intercepted by the middle-layer defense David's Sling missile; Iron Dome, as a near-layer and terminal defense system, is responsible for intercepting various enemy rockets and other low-speed ammunition with a range of 4-70 kilometers.

Among these four-layer air defense systems, the Iron Dome is undoubtedly the biggest star. Since it was put into service in 2011, the scenes of the Iron Dome intercepting various rocket attacks have become famous scenes on the battlefield of the new era. Over the past decade, the Iron Dome has shot down tens of thousands of various targets with an interception success rate of nearly 90%, becoming one of the best air defense systems today. In addition to a large number of equipment in Israel itself, countries including the United States and India have already or intend to purchase the system. However, the Iron Dome system is not impeccable. At the beginning of a new round of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Hamas armed forces took advantage of the weaknesses of the Iron Dome and successfully launched an effective attack on Israel. The biggest disadvantage of the Iron Dome is its limited ability to resist saturation strikes. In fact, it is very unfair to the Iron Dome to say this-it is already one of the "strongest in the world" in terms of resisting saturation strikes. Let's first look at the basic composition of a typical Iron Dome combat unit:

1

Detection and tracking systems

The core is the EL/M-2084 phased array radar developed by Israel Aerospace Corporation (IAI), another Israeli military giant, which can track 1,100 targets at the same time and provide data link support for intercepting missiles. This type of radar is also the core detector of the "David Sling Air Defense System", and its naval version is also purchased by the navies of Israel, India and other countries as the core component of the ship air defense system.

Iron Dome launches an interceptor. Source: Wikipedia

2

Command and control system

Developed by Israeli private company mPrest Systems, it is responsible for analyzing data from the detection and tracking system, calculating the missile's interception trajectory, and determining the threat level of the target. If the system determines that the target's impact point will be in an uninhabited area, it will automatically give up the interception.

3

Launch system

The Iron Dome uses fixed launch positions. This is mainly because Israel has a limited land area and the enemy's attack direction can be predicted in advance, so there is no need to use a mobile launch platform. The missile launcher is a 4x5 box layout with 20 rounds of ammunition. Each combat unit is equipped with 3-4 launchers.

4

Missile systems

The Iron Dome's Tamir interceptor has a diameter of 0.16 meters, a length of 3 meters, and a weight of 90 kilograms. It uses mid-course command guidance and active radar terminal guidance, and is equipped with a proximity high-explosive warhead.

An Iron Dome combat unit can cover about 150 square kilometers, and 60-80 spare missiles can fight 30-60 incoming targets. This is already a very good tactical indicator. However, in the military operation on October 7, Hamas armed forces carried out a saturation attack on the Iron Dome with thousands of rockets.

Israel currently has more than a dozen Iron Dome combat units, and all of its Tamir interceptor missiles were almost exhausted in the first wave of rocket attacks. The gap in the Iron Dome system's firepower for reloading missiles became a breakthrough for Hamas' rocket attacks.

The more fundamental disadvantage of the Iron Dome system is the reason why it is unable to intercept a large number of Hamas rocket salvos. This disadvantage is high cost. As with the previous disadvantage, it is also unfair to say that the Iron Dome is expensive. The cost of an Iron Dome combat unit is about 50 million US dollars, and the cost of each Tamir missile is about 40,000-50,000 US dollars. This is already a very low price for a high-end air defense system that uses high-performance phased array radars and active radar-guided interceptor missiles.

It is difficult to find a similar air defense system with lower cost in the world. But the problem is that its opponents have lower cost. Hamas militants mass-produce simple rockets, each costing only a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. They do not need to use precision guidance systems, and their main combat mission is to kill and deter Israeli civilian targets. Sometimes, they do not even need any guidance system at all, as long as the rocket flies out, the mission is completed.

This unequal cost has put Israel in a difficult situation - although its economic strength is far greater than that of its opponents, it is still under tremendous economic pressure in the confrontation between the "simple spear" and the "precision shield". In this Israeli-Palestinian conflict, many analysts believe that Israel's Iron Dome interceptor missile inventory has been exhausted. Even if the Iron Dome's single-shot success rate is increased to 100%, this "exchange" game is unsustainable in terms of time cost and economic cost.

Are iron bundles the solution?

Compared with anti-aircraft missiles or anti-aircraft artillery, laser weapons have unparalleled theoretical advantages.

1. Compared with missiles and artillery shells that use multiples of the speed of sound (Mach number) to measure speed, the speed of a laser beam is the speed of light, which cannot be exceeded. It travels in a straight line and has an extremely fast strike speed. There is no need to solve the trajectory or calculate the lead time.

2. The laser itself has no mass, so launching a laser beam does not require considering recoil or vibration like launching artillery shells and missiles. The mechanical design of the launch system will be relatively simple.

3. As long as the laser has electrical energy or other energy input, laser weapons can theoretically be fired an unlimited number of times without having to consider the number of spare ammunition and reloading speed like traditional weapons.

4. For each strike, only the cost of energy consumption needs to be considered. There is no need to consider the full life cycle cost of the design, production, logistics, storage, maintenance, and scrapping of shells and missiles.

Therefore, in theory, the low-cost laser air defense system with unlimited firing capacity has become an ideal weapon to fight against rockets like Hamas. This is why Israel began to develop the Iron Beam system before the Iron Dome system was put into service.

Image source: Rafael official website

Real problems with laser weapons

Ideals are full of hope, but reality is very skinny. There are still many technical challenges for laser weapons to move from science fiction to reality.

1

High-power laser technology is very difficult

The reason why laser can be used as a weapon mainly depends on the energy carried by its light. When high-energy light shines on an object, it will produce a strong thermal effect, causing the surface of the object to heat up rapidly and cause damage to the object. Laser cutting, laser welding, laser scalpels, etc. in daily life all use this principle. Therefore, to destroy a target, a laser with sufficient intensity must be irradiated on the target.

Lasers, like other electromagnetic waves, propagate in space in accordance with the inverse cube law of energy, so the energy per unit area decays rapidly as the engagement distance increases. If lasers are to be used to intercept long-range targets, such as ballistic missiles hundreds of kilometers away, the power of the lasers theoretically needs to be at least megawatts, or kilowatts.

At present, the theoretical solutions for megawatt-class lasers include: electrically pumped lasers, chemical lasers, solid-state lasers, fiber lasers, and carbon dioxide lasers. In practical applications, the United States proposed the concept of "airborne high-energy laser interception system" (ABL) in the 1990s, intending to install high-energy lasers on aircraft to intercept tactical ground-to-ground ballistic missiles that were just launched and were still in the boost phase from hundreds of kilometers away.

This system later evolved into the YAL-1A airborne laser experimental platform, which uses an oxygen-iodine chemical laser with an emission power of 1 megawatt. The initial engineering goal was a 3-megawatt laser, but the engineering difficulty was too great, so the goal was lowered.

However, even if it is reduced to 1 megawatt, the total weight of this laser is still close to 20 tons, and the volume is as large as five SUVs. In order to accommodate such a large laser, the US military modified a Boeing 747 jumbo jet. The oxygen-iodine chemical laser uses the energy generated by a chemical reaction to stimulate the laser. The raw materials for the reaction are iodine, hydrogen peroxide, potassium hydroxide and chlorine, and each emission consumes several tons of raw materials.

Therefore, even for a giant aircraft like the Boeing 747, the laser fuel carried at one time can only provide what is needed for a few interceptions.

In 2007, the YAL-1A conducted an interception test and successfully shot down several target missiles 80 kilometers away. But in 2011, the project was canceled by the US Department of Defense.

Then-US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said: "As far as I know, no one in the Department of Defense thinks this program should or will be deployed in actual operations. The reality is that you need a laser that is 20 to 30 times more powerful than the chemical lasers on today's aircraft to be able to launch at any distance from the launch site... If you want to implement this plan, you will need 10 to 20 747s, each costing $1 billion and $100 million per year in operating expenses. I don't think the military can support such a project."

At this stage, in order to improve the feasibility of the project, while continuing to promote the research and development of megawatt-class laser weapons, countries have focused on the application of hundred-kilowatt and ten-kilowatt laser weapons.

Transforming laser weapons from strategic defense to short-range tactical weapons, even if the laser energy is reduced by one or two orders of magnitude, is still a very difficult technology.

The difficulty lies in two aspects. One is the energy supply, especially for airborne, shipborne and vehicle-mounted platforms. Laser emission requires instantaneous large current and continuous emission capability, which requires extremely high-performance energy storage equipment.

The second is thermal control. When the laser is working, the energy cannot be completely converted into light energy. A considerable part of it will turn into heat, which will have a huge impact on the structural safety of the laser and even the entire laser weapon.

2

The control system is extremely complex

When discussing the advantages of laser weapons, we mentioned that since lasers are extremely fast and have good collimation, there is no need to calculate trajectory and lead time. However, in actual applications, light does not travel strictly in a straight line. The earth's atmosphere is an extremely complex environment. The temperature difference, air flow, and particulate matter in the air can cause the light to distort. This is why we see the twinkling of stars.

The same is true for lasers. Laser beams in the atmosphere will also scatter and refract, causing the light spot to move. Unlike artillery shells and missiles that can almost kill with one shot, lasers need a certain exposure time to destroy the target, which is between 1 and 10 seconds.

Laser source: Wikipedia

During this period, the light spot must be stably irradiated on the target. Taking the YAL-1A system as an example, its laser emitting end is a reflector with a diameter of 1 meter. At a distance of 100 kilometers, the diameter of the laser beam spot is about 20 centimeters. The laser itself is flying, the vibration and turbulence of the carrier aircraft, and the uneven atmosphere cause flickering. In this case, the light spot must be accurately pressed on a high-speed moving target within a few seconds. The technical difficulty can be imagined.

In order to reduce the difficulty, the irradiation time must be reduced, which requires increasing the power of the laser. This brings us to the first difficulty, and the energy of the laser beam cannot be increased infinitely, otherwise a phenomenon called "thermal corona effect" will occur in the atmosphere, that is, the laser ionizes the air, resulting in obstruction of laser propagation.

3

Laser application scenarios are limited

Laser is also light, and like visible light, clouds, fog, rain, snow, dust, and haze can hinder the propagation of lasers. In a relatively dry environment like Israel, laser weapons are more likely to be used. In other areas with changeable climates, laser weapons often cannot be used all-weather.

4

It is not difficult to counter laser weapons

Traditional smoke interference can greatly reduce the combat effectiveness of laser weapons. Applying a layer of laser-reflective paint on the surface of objects that may be intercepted by lasers, such as rockets and drones, can also make the laser ineffective. There is also a simpler and easier method, which is to make the rocket rotate, so that the laser spot cannot continue to heat a certain area, weakening its killing effect.

Real-world applications of laser weapons

The Iron Beam system is a 100-kilowatt laser air defense system, and its combat targets are mainly relatively high-speed ballistic targets such as rockets and mortar shells. Therefore, as Rafael said, there are still some engineering problems that need to be solved. But in the long run, such systems are still very important to Israel and are an important part of improving its national air defense system.

In early 2022, multiple foreign media reported that the Saudi Arabian military used its silent hunter laser defense system to shoot down several Houthi suicide drones, marking the first actual combat success of laser weapons.

From the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, to the recent conflict between Israel and Palestine, in the wars that took place in the 2020s, various drones have become the undisputed battlefield stars. Like tanks in World War I, these drones have changed the mode of warfare. Fighting against drones has become the top priority of the military of all countries today.

Compared with traditional airplanes, missiles, rockets and even artillery shells, drones are low-altitude, slow-moving, small targets, and low-cost swarms of drones, making them difficult for traditional air defense systems to identify, track and attack.

Source: Wikipedia

The cost of a commercial quadcopter or simple drone is much lower than that of an anti-aircraft missile, or even lower than the cost of a shell that can shoot them down. At this time, the necessity of laser air defense becomes prominent. Because most of these drones are not very high and have a limited range, a laser of 100 kilowatts or even 10 kilowatts can effectively intercept them at a distance of several kilometers.

As a major country in the field of drones and laser technology, my country has long been engaged in research in this area. At recent defense exhibitions at home and abroad, such as the China Airshow, China’s laser weapons have also been on display. [5]

I believe that in more cutting-edge fields, our country's scientists in the field of lasers must also be conducting exploration and practice. Laser confrontation has already stepped from science fiction movies into the real battlefield, and we are witnessing it all happening.

References

[1]https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/clip-shows-arma-3-gameplay-not-israels-laser-weapon-system-2023-10-18/

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20140119215110/http://www.rafael.co.il/Marketing/195-1951-en/Marketing.aspx

[3]https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-naftali-bennett-israel-middle-east-946f3744cfb6afd59a6ce1b053999ae1

[4] https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2022/10/07/rafael-anticipates-iron-beam-laser-system-could-deploy-in-two-years/

[5]https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_20657187

Author: Rutan Popular Science Author