Israel's Rafael unveils 'Iron Beam' laser-based defense system

Iron Beam uses a fiber optic laser to destroy an airborne target within 4-5 seconds of firing. Whether acting as a stand-alone system or with external cueing as part of an air-defense system, a threat is detected by a surveillance system and tracked by vehicle platforms in order to engage. The main benefits of using a directed energy weapon over conventional missile interceptors are lower costs per shot, an unlimited magazine, lower operational costs, and less manpower. Though the system may not cost less than missiles, operating it has lower life-cycle costs. Limited details that have been released as of February 2014 are that the system has successfully targeted mortar and artillery shells in over 100 tests and engaged and destroyed small UAVs. Current power levels are at "tens of kilowatts" and planned to be increased to hundreds of kW. Iron Beam has so far been funded mainly by the Israeli Ministry of Defence, and Rafael is awaiting a decision on whether they will choose to operate the system. Rafael is also pursuing increasing the range of the system and partnering with other companies to further develop the prototype. If sufficiently funded, the Iron Beam could be operational in two to three years

More laser defense weaponry, I wonder when fighter jets will get these put onto there rear to shoot down incoming missiles. If that happens and missiles lose there effectiveness in battle, I wonder if the counter would be to coat missiles with industrial mirrors ?
If there is no counter then maybe pilots would have to go back to traditional dog fighting with bullets.

a reply to: Blue_Jay33

More than 90% successful. Just need to hope none of the 10% it misses are nukes.

I might be a bit slow here but where's the video proof? where are actually recorded footage of these laser weapons defending against a missiles, I mean dont countries do this all the time, look at China, they used video from call of duty to try and make themselves out to be really strong and have cool weapons and military ideas.

Show me the footage untouched or edited and I will then believe that they have this.

Too much science fiction in this, they have lot of problems with their Iron dome already. Firing laser beams at the target requires perfect atmospheric conditions to make it work also it need a lot of energy to zap the target and not warming up and peeling off their paint.

I wonder what these war criminal israeli butchers are after..? Long term contract with the American taxpayers money again?

edit to add:


In addition to what I posted above just to ridicule this already laughable system and so called “high tech” idea… can it be effective on the “reflective surface” of the incoming “projectiles or planes”....?

a reply to: Danny85

It is being built right now, it goes into service next year, if everything goes according to plan.

And here is real footage of a laser in the US Navy doing it's work.
These exist it's a fact, but how effective they are in real combat situations has yet to be seen.

Interesting, this state of the art technology was in Singapore 3 weeks before MH370 vanished.

Looks like Israel is ripping off yet another defense weapon from the US Navy the Iron Dome was stolen from the Navy also. It's time for the Navy to start looking into this matter and see who is leaking all this info or at least try to catch the spies that is stealing it.

originally posted by: buster2010
Looks like Israel is ripping off yet another defense weapon from the US Navy the Iron Dome was stolen from the Navy also. It's time for the Navy to start looking into this matter and see who is leaking all this info or at least try to catch the spies that is stealing it.

The US and Israel cooperatively worked on a laser defense system from 1996 through 2005 when it was cut do to costs by 2007 Israel requested it be started up again. So no real suprise here.

originally posted by: MrSpad

originally posted by: buster2010
Looks like Israel is ripping off yet another defense weapon from the US Navy the Iron Dome was stolen from the Navy also. It's time for the Navy to start looking into this matter and see who is leaking all this info or at least try to catch the spies that is stealing it.

The US and Israel cooperatively worked on a laser defense system from 1996 through 2005 when it was cut do to costs by 2007 Israel requested it be started up again. So no real surprise here.

And let me guess America will be footing the bill for this just like how we pay for the Iron Dome? After all we spend more on Israels defense than Israel does.

This tech would IMO leave a lot of countries who base there entire defensive and offensive capabilities on missiles left in the dirt

While ChIna threat with the DF-21D and Russia Iran North Korea where bragging how more and more advanced there missiles where becoming for the past decade with no real funding in allied hypersonic misslies, it looks increasingly like they have been left with egg on there faces stuck with a stockpile full of worthless obsolete missiles

Ronald's Reagans Star Wars SBL has been speculated to have been in service for over a decade and I would be surprised if these land based systems and airborne lasers are offshoots from the original program

I bet we have a big war before technology knocks out the ability of armies to bomb other countries. A nuke up high could knock out some defenses but not military stuff, which is shielded from EMPs. So WW111 may soon be happening before it can't anymore.

a reply to: Blue_Jay33
I see, these terrorists stole this tech from us as well.
And they are our .."allies"...
We really need to stop funding these murderers.

The US navy and israel have been working cooperatively on weapons systems as far back as the 1960s
during the six day war in 1967 the Israelis captured a sam radar site during a raid.
Within a year he sam radar site was set up at a china lake range and being used to build counter measures systems and to train US pilots on how to take out the sites in north vietnam and to train israeli pilots to take out there problems.

Since then a lot of Russian equipment has been captured by israel and shipped to the US for our use in building counter measures systems.

Hitting a few mortars and drones is a lot different than taking out supersonic missiles and icbms that deploy decoys upon reentry. Still pretty fancy gadgetry though. I bet those things are pretty nasty against tanks and armored vehicles as well.

originally posted by: buster2010

originally posted by: MrSpad

originally posted by: buster2010
Looks like Israel is ripping off yet another defense weapon from the US Navy the Iron Dome was stolen from the Navy also. It's time for the Navy to start looking into this matter and see who is leaking all this info or at least try to catch the spies that is stealing it.

The US and Israel cooperatively worked on a laser defense system from 1996 through 2005 when it was cut do to costs by 2007 Israel requested it be started up again. So no real surprise here.

And let me guess America will be footing the bill for this just like how we pay for the Iron Dome? After all we spend more on Israels defense than Israel does.

Either way sharing the costs is cheaper than doing it on our own. Do they see a benefit? Of course. Do we see a benefit? Of course. Mutual benefits is why any nations develops a weapons system togther. We do it with many allied states. Why would this case be any different?

a reply to: Blue_Jay33

Unlike a missile system a directed energy weapon can eventually be rendered useless with a new casing material for the attacking aeriel target's, even a highly polished mirrored surface can delfect a substantial amount of an optical laser.
Here is some new's from china, forums.spacebattles.com...
The problem with directed energy weapon's is that they are energy and of course energy can alway's be redirected, the way a laser system work's as a weapon is to overcharge the energy of the atom's with intense directed photonic exposure and this caused the atom need to lose energy, this is emitted as heat and atomic vibration, the electrons in the atom's outer orbitals fly off as they gain to much energy to stay in there relative valancy orbital shell's and so the valent bond's to the surrounding atoms are broken (it melts the target) now of course super cooling would slow the effect of the laser as well and a depletion layer could also slow the laser.
Alternatively a counter measure system to identify the source of the targeting laser can also be adapted so two (or more) missiles are launched, the first is a laser detector (which mimmicks an attacking missile and so draw's defence laser fire revealing the defence locations as lasers can be traced back to there source of origin, and the second (grouping) a laser destroyer that flys at low altitude like a tomohawk, they talk to one another in flight and after the dummy missile has passed targeting paramaters to the anti defence missiles they then clear the way for the next wave of attacking missiles.
It should work against the Hammas missiles though but would be quickly rendered useless against super power systems and worrying Iran is capable of developing such a system as I outline above so if I was israel I would not let go of my patriot missiles just yet.

originally posted by: Blue_Jay33
More laser defense weaponry, I wonder when fighter jets will get these put onto there rear to shoot down incoming missiles. If that happens and missiles lose there effectiveness in battle, I wonder if the counter would be to coat missiles with industrial mirrors ?
If there is no counter then maybe pilots would have to go back to traditional dog fighting with bullets.

It will be a long time before lasers are seen on fighters or attack aircraft. The power requirements are enormous and there's no way a power generator could be employed on one any time soon and still have aerial combat capability. The equipment to generate the dozens to a hundred or more kilowatts needed per shot is just too massive. The last airborne laser we tested was mounted in a 747 and used thousands of pounds of chemicals (it was a chemical laser) for only a few shots, and it got retired.

a reply to: Blue_Jay33

Its not that I dont believe they exist, Its just until I see the Israeli army using them or at least demonstrating them, then I will believe that they have one or two or how ever many they are claiming to have.

originally posted by: amkia
Too much science fiction in this, they have lot of problems with their Iron dome already. Firing laser beams at the target requires perfect atmospheric conditions to make it work also it need a lot of energy to zap the target and not warming up and peeling off their paint.

I wonder what these war criminal israeli butchers are after..? Long term contract with the American taxpayers money again?

edit to add:


In addition to what I posted above just to ridicule this already laughable system and so called “high tech” idea… can it be effective on the “reflective surface” of the incoming “projectiles or planes”....?

Everything in your post is ignorant. Including the ol' ATS belief a mirror makes a target immune.

Mirrors are not 100% reflective. Any part not reflected is turned into heat. That heat would then burn the coating making it less reflective the hotter it got. It would not offer much protection unless it was 100% reflective. Now you also need to develop a reflective coating that is capable of sustaining very high speeds / being shot without being damaged or getting any material on it lowing it's reflectivity.

a reply to: OccamsRazor04

A mirror is as you say not 100 percent effective but it reduces the effective energy of the laser and allow's the targeted missile to remain operational longer which it may then be able to use to enact evasive behaviour.
Many years ago, to be precise in the 1970's through to the 1980's powered by the chernobyl reactor a soviet defence system was being developed and was at the prototype stage, it did not use a laser but worked on another radio wave system.
It consisted of a massive radar array that would produce a very wide spectrum radar pulse at an incoming target, the return signal was then analyzed to identify absorbption wavelengths and the resultant absorbption wavelengths were processed, the inverse complex conjugate of the waveform was emitted at a very (Extremely - which is why they needed the reactor) high amplitude at the incoming target and this had the effect of supersaturating the target with harmonic resonance causing energy with litterally demolecularized the target in flight.
Even a pulsed laser has limitations when faced with suitable shielding or how do you think the laser emitter remains intact, I can percieve of a laminate layer consisting of polarized light scattering embedded tiny mirrors in the substrate with a depletion property, the depletion would of course create a plasmatic gas but the thrust ration would be low so the missile could still maintain it's guidence, of course there is a soft spot, or two and those are the rocket motor and the sensor head.