An approach to effect-based laser weapon design

The world is confronted with increasingly severe challenges of unconventional threats with the popularization of small UAVs in civil fields. Due to the advantages such as killing or disabling targets with no or minimal collateral damage, the high energy laser weapon becomes one of effective means for coping with these kinds of threats. In order to guarantee cost-effectiveness, this paper presents an effect-based method for designing high energy laser weapons. First, we introduce the system components, the operating mechanism, and the damage capability of system. Second, we present the relationship equations between the on-target irradiance and all the influence factors. Finally, we discuss the laser selection problem and beam combining methods and show how to determine main technical parameters of the laser weapon system.