Lockheed Martin achieves first flight of its 50kW laser-powered weapon

Hard to find more mundane details, interested in how they power it. Do they PTO off engine with big alternator as 50 kw is about 67 hp. I would guess some kind of buffer battery or capacitors. A small lithium bank could do 50 kw for a short period then get recharged with lower powered alternator.

I believe lithium jump starters are typically around 30C discharge rate, so for a 50kw short laser pulse you would only need a 1.6 kWh battery which is about the size of two Ebike batteries. That could do a couple minutes of laser time.

This is assuming the 50kw is input power not output power, its probably output power so probably need much more input power, wonder what the efficiency of this kind of system is.

The press-release [1] title that this mostly just rehashes is “Lockheed Martin Achieves First Light In Latest Laser Lab Demonstration”.

After reading the linked article I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how “first _flight_” was an accurate description of the test of a land-based laser weapon.

[1] - https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2023-01-23-Lockheed-Martin-A...

> Last year, the company demonstrated its Layered Laser Defense (LLD) capability, which defeated two surrogate missiles at tactically relevant ranges.

which says precisely nothing

Go Lockheed Martin! Go! Go! Go!

Democratic world need powerful weapons, to defend from China/Russia and other totalitarian.