A roving White House laser gun that incinerates flying drones sounds like a scene from a bad science fiction novel, but the technology is just a few years away from becoming operational in the military — and Monday’s drone incident at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. could be a glimpse of tomorrow’s robot wars.
A cutting-edge laser weapons system can pinpoint and zap small objects out of the sky. While the drone zapper is under development as military hardware, it could knock out drones over the White House lawn.
In 2014, the U.S. Navy deployed its Laser Weapons System in the Persian Gulf, on the helicopter-docking warship USS Ponce.
The system’s console requires only one officer to operate all functions of the laser and fire the weapon with a video-game-like controller.
U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert referred to the weapon as a “laser gun” during House Armed Services Committee testimony last year and touted its efficiency and low-cost “rounds.”
“It costs under $1 for one round, if you will — laser round,” he said. “We’ve already proven it against a drone and a small craft.”
A late December Congressional Research Service report on the latest laser weapons technology said high-energy military lasers capable of countering “certain surface and air targets at ranges of about a mile” could be made ready for installation on Navy ships over the next few years.
The Navy, according to the report, anticipates moving to a shipboard laser program in the fiscal 2018 timeframe, achieving operational capacity in fiscal 2020 or 2021.
But a laser-protected White House may be quite a bit further in the future — and it may not be in the cards at all, because of concerns about having the lethal weapon in a domestic urban environment.
The small quad-copter drone crash at the White House lawn sent shockwaves in the Secret Service and law enforcement community, which have been worried and trying to prepare for such a scenario for several years.
Though the drone crash was unintentional and harmless, the result of a drunken intelligence officer playing with his toys in the wee hours, the episode stirred plenty of Washington speculation about the best military technology to deal with inexpensive drones that could easily be turned into bomb-wielding detonation devices.
The best operational technology right now to knock a drone out of the sky is simple military-grade jamming technology that can disable the remote control operation of the craft and bring it to the ground.
For years, the U.S. military dominated the field of electromagnetic warfare and used jamming technology for a variety of assaults — including disabling GPS technology and cell phone communications.
But now the field is becoming increasingly crowded, and its secrets are out. Would-be attackers can simply switch the frequency of a drone or remote-controlled bomb to circumvent the jamming signals.
A laser protection system, however, would bring serious safety and technical concerns. The Congressional Research Service report pointed out a number of limitations and problems that would prevent lasers from becoming an ideal security system for civilian buildings and grounds, especially the tourist-friendly White House.
For instance, unlike guided missiles that have the capacity to turn corners and avoid buildings, trees, people and other objects in its path, a laser light flies through the atmosphere on a straight path.
“Anything in its pathway it would incinerate — it’s going to go exactly where you told it to go and it’s not going to bend around anything,” Emil Maine, a weapons and national security expert at the Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Examiner.
In addition to the line-of-sight problems, water vapor, fog, dust and even smog — any substances in the atmosphere — tend to scatter light from the laser and make it ineffective.
“You tend not to want to put high-energy experimental weapons next to the White House – I can easily see a horrible science fiction-like disaster if something like that goes on the fritz,” he said.
Still, Maine said he doesn’t think the idea of lasers eventually helping to defend the White House from drone or other attacks from the air “is at far-fetched as it sounds.”
“There are a lot of reasons why people are interested in it,” he said, noting that China has been furiously developing its laser weapons technology as well. “While coming up with the technology is very expensive, the actually shooting of the laser is of minimal expense.”
Any suggestion in the near or distant future to implement such a deadly security measure at the White House would inevitably face stiff resistance from a host of Washington committees and interest groups.
Even plans to raise the black-iron fence surrounding the White House complex, after a string of high-profile fence-jumping incidents over the last year, are slow to unfold.
Acting Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy testified before Congress in November that agency officials have been working with the National Capital Planning Commission, the Fine Arts Commission and the National Park Service to evaluate options for the perimeter of the complex that could help prevent fence-jumpers from breaching White House security.
He said at the time he hopes to have some drawings for members of Congress to review within the next few months.
