The technology to ride on a laser beam is still modern.
The only real limitation is range, so it needs to be complemented by a long range missile.
The article says nothing about attacking land target.
It does mention attacking airplanes targeting land targets
Hi dear
@A.P. Richelieu
I fail to understand as to how the technology to ride laser beam is latest?It is not even fire and forget! The operator has to constantly point the beam to the target till the missile hits it. I find it hard to accept anything that doesnt have "fire and forget" as truly modern. Fire and forget comes from onboard seekers(either IIR or MMW in case of small range MANPAD)! The guidance laws to steer a missile towards a target in case of lets say an IIR/MMW guided missile are hell lot more complex as compared to any beam rider. I will explain you the basics in very simple terms-Kindly Note I am only talking about small manpads but a lot of things are equally applicable to any fire and forget BVRAAM.
The entire control system can be divided into two major parts-
(A) Guidance Laws--thats the crux as it renders fire and forget capability
(B) Various control laws to control angular displacement and angular rates by controlling the control surfaces.Like flight patch controller,rate controller etc.
#A
Guidance law is almost always coupled with a sensor and a kalman filter.
The sensor can measure various things like range to the target(LOS range),closure rate,LOS rate(the rate of rotation of LOS vector in the picture above:LOS angle is angle between the inertial axis and the LOS vector)--as we can see in the picture above,LOS vector is turning in anti clockwise sense and it is natural to think that missile would have to also turn in anti clock wise fashion in order to intercept the target. Or in other words missile velocity vector would have to turn anti clock wise at a rate "faster" than the rate of turning of LOS vector in order to have a successful interception. This ratio of rate of turning of missile velocity vector and LOS vector is captured in a constant known as "navigational constant"--normally it is 4:1 or 5:1.
So,after reading all of this,one might naturally ask,what is it that "guidance law" provide?
Guidance law provides nothing but
lateral acceleration such that the LOS rate is always 0! It basically tells #B(various flight controllers) to bring the LOS rate to 0. From basic calculus we see that if derivative of a variable is 0,then it means that variable is constant. What missile does is --it makes the LOS angle constant throughout itz journey. A constant LOS angle means both missile and target are on collision course!!
Now the basic guidance law takes the form-
Ac=N*v*(lambda_dot)
where Ac is the lateral acceleration perpendicular to either LOS vector of missile velocity
N=navigational constant-it determines the rate of turning of missile velocity vector vis-a-vis LOS vector
v=closure rate
lambda_dot= rate of change of LOS angle.
Now the point is,this fundamental PN(known as proprtional navigation in control engineering) might not work in modern missiles,hence more advanced mathematical constructs are often brought to bear alongwith PN law.For instance optimal control and Dynamic Inversion techniques are often employed with PN to make much more effective.I work with Dynamic Inversion.
#B
Once you have computed your lateral acceleration needed to bring LOS rate to 0,you feed this information to various controllers that in turn control the servo motors. For instance attitude controller,rate controller etc.
