Landmark Deal Would Officially Add Laser Weapons to US Army Arsenal
Landmark Deal Would Officially Add Laser Weapons to US Army Arsenal
里程碑式协议：激光武器将正式加入美国陆军军火库
They stuffed a real-life ray gun into a 747 to shoot down ballistic missiles and stuck a laser on top of a Humvee to zap roadside bombs. For more than 50 years, the United States military and its researchers have tried to develop laser weapons. None of them panned out. 他们曾将现实中的“射线枪”装进波音747飞机以击落弹道导弹，也曾把激光器安装在悍马车顶以摧毁路边炸弹。50多年来，美国军方及其研究人员一直试图开发激光武器，但此前均未取得成功。
But now, the US Army is about to make a working laser weapon an official part of its arsenal. The Pentagon is poised to sign a contract to acquire and rapidly deploy what’s called an Enduring High Energy Laser in and around bases across the world to defend them from drone attacks, according to sources familiar with the matter. The official announcement could come as early as this week. When the deal is signed, it will mark the first time that the US military will have committed to equipping its forces with laser weapons in significant numbers. 但现在，美国陆军即将把一种实用的激光武器正式纳入其军火库。据知情人士透露，五角大楼准备签署一份合同，采购并快速部署所谓的“持久高能激光武器”（Enduring High Energy Laser），将其部署在全球各地的基地及其周边，以防御无人机袭击。官方公告最早可能于本周发布。一旦协议签署，这将标志着美军首次承诺为其部队大规模装备激光武器。
“For years, lasers were going to be the future, and they never really came to their own. Now, they’re actually coming to their own,” Mark J. Lewis, the former Air Force chief scientist, tells WIRED. “多年来，人们一直说激光是未来，但它们从未真正成熟。现在，它们终于迎来了属于自己的时代，”前空军首席科学家马克·J·刘易斯（Mark J. Lewis）告诉《连线》（WIRED）杂志。
The Iran and Ukraine wars have shown that drones are now so cheap, so plentiful, and so deadly that they’re impossible to stop with any single countermeasure. Some of the traditional ones have been particularly clunky. During the early days of the Iran conflict, the US even resorted to firing $4 million Patriot missiles at $35,000 Iranian drones—a waste of money, and a move that depleted the American interceptor stockpile. 伊朗和乌克兰的战争表明，无人机现在变得如此廉价、数量如此庞大且极具杀伤力，以至于任何单一的防御手段都无法阻止它们。一些传统手段显得尤为笨拙。在伊朗冲突初期，美国甚至不得不动用价值400万美元的“爱国者”导弹去拦截价值3.5万美元的伊朗无人机——这不仅是金钱的浪费，还消耗了美国的拦截弹库存。
Modern lasers, on the other hand, never run out of ammunition. “Basically, you can keep firing them as long as you’ve got power,” Lewis says. “There are some other issues with lasers, including how rapidly you can refire and recharge. But if you solve those problems, then suddenly you’ve got a pretty nifty way to help counteract things like a drone swarm attack.” 相比之下，现代激光武器永远不会耗尽弹药。“基本上，只要有电力供应，你就可以持续发射，”刘易斯说，“激光武器确实还存在其他问题，包括重新发射和充电的速度。但如果你解决了这些问题，那么你突然就拥有了一种非常巧妙的方法来对抗无人机群攻击。”
That’s one reason why the US military, at this moment, has either deployed or is actively testing a half-dozen laser weapons systems, according to the Laser Wars newsletter. The Navy has installed laser “dazzlers” on two of its ships to blind drones’ electro-optical sensors. The Air Force’s command for Europe and Africa has sent Boeing’s Compact Laser Weapons System “to locations across the theater.” In late June, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth traveled to the Army’s test range in White Sands, New Mexico, for a demonstration of all sorts of directed-energy weapon projects. 据《激光战争》（Laser Wars）通讯报道，这就是为什么美军目前已经部署或正在积极测试六种激光武器系统的原因。海军已在两艘舰艇上安装了激光“炫目器”，以致盲无人机的光电传感器。空军欧洲和非洲司令部已将波音公司的紧凑型激光武器系统“部署到战区的各个地点”。6月下旬，国防部长皮特·赫格塞斯（Pete Hegseth）前往新墨西哥州白沙导弹靶场，观摩了各类定向能武器项目的演示。
The deployments haven’t all gone great. Four vehicles equipped with Raytheon air-defense lasers were yanked from the Middle East after poor reviews from soldiers. One laser, built by the defense contractor AeroVironment and positioned along the southern US border, accidentally zapped a party balloon in February, causing the Federal Aviation Administration to briefly close the airspace around El Paso, Texas. Once it was reopened, the laser shot down a Border Patrol drone by mistake. 这些部署并非一帆风顺。四辆配备雷神公司防空激光器的车辆因士兵评价不佳而被撤出中东。今年2月，由国防承包商AeroVironment制造并部署在美国南部边境的一台激光器意外击中了一个派对气球，导致美国联邦航空管理局（FAA）短暂关闭了德克萨斯州埃尔帕索周边的空域。空域重新开放后，该激光器又误击落了一架边境巡逻队的无人机。
Despite such mishaps, the Army appears ready to go beyond the one-offs and the experiments. In fact, in some ways, the accidental kill helped make the case for the laser, proving it could actually take out such a drone. 尽管发生了这些事故，陆军似乎已准备好超越单次试验和实验阶段。事实上，在某种程度上，那次意外的击落反而为激光武器提供了论据，证明它确实能够摧毁此类无人机。
The Pentagon and its suppliers had been scrambling to field something, anything to defend against mass-produced, low-cost attack drones. They’ve rolled out radio frequency jammers, microwave weapons, an array of missiles, drones designed to kill other drones, even copies of the Iranian robots. None of them in isolation have been enough. On March 1, an Iranian drone killed six US service members and injured 30 others. 五角大楼及其供应商一直在争分夺秒地部署各种手段，以防御大规模生产的低成本攻击无人机。他们推出了射频干扰器、微波武器、各种导弹、专门用于猎杀无人机的无人机，甚至是伊朗无人机的仿制品。但这些手段单独使用都不足以应对威胁。3月1日，一架伊朗无人机造成6名美军士兵死亡，30人受伤。
Pentagon and FAA officials went to White Sands less than a week later for a demo of an AeroVironment laser and assurances it could operate safely in a crowded airspace, according to The New York Times. (Lt. Gen Frank Lozano later said at a DC think tank event that the system had showed “a lot of recent promise and capability out at White Sands,” adding that the Army was “negotiating a contract with AeroVironment right now for the Enduring High Energy Laser system.”) 据《纽约时报》报道，不到一周后，五角大楼和FAA官员前往白沙靶场观摩了AeroVironment激光器的演示，并确认其能在拥挤的空域中安全运行。（中将弗兰克·洛萨诺（Frank Lozano）后来在华盛顿的一场智库活动中表示，该系统在白沙靶场表现出了“近期巨大的潜力和能力”，并补充说陆军“目前正在与AeroVironment就持久高能激光武器系统进行合同谈判”。）
Two days after the White Sands display, President Donald Trump hyped the directed energy weapons’ capabilities. 在白沙演示两天后，唐纳德·特朗普总统大肆宣传了定向能武器的能力。
“The laser technology that we have now is incredible,” he told reporters at his Doral, Florida club. “It’s coming out pretty soon, where literally lasers will do the work of—at a lot less cost—do the work of what the Patriots are doing.” “我们现在拥有的激光技术令人难以置信，”他在佛罗里达州多拉尔的俱乐部对记者说，“它很快就会问世，届时激光将以低得多的成本，真正完成‘爱国者’导弹正在做的工作。”
Now, the Army is expected to sign a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars with AeroVironment. According to the Army’s original request for information, that would be for up to 20 of the weapons. They’re supposed to be compact enough to fit inside in a four-by-seven foot container, or atop an all-terrain vehicle. And as Trump noted, they’re supposed to be powerful enough to knock out one-way attack drones like the Shahed-136, the workhorse of Iran’s deadly unmanned arsenal. (Neither the Army nor AeroVironment agreed to comment for this story.) 目前，预计陆军将与AeroVironment签署一份价值数亿美元的合同。根据陆军最初的信息征询书，合同涉及多达20套武器系统。它们被设计得足够紧凑，可以装入一个4x7英尺的集装箱内，或安装在全地形车上。正如特朗普所指出的，它们应该有足够的威力击落像“见证者-136”（Shahed-136）这样的单向攻击无人机，而后者正是伊朗致命无人机库中的主力。（陆军和AeroVironment均未就本文置评。）
But the truly novel development is that the Enduring High Energy Laser, or E-HEL, will be an operational “program of record,” military-speak for a formally approved piece of kit, officially inscribed in the Pentagon’s five-year budget. That’s the military’s sign to itself that this is for real, and a signal to contractors to ramp up production. “Program of record indicates a wider cultural acceptance of the new technology as a military capability,” says Craig Robin, who ran the directed energy portfolio for the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office. It’s the first time the Army has ever done so with a laser weapon. 但真正具有开创性意义的发展在于，“持久高能激光武器”（E-HEL）将成为一个“记录在案的项目”（program of record）——这是军方术语，指正式批准的装备，并被正式列入五角大楼的五年预算中。这是军方确认该项目已进入实战阶段的标志，也是向承包商发出扩大生产的信号。“记录在案的项目表明，这种新技术作为一种军事能力，已在文化层面获得了更广泛的认可，”曾负责陆军快速能力与关键技术办公室定向能项目组合的克雷格·罗宾（Craig Robin）表示。这是陆军首次对激光武器采取此类举措。
The basic physics of lasers have been well-understood for decades: Infuse an atom with enough energy and it goes into an “excited state,” in which the electrons orbit farther away from the nucleus. When the electrons come back down, they emit photons, and each one passing an excited atom triggers it to emit an identical photon: same frequency, same phase. Bounce that cascade between mirrors so it keeps building, and you get a powerful, 激光的基本物理原理几十年来已广为人知：为原子注入足够的能量，使其进入“激发态”，此时电子在远离原子核的轨道上运行。当电子回到基态时，它们会发射光子，每一个经过激发态原子的光子都会触发该原子发射一个相同的光子：频率相同、相位相同。在镜面之间反射这种级联光束使其不断增强，你就能得到一道强大的……