Missile-Fighting Lasers

One of the biggest challenges facing modern armies is the widespread use of asymmetric warfare by today’s terrorist and partisan organizations.

The concept of asymmetric warfare has been around for as long as nations have maintained organized, professional armies.

Factions fighting against these armies — lacking the brute force and size to face their numerically and technologically superior enemies head on — have traditionally resorted to non-conventional methods to even the field.

And time and again throughout history, smaller amateur armies have outfought and outlasted far bigger adversaries.

Using ambushes, nighttime raids, suicide attacks, snipers, and improvised explosives, well-supplied and locally supported partisan armies have proven to be hard — sometimes impossible — to stop.

It happened to the Romans, whose army was spread too thin across their vast empire to effectively deal with barbarian tribes.

It happened to the English, who were defeated by a rag-tag group of colonial militiamen.

It happened to the Soviets, who could not afford to maintain their grudge match against the Afghan Mujahideen.

And it’s happening today in dozens of contested areas around the world, where local partisans peck away at occupying armies.

And It’s Not Going Away Anytime Soon

The tactics of partisan warfare haven’t changed a whole lot over the centuries, but the weapons definitely have.

A particularly spectacular and disruptive example of how a small band of non-professional fighters can send a major army packing came at the start of the 1980s — and with no small help from our own CIA.

Armed with man-portable FIM-82 Stinger surface-to-air missiles, the Afghan freedom fighters were able to successfully engage and destroy Soviet gunship helicopters like the fearsome and heavily armored Mi-24 “Hind,” as well as slower jets like the SU-25 “Frogfoot” ground-attack aircraft.

The unexpected losses cost the Soviets dearly, causing them to change the way they carried out missions against the insurgents and, ultimately, helping to bring the war to an end.

In the three decades since, this extremely effective application of asymmetric warfare has been imitated a number of times — most recently in Syria, with Assad air force planes falling victim to man-portable surface-to-air missiles of U.S., Russian, and Chinese origin.

However, as much as we may like a good David vs. Goliath story, the problem is that cheap, man-portable missiles are now in the hands of a wide variety of officially recognized armies, as well as groups of insurgents, militias, and even roving death squads posing as religious factions.

Biting the Hand that Fed Them

In fact, some of the same Stingers given to the Afghan resistance 30 years ago are still hidden away, waiting to be used — possibly on American aircraft.

It’s made the airspace above today’s contested regions more dangerous than ever before, as these tiny missiles can be deployed and fired in seconds, then repositioned and fired again, with almost no chance of counterattack from the target.

With a maximum velocity of Mach 2, these missiles can strike hapless planes and helicopters with compact but deadly fragmentation warheads from up to three miles away.

That’s not a long range when compared to today’s full-sized surface-to-air missiles, but it’s effective enough to disrupt the invasion plans of any modern army.

However, the one thing the U.S. Stinger, the Russian 9K38 “Igla,” and the Chinese FN-6 have in common is their guidance systems — and it’s this guidance system that’s proven to be their Achilles heel.

You see, while the infrared seeker heads of this class of missiles is quite effective at distinguishing the heat signature of a helicopter or jet plane, it’s also susceptible to interference.

And that’s a weakness that one American defense contractor exploited when it built the most compact laser defense system ever to be mounted on an aircraft.

Called the Viper 2.1, this laser weighs less than 10 lbs — complete with power source — and comes in a case just 13 inches by two inches thick.

100% Success Rate

Officially announced by manufacturer Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) this past November, the system has already proven to be incredibly effective, not to mention completely autonomous.

Its list of successes is already impressive…

The Viper 2.1 has successfully completed Large Aircraft Infrared Countermeasures (LAIRCM) live-fire tests — including multiple missile engagements.

It’s also successfully defeated different missile types launched from a variety of ranges that represent combat scenarios with a 100% kill rate — 52 out of 52 times.

These tests were patterned after realistic scenarios, meaning that neither the system nor the crews of the target aircraft had any knowledge of the threat type or location.

Mind you, this isn’t the kind of laser that will burn a hole through tank armor or vaporize an enemy combatant from a hundred miles away.

This laser is relatively low power and disrupts its target by blinding the missile’s IR seeker head — it is not effective against larger, radar-guided threats.

Nor is it designed to be. While radar-guided missiles are the fastest long-flying air defense weapons in existence, smaller, cheaper heat-seekers are far more common — and more importantly, far more popular with hostile nations and militias.

Mated with Northrop’s AN/AAQ24(V) Directional Infrared Countermeasure system — a system with almost 50 years of development behind it — the Viper 2.1 laser will provide low-altitude protection against a wide variety of military and civilian aircraft for as long as heat-seeking missiles are in service.

Moving forward, the expectation is that technologies like these will become more and more important to any military force operating aircraft in contested areas.

To your wealth,

Brian Hicks

Brian is a founding member and President of Angel Publishing and investment director for the income and dividend newsletter The Wealth Advisory. He writes about general investment strategies for Tech Investing Daily, Wealth Daily and Energy & Capital. Known as the “original bull on America,” Brian is also the author of the 2008 book, Profit from the Peak: The End of Oil and the Greatest Investment Event of the Century. In addition to writing about the economy, investments and politics, Brian is also a frequent guest on CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox and countless radio shows. For more on Brian, take a look at his editor’s page.