Modern-Age Weapons under Development at DRDO
To develop modern weapons for the future, the Hyderabad-based Centre for High Energy Systems and Sciences (CHESS) is working on new iterations of the weapons.?
What is CHESS?
- The Centre for High Energy Systems and Sciences is a DRDO unit.?
- It is involved in the development of modern military and sensor technology for stealth and recce applications.
- The CHESS is the nodal department for the development for all the high energy weapons systems (mainly lasers) in India.
- One of the new military technology sub-class under development in the CHESS is the Directed Energy weapons (DEWs).
What is a Directed Energy Weapon?
- A directed-energy weapon (DEW) is a weapon which has a long-range.
- It is used to damage the target with a highly focused beam of energy.
- This beam can be generated using a highly powerful energy source and can include either of laser, microwaves or particle beams.
- Since the particle beams are mildly affected by gravity, laser weapons have an almost perfectly flat trajectory which makes the targeting easier and more convenient.
- The potential applications of DEW technology can be weapons which can be used to target personnel, missiles, vehicles, and other optical devices in vehicles.
- DRDO has been working on the DEW technology for 3-4 years and aims to develop a 10-kW and 20-kW weapon system.
Apart from India, the US, China, Russia, and the UK are all developing DEW weapons of their own design.