The F-35 could come equipped with weaponized lasers

US Marine Corps Photo

The Marine Corps is working toward the day when it could equip an F-35B joint strike fighter with a directed energy weapon, a top service official said Aug. 30.

Putting a laser on board an F-35 is “absolutely,” something the Marine Corps would be interested in, said Lt. Gen. Robert Walsh, commanding general of Marine Corps Combat Development Command and deputy commandant of combat development and integration.

To get to that point, the service would start by putting the system on a KC-130, which would be a better fit because of current size, weight and power constraints, he said during a breakfast meeting with defense reporters in Washington, D.C.

“As soon as we could miniaturize them, we would put them on F-35s, Cobra … any of those kind of attack aircraft,” he said. Walsh said a laser could also be installed on an MV-22 Osprey.

So far, it has been a struggle reducing the size of directed energy weapons, he said. In order to produce enough power to be effective against a threat, systems are often large, he said.

Yet laser weapons technology is something that will be increasingly critical for the service going forward, Walsh said.

“It’s very important. It’s where we want to go,” he said. Lasers will lighten the Corps' loads by reducing the amount of energy, powder and kinetic ordnance it must carry into the field, he said.

The service is currently working alongside the Office of Naval Research on the ground-based air defense directed energy on-the-move program, he said. The goal of that effort is to mount a high-energy laser on a vehicle.

“The ‘on-the-move’ piece is trying to get it onto a vehicle that we can maneuver with," he said. ONR has demonstrated a 10-kilowatt laser and the intent is to move to a 30-kilowatt laser, he added. The system could be used against enemy unmanned aerial vehicles, he said.

US Marine Corps Photo

Meanwhile, the Marine Corps is preparing to send the F-35B on deployment abroad, Walsh said. Its first operational squadron — VMFA-121 — will deploy to Japan in 2017 onboard the USS Wasp amphibious assault ship, he said.

“Our intent right now is to put six F-35s on to Wasp,” he said. “The squadron … will deploy with 16 airplanes … to Japan. Six will go on Wasp, 10 will stay there as the parent squadron. We can change that mix depending on the mission. So we could probably put up to 16 — all of them — onto the Wasp, but we would being moving capabilities off of it.”

There are also plans to deploy another squadron from another Wasp-class ship, the USS Essex, he said.

“Not only are we deploying it on the Wasp in the Pacific, we’re also going to deploy it on Essex during the same year in Central Command,” he said. “That’s quite the challenge, to put two squadrons aboard two ships and deploy them.”

The Essex will soon undergo modifications to support the joint strike fighter, he said. There are also plans to deploy a squadron with the USS America amphibious assault ship where the Marine Corps is preparing to do more F-35 integration testing, he added.

Putting the F-35 on board amphibious ships requires a number of modifications, he said. The service has "never had that kind of capability [on an amphibious ship] and it's forcing lots of change within the Navy and Marine Corps,” he said. “We’ll … continue to modify our big-deck amphibs to be able to take F-35s as deployments continue.”

The Marine Corps will take lessons learned from these deployments and make adjustments to the aircraft, he said.

“As the first one out the door in operational deployment, we’ll learn from that and see what capabilities … we have to grow into the airplane to continue to develop it,” he said. “A lot of it is going to be school of hard knocks when we put it out there.”

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