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.