Superconducting Power Transmission for Directed Energy Applications

Airborne directed energy weapons offer advantages over conventional weapons as they minimize collateral damage, reducing the cost of post-conflict reconstruction. However, the high power levels required by these weapons present size and weight challenges for airborne applications. In particular, the current capacity required of the power transmission cables can make the power transmission system one of the heaviest component systems. Increasing the power density of this system is a major program goal. We propose an innovative Superconducting Power Transmission system that offers a large reduction in the weight of the power transmission system as well as a significant reduction in the transmission power losses of this system. We achieve these performance gains by combining multi-stage current leads with a superconducting transmission cable, all cooled by a multi-stage turbo-Brayton cryocooler. The result is a system with major gains in power density and efficiency compared with a copper cable and even compared with other conventional superconducting solutions. In Phase I we will prove the feasibility and evaluate the performance advantages of our concept by designing and optimizing the system configuration for a specific airborne directed energy application. In Phase II we will build and test a technology demonstration of the proposed system. BENEFIT: The reduction in size, weight and losses provided by our proposed Superconducting Power Transmission (SPT) system make this an enabling technology for airborne directed energy applications.  The proposed technology is extremely reliable and requires little maintenance. The SPT system would also be valuable for electric aircraft applications employing superconducting machines and for other high current power distribution applications such as those used in data server and super computing centers.)