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More on JSF Laser System
An anonymous reader writes "Seems Lockheed Martin has won a contract to equip future versions of the Joint Strike Fighter with a 100-kW laser. Housed in a dome within the aircraft, the laser's turret would emerge for firing [sound familiar?], and the laser itself is spec'ed to achieve airborne and ground kills at a distance of more than six miles. The problem? According to this Aviation Week article, Lockheed Martin has to figure out how to dissipate 900 kilowatts of heat. Maybe the Finnish airforce could value-add to the OEM model." We mentioned this earlier.
Can I get mine with extra butter and popped from 6 miles away, please?
the plot of Real Genius than a star trek episode...
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
900Kw of heat, and only a 100Kw laser? Wow, not to effcient is it?
Very efficient for a laser. Most lasers get less than 1%.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
They can use whatever heatsink comes out for those 4 Ghz Pentiums...
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
Watts is a measure of power, i.e. energy per unit time. So, to ask how long it takes to deliver 100KW is nonsensical. Did you perhaps mean, how long can this thing fire for continuously, i.e. how much energy can I fire at the target in a burst?
intentionally blinding people with lasers is against the Geneva convention.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I didn't want it on the aircraft,
I wanted them mounted on the sharks!
All I want are sharks with freakin laser beams on their head!
--Dr. Evil.
http://www.theMediaBunker.com
if they are gonna put a huge warning sticker on the front of the figher: "Do not stare directly into laser"?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Actually, the F22 and probably at least some other modern fighters use bellows tanks in it's fel tanks to cool engine oil. Basically you pump hot oil from the engine into the tanks which are surrounded by thousands of gallons of fuel in order to cool it down.
Along the same lines it is very common for automobiles to have their fuel pumps inside the fuel tank for the same reason. If you live in a hot area there is a pretty good chance that people who run their cars frequently near empty go through more fuel pumps than those who don't.
Hey dude, it's a WEAPON. That means it's SUPPOSED to cause damage... so blinding some enemy troops isn't such a bad thing.
Shh, don't burst his reality. He's probably also one of those people that want to outlaw weapons in war because they are too effective at killing people. Let him go about his dreams of Nerf warfare.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
The legendary SR-71 (high altitude mach 3 spyplane) kept the fuel stored at an extremely low temperature in the tanks (sub zero initially I believe), then pumped it through fuel lines running throughout the aircraft. The fuel would absorb the heat from the various internal components of the plane before arriving at the engines.
They need a case mod for the JSF. I suggest one of the water-cooled systems; a second non-laser-firing plane can fly alongside with the radiator. Only a few hundred meters of tubing for the water would be needed to connect the two.
Alternatively, mount a gigantic fishtank on top of the aircraft.
I don't remember any of the other weird case mods that have been posted here, for which I'm sure all of you are thankful. :-)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I'd say we should wait and see how the ABL performs before getting rid of the trusty ol' AMRAAM.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
Housed in a dome within the aircraft, the laser's turret would emerge for firing [sound familiar?]
I find the suggestion of a Trek parallel humorous. Of course a laser turret that emerges to fire is somehow the visionary genius of a Trek writer. But, I guess whale penises do that too. Oh well...
-Sean
I can see it now:
GI: Sarge! There's a dozen or more enemy troops on the other side of that ridge! I'm going to call for air support: They'll blind those bastards with a laser! We can go in and round 'em up.
Sarge: No can do, soldier. That's against the Geneva convention. You tell your flyboy buddy to drop a Daisy Cutter on those a-holes. I'm afraid the only humane way to handle this situation is to incinerate those poor bastards to a crispy crunch.
GI:Yes, Sir!
"to get 100 kilowatts of light out, you've got to put a megawatt of electrical power in, so somewhere along the way you've got to deal with 900 kilowatts of cooling," This sentence means nothing to an engineer. Here's why: 900 kilowatts over 1 millisecond is 1/4 of a watthour. A trivial amount of energy to dissipate. Over 1 second, it's 250 watthours, no big deal, but not trivial. Over 1 hour, it's 900 kilowatt hours, a very big deal. Without time, it's just big impressive numbers for the ignorant masses.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Chrome tanks, chrome fatigues, and mirror Cochese shades?
SWEEET!
This project is utter foolishness. If we figure out how to operate a 1mW 6.2 mile laser on a fighter, that makes it portable enough to fit on a truck or tracked vehicle. With a greater percentage of a groud vehicle being able to be committed to power systems, a ground-based mobile laser will be ablt to outpower an airborne version, and likely be a LOT cheaper.
Outranged outgunned outnumbered airplanes are NOT what we want. We are trading decades or our airpower in for a few measly years of SAM and ground strike invulnerability. This direction is NOT smart for us.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
I work in a laser lab, were the laser we work with (an Argon Ion) puts out a maximum 15 watts of power (of multiple wavelengths of visible light) in a ~5mm diameter beam.
At 1/2 watt, it will blind you immediately if your eye passes in front of it.
At 3 watts, it will burn through a piece of paper.
At 6 watts, it's burning through my sleeve.
At 8 watts if I accidentally wave my hand through it, it will cause blisters to form several minutes later.
At 10 watts, our power meter starts smoking and our mirrors begin to get these ugly burn marks on them.
At 15 watts, it'll burn through an aluminum can.
This is for a continuous wave laser (one that doesn't pulse). Now you can imagine what 100,000 watts will do:). The question is, seeing as how this must be firing in pulses, what is the pulse length? Minutes? Seconds? Milliseconds?
I'm also curious what wavelength it is firing at. I didn't notice it in the article (but I definitely could have missed it). Anyway, I hope that helped answer your question. Maybe some other slashdotters out there have worked with more powerful lasers?
JoeRobe
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
For some people, this is an acceptable way to relate to other people. If you don't like other people, just kill them. Preferably from a long way away.
It's profitable, too, for a small number of people, because the weapons are secret and therefore the profits can be kept secret.
It's an adult video game. Except that you don't get to play. You, if you are an American taxpayer, only get to pay.
There are a lot of people who would like to kill other people if it is free and they don't have to go to prison. It's a kind of mental illness. For more about this, see What should be the Response to Violence?
Violence tends to cause other violence. Mostly hidden elements of the U.S. government are causing the U.S. to be a target of violence. For example, the U.S. government (taxpayers) spend more than $900 every year for every man, woman, and child in Israel so that Israelis can buy U.S.-made weapons to kill Arabs. It's a way of transferring money from the taxpayers to the weapons makers. It seems likely that this will result in another holocaust; I doubt the Arabs are kidding when they say they will never surrender.
Every day in the U.S., it is possible to see American leaders on television calmly discussing the killing of other people. Of course, they have come to believe that they will never be the target.
I accidentally posted this anonymously before, so here it is now, with my name on it.
Well, a watt is a joule/second.
.25 kilograms of water by 100 degrees. This is not particularily accurate but it gives you an idea of the power - water is not particularily easy to heat and if this laser could fire for even a few seconds on a fairly small surface area....ZAP!
A calorie is the amount of energy to raise 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius and there are 4.19 Joules in a calorie. Therefore, 100 kilowatts = 100 000 W = 100 000 J/s ~ 25 000 calories/s which means we could raise 25 kg of water by 1 degree in 1 second. Now this would have to depend on the surface area of the target - it could be 2.5 kilograms of water by 10 degrees in a second or
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
Star Trek, here we come... Mr Worf, arm phasers!
I think the best part about a country having powerful weapons is their ability to NOT use them. Keeps evil powers in check (of course, evil is a subjective term, but anyways...). Same with nuclear weapons. Einstein basically told U.S. representatives, "yes, splitting atoms will work, but don't do it. It has disasterous consequences." Well, they didn't exactly listen. But I hope the ability to develop new weapons comes with the mindset to not use them.
I would prefer to see these laser weapons go from fighter jets to medical surgery. Imagine the medical uses for this. Small, precise cuts, no sterilization necessary.
... Or just boil some water and vent the steam. 900 Kw isn't much when it's not continuous, and boiling water takes a LOT of energy.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Usage of these weapons is actually restricted by international treaty. The reason is that high intensity light systems could be used to permanently blind the foot soldiers, and that is considered unsportsman like warfare. Sorta like the way nukes are considered unsportsman like too! But lasers, like any other bright light, does't just kill people. They can blind them, and permanently too. That is considered to be off limites. Now melting the armor on a vehicle is fair game, and if you happen to be looking in the laser and manage to not get your skin instantly burned (not likely), but you go blind; your fair game cuz you were sitting on an legitimate target (the armor vehicle). But swooping down on populated areas, and then sweaping the crowded areas with bright lights is bad.
The treaty was a bit unclear, and unfourtunatly I don't have the deatials, but as I recall it might be offlimites to use the laser to blind enemy pilots too. As in shining the beam inot he cockpit of the enemy jet! I guess it depends ont he situation, and the combat senarios.... but we are realyl treading new ground here!
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
At these levels of power, the reflective material would have to reflect virtually all light in order to be safe. And when I say "virtually all," I mean on the order of 99.999%. I believe a 12 watt laser can cut through sheet aluminum pretty handily, and aluminum is both somewhat reflective and highly heat-conductive. A kilowatt-scale laser should be able to cut through just about anything, shiny or otherwise.
Christianity is a religion of violence, historically spread through military conquest. The Catholic Church basically offers two choices for the "pagan:" conversion or death.
Jesus Christ can now take his place beside Charles Manson, another leader of a dangerous and bloody cult.
Jesus (and Mohammed) your grasp of religious history is awful. Islam's history of violence pales in comparison to the millions killed in the various heresies, pogroms and Inquisitions the Holy Roman Apolostic Cathlolic Church has either directed or tacitly supported since the Council of Nicaea. Men were burned alive at the stake for merely saying that Jesus may have been part human and part divine; entire cities were sacked and burned because the inhabitants dared to have a different definition of the Trinity than those in power. The rise of Islamic Fundamentalism dates from the late 1700s. The rise of Christian Fundamentalism can be dated from the end of the Roman Empire, when the academies of the ploytheistic religions were forced to shut down.
All religions have been turned to the uses of power and violence. Singling out Islam is part of the problem.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
On a vehicle that uses heated gas expansion for propulsion (fancy name for a jet), It seems like 900kw of extra heat could be used in place of an afterburner.
Just find a fluid that does a phase change efficiently between the melting temperature of the laser's mechanism and say just a little hotter than the jet's exaust plume.
Liquid boron or sulfer ought to do the trick.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Islam is a religion of violence, historically spread through military conquest. The Koran basically offers two choices for the "infidel:" conversion or death.
Dead wrong.
Go find a copy of the Koran (hint, it's on-line several places) and find me a single passage that says unbelievers must be killed. Guess what: it ain't in there.
Quite the opposite. What you'll find is lots of statements about how Allah will punish the unbelievers, and quite a few that tell the believers to take care not to incite the unbelievers, but to live alongside them in peace, unless the unbelievers try to stop the Muslims from worshipping Allah.
And history bears this out as well. Historically, Islam is a far less violent religion than Christianity. For example, consider Moorish Spain. Although the conquest of Spain was violent (that being the accepted manner of expanding your territory), the Muslims at the time did *not* force the Christians and Jews to convert. In fact, from the point of view of the Jews, the Moorish occupation was a golden age, one of the few times that they were pretty much completely free of oppression. Not only were they not killed, or forced to convert, both Jews and Christians managed to gain high ranks within the government.
When the Christians finally managed to eject the Moors, *they* gave all non-believers three choices: convert, leave or die. And they often neglected to offer the second option. You may have heard of a little bash called the "Spanish Inquisition".
I'm not slamming Christianity; I'm Christian. I'm making the point that the teachings of Islam are *not* inherently violent. Everyone knows that Christ preached turning the other cheek, and yet supposedly Christian people have repeatedly perverted his doctrine. Islam teaches that violence against another man is only permitted when that man is trying to stop you from following Islam.
There are a some violent and despicable people in the world who happen to be Muslims and have chosen to use the rhetoric of "Jihad" (specifically, the lesser Jihad, which is the fight for freedom from religious oppression) to justify their hatred and their murders. The term doesn't fit the application, but that has never bothered propagandists.
You can't negotiate with people who want nothing more than to see you dead.
True, but keep in mind that the number of Muslims who feel that way about Israel is small relative to the Muslim population. Don't try to smear all Muslims with that same tar. Most of the Arab world has sympathy for their Palestinian brethren, but that's a far cry from wanting to see all Israelis (or all non-believers) dead.
As for the Israel/Palestine conflict, neither side is totally right, and neither side is totally wrong. The Palestinians have a legitimate beef about wanting their land back, but they should have figured out by now that they're not going to get all of it back and been content to accept some of the numerous offers to share. Their use of terror tactics is despicable in the extreme. On the Israeli side, their deep hatred ensures that there will never be any kind of peaceful settlement, and they're guilty of frequently applying excessive and indiscriminate force. Israel was the embattled underdog, trying to pull something good together after thousands of years of oppression but they've turned into a bully that causes many of their own problems by overreacting.
In short, it's a mess caused by hatred and selfishness on both sides, and although the debate is often wrapped in religious clothes, the core problems are racism and land, not doctrine.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The next-gen JSF would feature a mini-oven and a jacuzzi for the pilot and co-pilot.
Right... I can see it now:
Pilot: I need to use the laser Slider... time to fire up the oven.
Copilot: Shit Maverick, this is the 15th batch of hot pockets I've had to eat this flight - can't you use a fucking missile or something?
_sig_ is away