Laser Shoots Down Artillery Shell In Flight

An anonymous reader writes "The Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser is a joint project between the US Army and the Israeli Defense Ministry, with much of the work being done by TRW. Tuesday they had a spectacular success when they shot an artillery shell out of the air."

Comments

More details please

[A5un]

Reading through the article doesn't give much info about details such as:
How much does one unit cost?
How long is the "reload"/"re-aiming" time?
Will it survive real heavy artillery battle?

Re:More details please

[Docrates]

You seem to be ruling out the possibility of a US vs. North Korea or a US vs. China war. 10 years before Gulf War I noone was thinking about it, but the military was preparing for it nonetheless. When you have a huge war in your hands is NOT the time to star figuring out which weapons would be useful.

Re:More details please

[Wyatt Earp]

It does, if it's possible to achive. Which hasn't happened for the Russians since 1945 and hasn't happened for the Chinese since the winter of 1950-51.

It won't happen anywhere in the world, unless you are talking about battlefield missiles and China pointing them at Taiwan, which I'm not.

No one outside of the Chinese are going to have 300 howitzers, but for shits and grins lets say they do.

Soviet Doctrine is to line them up wheel to wheel in a phase-line that's been surveyed and to toss round after round at the Yankee pigs while T-72s and T-80s roll across in an advancing line.

Sounds swell, but it won't work.

In the 1970s the US Army in Europe came up with Air-Land Battle which was designed to counter this plan.

You take some Apache and Kiowa Warriors (soon RAH-66s) and swoop in Hellfiring the crap out of the tanks, then you zap some of the supporting infantry and softer AAA and mobile SAMs with Hydra-70 rockets while the A-10s Maverick the advancing line and F-16s throw HARMs at the AAA and SAMs dumb enough to light up thier radars.

As soon as the D-30s open up, it's go time, the M-109s counter battery fire and scoot before the first rounds impact, then without a surveyed position form up and counter battery fire more while the MLRS's throw some bomblet love in the direction of the Red Arty.

In 10 minutes 70% of the static Soviet Doctrine guns are foil.

Most conventional USSR units were NOT nuclear armed, tactical nuclear weapons were closely controled by the Communist Party and the Red Army.

I'm not talking about blind-faith, Iraq was a very viable opponent on Jan 14 1991, but they made grave tactical mistakes, driven from the Soviet, Chinese and East German advisors and thier own experiance in dealing with American equipment in the Iran-Iraq War.

Air-Land battle, with combined arms operations and movement destroyed Soviet Doctrine formations, units and hardware.

Soviet Doctrine calls for close management from a higher headquarters, when that is cut off, the army withers and dies. Soviet Doctrine and equipment does not allow for mobile combat formations that can move quickly, the US/NATO doctrine does.

M-1A2, M-2, AH-64, H-56, A-10, F-16, M-109, MLRS, MAV, M-60A3, M-113A3, F-117 and F-15E are all desgined/upgraded to exploit faults in Soviet Doctrine as illustrated in Korea, the Golan, Sinai, Inter-Germany observations and Iraq.

The only nation-state that could give the US a run for the money is Communist China. Russia could at a nuclear level, but not a conventional level.

Israel would be a tougher nut to crack than the EU.

Wonder if this was a gimmee

[afidel]

like the ones used to pass the first generation patriot missle system. The gen 1 patriots were so bad that final analysis showed that in one test the patriot missed the mark only to have the target slam into it, thus causing both to break up. In the official scoring this was marked as a hit and win for the patriot sytem even though it was a random fluke. Unless someone not affiliated with the military or the defense contractor verifies the results I shall remain skepticle until field use proves the system.

Mirror coating?

[Quixote]

What if the shell had a very glossy finish (like a mirror or something). Would the laser still have the same impact (no pun intended)? I'm just curious.

Re:Where does the momentum go?

[afidel]

hehe, you just pointed out one of the biggest benifits of this type of antiprojectile system. If they work and are fast enough you can explode the ordinance over the enemies own lines. If the enemy is using nasty stuff like biological, chemical, or nuclear arms you've just doubled the effectiveness of your defense by making it an offense.

Re:Where does the momentum go?

[mce]

You're missing 2 points:

• The explosive bit.
• Even if you just succeed in breaking the shell into pieces and due to some magic it does not explode, the pieces will not end up at the original target as designed. First of all, their trajectories and speeds will diverge. Next, shells are designed to do their nasty job in very specific ways (they have care- and purposefully designed geometries, windscreens, armour piercing caps, fuze delays, ...). If these things do not arrive as intended, their effect will be greatly reduced and sometimes even nullified. Hell, even a 1 degree change in impact obliquity can make the difference between piercing an armoured plate or bouncing off (for otherwise identical and intact shells).

Great!

[Rogerborg]

Now, all we need to do is to find an enemy to use it against.

If we don't know where the shells are coming from, what's the chances that this system will be able to realistically identify a genuine incoming round, activate (from idle) and reliably shoot it down in time? We're not getting the first couple of rounds, and after that, our existing counterbattery systems will be silencing the enemy artillery.

If we do know where they're coming from (and we damn well should, given what we spend on reccetech), then why aren't we pasting them with our existing overwhelming air superiority and artillery?

So what's the theatre? Where are these systems going to be deployed?

One in the White House, one in the Pentagon... where else? Whatever we build on the WTC site? But do we reckon that any grunts are going to get the benefit of it? Hmmm.

It's neato technology, but it seems like a solution to a problem that the US has spent trillions to ensure that it doesn't have any more.

Begging to violate the Geneva Convention

[ProfessorPuke]

Most nations have signed the Geneva Convention to regulate the conduct of war- amoung other things, this means that you can only attack people with weapons meant to kill them, but not infect, poison, or maim.

(A gentleman's agreement between the respective military-industrial-complexes, really. Dead soldier -> proud military funeral -> enhanced militarism and anticipation of future retaliation. Wounded soldier -> disabled veteran begging on sidewalk -> budget pressure for providing care, and public squeamishness about enrolling in future conflicts. Too much peace hurts our economic growth!)

This means no chemical weapons (tell that to Russia!), no hollowpoint or fragmentary bullets, few shotguns, and no lasers aimed at people. Because the easiest ways to hurt someone with a laser is to burn his eyes out, this is consistent with Geneva.

But, today's new, powerful anti-munition lasers will be an attractive option in the anti-aircraft role as well. Military planners must be thinking of this, but they don't want to talk about it for fear of striking taboo/war-crimes territory.

But I wonder what'll happen if a laser-defense battery suddenly finds themselves face to face with an enemy Hind who snuck up terrain-masked. Will they run for it and hope he's a slow shot, or light it up and watch the fireworks?

And, if the the ABL gets built and we get another hijacker repurposing an airliner into a weapon, the president will be hard pressed not to order him zapped, too.

(Of course, another reason planners might not talk much about targeting aircraft with lasers is that the US and Israel have no potential opponents whose aircraft can't be simply destroyed with Beyond-Visual-Range missiles. Won't stop me from speculating.)