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Northrop Grumman Markets Weaponized Laser System
stephencrane writes "Northrop Grumman is making available for sale the FIRESTRIKE weaponized laser system. The solid-state laser unit weighs over 400lbs, sends/receives instructions and data via an RJ-45 jack and can be synchronized with additional units to emit a 100 kW beam. It looks like some piece of stereophonic amplification equipment out of the '50s. Or Fallout 3. The press release suggests that FIRESTRIKE 'will form the backbone of future laser weapon systems.'"
Northrop is also working on a weaponized shark system.
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Apparently, he is the only one who could defeat this system, due to his rhinestone covered suit.
We are gonna need a bigger shark.
This pic from TFA shows a "heating/cooling" interface which shows that the units are going to need a coolant circulation system which would makes the whole system more cumbersome than it appears at first glance. With each LRU at 400 pounds + the cooling system I doubt these would be mounted on a hummer.
Another bullet point is that TFA states that "The firm has said that at least eight of these can be linked up to get a proper 100 kilowatt beam" but how exactly would that be done? this provides an idea, anybody "in the know" wanna chime in?
So what exactly happens when they point the laser at a tank with a bunch of large corner cube reflectors mounted on it? I mean, if even a fraction of the laser energy comes back I could see this being a real problem.
ok for christmas I get my brand new 15kw or later my 100kw laser gun.
but what can i do with that ?
explode a potato in a 10 minutes static shot ? or melt aircraft wing in 1 second ?
also laser is light, therefore someone just needs to diffract or reflect the stream to be protected ? is that right ?
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
sends/receives instructions and data via an RJ-45 jack
Don't worry guys, the TSA is working hard on updating their "do not mix with aircraft" list to accommodate this.
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
You haven't seen how the US handles casualties of war, have you?
Eye patches and canes, maybe a dog for officers. You can't make an omelet without breaking legs.
As for civilians, well. . .
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Now if I could get this mounted on my flying car (http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/15/007225), like, that would be totally awesome.
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When the military gets laser rifles, it'll be that much easier for to make the case for why "assault rifles" should be regulated like bb guns.
Using multiple such things, each of them too wimpy to cause much damage seems important. First, it makes it much harder for the enemy to knock them off — hitting one unit disables a small fraction of the whole. Second, the power can be concentrated at different targets depending on the need (soldiers, a missile, an artillery shell, a plane) — rather than the all-or-nothing of a single giant laser. And third, an errant device will not be as harmful — for example, if, when the network of these are shooting at an incoming missile, one of them hits a civilian plane or some other unintended object. No problem — a single beam is too weak to be really harmful.
Now, of course, they would need to be very precisely targeted and coordinated. Fortunately, we have GPS and powerful computers...
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Can it blow up a house using a giant jiffypop container?
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Since before the dawn of time, Man has dreamed of the laser cannon - even when Woman said it was dumb and that the costumes on Star Trek were ridiculous.
The ancient Hebrews called it "Uriel" - "the flame of God". The Romans had an entire god (Apollo) devoted to the laser cannon and its many uses. The Greeks dreamed of Prometheus stealing the laser cannon of Zeus and giving it to mortals. In Norse mythology, the end of Ragnarok is marked by the wolf Skoll consuming the last remaining laser cannon and condemning the world to a laser cannon-less eternal night.
Today, the laser cannon is at last ours. Thank you, Northrop-Grumman, and thank you, US military-industrial complex. The spirits of countless millennia stand in silent awe at what you have wrought.
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Smokey says "Only YOU can prevent huge frickin' weaponized lasers!"
The top two articles at the moment on Slashdot:
>Northrop Grumman Markets Weaponized Laser System
>Pentagon Clears Flying-Car Project For Takeoff
Has the future finally arrived?
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If you're being shot in the face with a 15KW laser, I think blindness is the least of your worries. A direct shot from something like this will lead to blindness in the same way a bullet in your eye leads to blindness. The unit is a weapon and will be treated like one, I doubt they'll be waving it around as a joke any more than they shoot people with real bullets for a joke.
More interesting is the question of backscatter - lasers can be reflected. In fact, it would see the primary means of protection against laser fire would be a mirrored surface. On any kind of complex surface that will indeed produce a lot of scattered rays of lesser, but still blinding, power.
I would assume that the primary envisaged use case of this thing, right now at least, is anti-missile, especially at sea. Anti-ship missiles typically have a curved, if not spherical, tip, which in future will presumably be covered by a mirrored coating as a counter to the existence of laser defense systems. At least some of the laser light, then, will likely reflect back at the ship, with unpredictable intensity.
The advent of this kind of thing may indeed precipitate an interesting change in how military personnel dress and expose themselves in combat situations. Mirrored helmets for everyone who could possibly be in range would seem a likely first step ...
Disclaimer: I know nothing about laser warfare that I didn't learn from Culture novels!
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Unless it is a pencil-thin or smaller beam, 15kW is just plain not very much. I mean, it's a lot of energy, I wouldn't want it pointed at my couch... but it is only about as much as you would get out of 150 light bulbs. Maybe even less, considering the conversion factor.
I guess it is on the verge of being practical. But not much more, yet.
Well, lessee...a 100mW (20dBm or 0.1W) collimated burning laser will pop ballons and burn dark objects such as electrical tape. This one is 15KW (~72dBm) so that's ~72-20=52dB times the power, or about 15KW/0.1W=150,000 "burning lasers", assuming Northrop-Grumman can collimate a laser as well as some guy on Instructables.
There's a material out there, google for it, that can go from a transparent material to a mirrored material in around 11 seconds when current is applied to it. I could see that being used as a windshield for whatever vehicle carries these devices, and activated before firing the weapon.
I guess you haven't worked with lasers much. A 3 Watt CO2 laser will burn paper in less than a second or so. Light bulbs put out a lot of power. If you hold on to a light bulb that's on, your hand won't last very long. Nevertheless, the destructive power is small compared to conventional weapons. The advantage here is accuracy.
So, if I buy this new toy, how many C-Cell or 9V batteries do I need? The companies are usually to cheap to put them in the box.
"The advent of this kind of thing may indeed precipitate an interesting change in how military personnel dress and expose themselves in combat situations. Mirrored helmets for everyone who could possibly be in range would seem a likely first step ..."
Mirrored helmets are sniper bait, but a full-face combat helmet system with auto-darkening lenses would reduce eye damage from reflections. Auto-darkening welding lenses are cheap to produce.
http://www.millerwelds.com/products/weldinghelmets/
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FIRESTRIKEâs can be linked together to get a more powerful beam
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of sharks with laser beams attached to their heads!
You just got troll'd!
Low Power Setting Provides nominally 100 watt alignment beam
Article is here.
"Alignment beams" are normally low-power (a few milliwatts) visible beams used to indicate the path of an invisible beam. I guess with this one you'd point the alignment beam, move the glowing/smoking spot to your intended target, then hit the big switch.
Just put a solar panel on it and aim the laser at the panel. That should provide loads of power!
Mine.
7.62NATO (used in the old Phalanx Anti Missle System's miniguns) delivers about 400 joules at 500m. This laser needs about 27ms of on point contact to do that. Of course I'm assuming that the laser isn't affected much by water vapor in the air. And that heat is as effective as kinetic energy.
75kW Generators (TFA says it's 20% efficient) are basicly small trailer/pick-up bed sized. But that includes a 4L Diesel engine and a fuel tank. Share the vehicles motor and add some energy storage like a bank of capacitors so you can move and fire. Put a big radiator on the roof for cooling 600 Prescotts :) and you're good to go. I think you could shoehorn it into a Hummer sized vehicle.
Really, it sounds like a replacement for something like the Phalanx or semi-fixed medium to heavy machineguns. It has the bonus of being really accurate, so set up however many automated turrets you want and slave them to a targeting or master laser.
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You joke but it's developments like this that put Revelations in a new light (no pun intended).
The same light ... it's just more coherent.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I predict the consumer versions will have a USB interface and Windows-only drivers... :/
Ezekiel 23:20
I should not even have to explain -- because if you knew squat about this, it would not be necessary -- that there are, among other classes, "first-surface" mirrors often used in telescopes. Look it up. And even that is just one example. A mirror -- and even first-surface is only one subset of the available kinds -- does NOT have to "absorb" the energy in order to reflect it. That is a huge assumption that is simply false.
Assuming that is true... that a reflective surface must absorb the light before re-emitting it in a complementary direction -- would be to assume that, for example, white paper must absorb light and then redirect it in order to accomplish its reflective quality, while a black piece of paper would simply absorb the light. If that were the case, not only would the black piece of paper become warmer (as it does), the white piece of paper (or other efficient reflector closer to ideal) would actually become cooler, since it must expend energy to absorb then re-emit the light in a direction opposite to the direction the light originally entered. (Even you admit that energy is expended in the process of reflection.) That might only be a small effect, but it would be noticeable.
Not only would the material reflect the light, it would become cooler in the process.
Most reflectors are less than ideal, but the basic principle still holds. You don't get something for free.
Not only that, but a good many designs for relatively high-powered lasers rely on internal reflection from mirrors to achieve the lasing effect at all. If what you claimed about reflectors were true, these lasers would not even work! Their end mirrors would melt down before light were ever emitted from the device. But lase and emit they do, easily enough to melt several inches of steel, without a shred of problem with (or heating of) the mirrors.