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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.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
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?
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ok for christmas I get my brand new 15kw or later my 100kw laser gun. ... but what can i do with that ?
To provide a sense of scale, industrial laser cutters (CO2) tend to run from 100 W to 3000 W. The smaller of these lasers is five times more powerful. I imagine it could cut through an aircraft's wing in milliseconds at most; due to weight limits they aren't very thick. Of course, you'd need to do more than just bore a hole through the wing to bring down a plane.
It's worth noting that a sufficiently powerful laser will actually vaporize the surface, rather than just melting it. It can essentially cause the surface to explode from the sudden influx of heat, resulting in far greater damage than a simple cut.
also laser is light, therefore someone just needs to diffract or reflect the stream to be protected ? is that right ?
At these power levels even an optics-quality mirror tends to absorb too much energy to remain effective. Even if it's just 0.1%, that's still 150 W to 1 kW being absorbed, which will quickly heat the mirror to the point where it becomes opaque.
If you could make it work, though, a retroreflector would be even better than a mirror, since it would redirect the laser back at the source.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
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?
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
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.