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Airborne Boeing Laser Blasts Ground Target
coondoggie writes "The airborne military laser which promises to destroy, damage or disable targets with little to no collateral damage has for the first time actually blown something up. Boeing and the US Air Force today said that on Aug. 30, a C-130H aircraft armed with Boeing's Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) blasted a target test vehicle on the ground for the first time. Boeing has been developing the ATL since 2008 under an Air Force contract worth up to $30 million."
A mirror surface will harden the target, but even the best mirrors do not reflect all light and a combat laser can still burn a hole in it very fast.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I meant the reflections. Are they willing to blind anyone within eyesight?
It's still a chemical laser. It's quite possible to make chemical lasers powerful enough to be used as weapons, but so far the equipment has been too big to be very useful. The Mobile Tactical High-Energy Laser is able to shoot down artillery shells and small rockets, but the equipment takes up three trailers and costs too much.
The solid state laser people are catching up. The current output record is around 100 KW. This is enough to be marginally useful for anti-aircraft use. Around a megawatt, things start to get militarily interesting.
Cooling is a huge problem for the solid state devices, though. With the chemical lasers, most of the heat is dumped with the spent chemicals. For the solid state devices, the gear has to be cooled, and efficiency is only around 20%.
"War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over."
~William Tecumseh Sherman
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My company's developer had a side job as "computer support engineer" for this group a couple month ago (translate: 45/hr to configure software and as a human "fail-safe"). They actually did the first test fire a month or two back.
It was only half successful.
It did destroy the target which he described as a "basketball sized item" while traveling at ~450mph or whatever a C-130 cruises at (not supersonic). Unfortunately one of the chemicals has a ph of 17 and is stored at 2500 psi. When the tank developed a leak everyone had to don gas masks, move the cockpit and then make an emergency landing before it ate the plane. A full hazmat crew run by the company had to be flown in from Albuquerque to run decontamination.
It makes me think that perhaps if they just shot those chemicals rather than the laser it might be just as effective and quite a bit cheaper.
Weapons like this actually make an ICBM strike *more* likely against the US. If conventional war were to break out between the US and a country like China, with neither party really wanting a nuclear escalation but reserving their nukes as a deterrent, they'd be afraid that if they lost the ability to effectively shoot down aircraft over their territory they'd also lose the ability to launch ICBM's in case of escalation. So, at the first sign of the US gaining air superiority, they'd go ahead and launch ICBM's.
Not really. First, this is the ATL. It is a different craft with a different mission. It is designed to take out targets on the ground.
Second, for us to take out China's missile, we would have to have multiples of these craft located deep inside of this countries AND all over the world. The reason is that China has a number of boomers and is building 1-2 new nuclear boomers EACH YEAR. In fact, they will surpass America's count in the next 2 years. As it is, China now has boomers patroling both the American Atlantic and Pacific seaboards as well as the Mexican gulf (Venezuela has begun quietly allowing them to have port calls). We also know that China has at least 10 boomers, and will surpass it within 4 years (more likely 2). In addition, to be able to take out all of China's sites with this would require us to be in every country that surrounds China, with multiple aircraft (and russia would require at least 4 to 8 of these). Think we can swing that? Neither does China. TO be honest, we will probable need a lot more. China appears to be building new nuclear warheads. They restarted their factory last decade. They started their build-up before we decided anything about the ABLs.
Finally, the ABL shooting horizontally will have a range of around 500-700. It it probable that it would have a range far shorter over china due to their pollution. In addition, this craft will become more ineffective on 2'nd and third round since dust would have been kicked into the air.
Neither the ATL nor the ABL will be a threat to China's missiles.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Do yourself the favour of looking up which sections of the Geneva Conventions the USA is a signatory to. Then read those sections. Then come up with examples of us violating those sections.
Be aware, by the by, that we never signed on to the sections giving near-blanket immunity to guerrilla forces
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"