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US Navy Breaks Laser Record
ectotherm writes "The US Navy has broken the existing record for the power of a laser. Their new free-electron laser can burn through 20 feet of steel per second. 'Next up for the tech: additional weaponization. The Navy just awarded Boeing a contract worth up to $163 million to take that technology and package it as a 100 kW weapons system, one that the Navy hopes to use not only to destroy things but for on-ship communications, tracking and detection, too — using a fraction of the energy such applications use now, plus with more accuracy.' Now all we need to do is upgrade the sharks..."
Who needs to burn through 20 feet of steel? Or even 2 feet of steel?
What's even more crazy is that their ultimate goal is to reach a megawatt of power and burn through *2000* feet of steel per second. I'd imagine seeing a phalanx of tanks, and with one 3 second FWOOOONG! from the laser, our military crosscuts through them all in one sweep. Here's the Wired article I'm referring to: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/unexpectedly-navys-superlaser-blasts-away-a-record
The article said it can burn thru 20 feet of steel per second, not 200 per the slashdot version.
Even the 20 feet is likely misleading since I doubt it can sustain that power output for more than a fraction of a second, and anyways if you really were borign thru multiple feet of steel then all your vaporized steel in the borehole you were creating would get in the way of the laser.
Still very impressive though. I'd love to see the face of the first crackpot dictator whose ICBMs are shot down by one of these.
This 500kV test was of just the accelerator (i.e. the bit the produces the electron beam part of a Free Electron Beam laser), not the FEL itself. It's this electron beam that is purported to do the extraordinary steel-cutting, not the laser beam. There is no mention of whether this was a momentary or sustained electron beam output. A 500kV accelerator on it's own isn't all that impressive, but once they package it into a small volume (room rather than building), and actually use it to lase, then that will be very impressive indeed.
yea right.
What planet do you live on? But the humans of earth are a jealous lot, full of hate and mistrust, and belief that their way is the only way to live, and that all other ways must be eliminated.
Before you go spouting off stupid again why don't you take a look at the shear number of fanatics in the world(christian, muslim, jewish, whale watcher, environmentalist, whatever) and decide if your small army will work againist people who don't believe in reason and are willing to fight to the death for their illogic.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Who needs range when your "missile" is travelling at the speed of light?
Anyways, for a laser mounted on a Navy warship, say 10m above sea level, the horizon is over 10km away, so even an incoming sea skipping exocet missile coming in at 300 m/s is over 30 sec away.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon
These laser systems are being developed to shoot down incoming artillery and missiles. That's why the US Navy is commissioning companies to develop small enough systems to be fit in destroyers. That way, the US carrier group employs these destroyers to protect the carrier group from airborne threats while the carrier, with their fighters and bombers, occupy themselves with attacking stuff over the horizon.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
There some more information to be found here: http://www.jlab.org/FEL/ You could also watch the video http://www.jlab.org/FEL/Movie28.mov , but that was a bit disappointing (no KABOOM).
Well, you may drive at 60 miles/hour and not mean to drive for 60 miles. In this case, it could cut through 1/2" steel plating in 1/2 inch / (20 ft/second) = 2 milliseconds. Does that make sense?
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Wow, that was one of the worst articles I've ever read.
So to "create power" requires energy. Uh, ok... I'm with you, sort of.
OK, so they "injected" 500kV of "juice." Fuck you, fox news.
So wait, the power output of this thing is actually 14kW, and the goal of the program is to reach 1MW. But apparently they were at 10kW four years ago... so what's this article actually about? The fact that they increased the voltage to 500kV from the previous 320kV? Why does that matter?
Oh ok, I guess the big development here is that they're using superconductors... or something. It's tough to tell, because "super-conducting electron power" is a series of words that, when strung together, don't mean a fucking thing.
Clearly.
...impossible to counter?
Umm, what if the enemy launched 1000 fake missiles at the same time---how many simultaneous targets can it destroy? What if they launched a series of missiles from beyond the horizon, how long can you keep using your laser? What if they launched torpedos instead, or at the same time, does your laser also work underwater? What if they launched highly reflective chaff with their missiles, would your laser be able to find the target and would it have full energy? What if they launched a whole lot of small missiles rather than one big one? What if their missiles incorporated radar invisibility, so you don't see it with the auto-aiming mechanism? What if they just launched chunks of metal that didn't care if they had a pin-sized hole in them? What if they made missiles that looked like missiles, but actually had the explosive part offset somehow, so your super-accurate laser kept burning holes in irrelevant areas?
Mach 1 is about 340 m/s. At that speed the Navy could send up a fighter and throw a rope around it. ICBM reentry speeds are usually over 4,000 m/s, with in-flight speeds of over 6,000 m/s. Or about Mach 16. A different magnitude of problem...
It's hard to believe that peace lovers would be opposed to the very kind of weapon that would reduce the bloodshed and put pressure on the very causes of wars...
That's because it isn't. If you start assassinating the enemy's leadership (whether it be with baseball bats or orbiting laser projectors), you're going to start World War III. And, because you've killed off all the people who had the power to say "stop", it will continue until we're all dead.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Mirrors don't work against extremely high power lasers. The electric field strength at the focal point is such that electrons are ripped directly out of the atoms. This forms a plasma which is an efficient absorber regardless of how shiny the surface originally was.
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