Slashdot Mirror
German Laser Destroys Targets More Than 1Km Away
kkleiner writes "A German company has brought us one step closer to the kinds of shootouts only seen in Sci-Fi films. Düsseldorf-based Rheinmetall Defense recently tested a 50kW, high-energy laser at their proving ground facility in Switzerland. First, the system sliced through a 15mm- (~0.6 inches) thick steel girder from a kilometer away. Then, from a distance of two kilometers, it shot down a handful of drones as they nose-dived toward the surface at 50 meters per second."
But can it wreck a college professor's house full of pop corn?
So how well does it make popcorn?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
AWESOME!
Does anyone else think of the Bolo books when reading this.
Why did they test it in a country where there are no sharks?
How do you shoot down something that is already nosediving?
This sig washed every five years whether it needs it or not!
I predict a mirrored future for our military vehicles...
What can possibly go wrong...?! :p
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
Shooting down drones. Sort of like one of them electric bug zappers, but for bigger bugs.
Be seeing you...
It has already been done.
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/05/wicked-lasers-shark/
I figured if a laser's very tight-column beam was so close to "perfect" that if it could destroy something at 10 meters, it could destroy or at least severely damage it at 1,000 meters, at least in a vacuum.
Perhaps I should be impressed that 1 km of atmosphere didn't disrupt the laser enough to disable its destructive power. Next time, try 1km of fog or 1km of Beijing smog.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Why do people still use non-metric system?
Lastly, they’ll begin making these high-energy laser systems mobile by mounting a laser onto a TM170 armored vehicle.
Godzilla doesn't stand a chance now!
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
50 m/sec is 894.776 furlongs/sec for y'all in the US. :)
This kind of weapon would be an incredible boost for air defense, at least for close-in ground support and other low-level attacks. It wouldn't do much against artillery shells or naval gunfire. It would also likely allow the development of a laser-based missile defense system far superior to a patriot system. If these things come to pass, the balance of power would shift away from nations with a heavy emphasis on air power (i.e. the U.S. with its aircraft carriers and air force) towards nations with large and mobile ground forces.
Until the nations with a heavy emphasis on air power just hit all of your frikin' lasers with cruise missiles, and then bomb the shit out of you with their superior air power...
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It wouldn't do much against artillery shells or naval gunfire.
It would be somewhat effective against artillery shells. Most large shells travel slowly and rely on explosives for their damage. Heat one up enough and you'll either bork the fuse or set off the explosives prematurely. Now you've got non-aerodynamic shrapnel with a relatively low terminal velocity raining down rather than a high explosive shell.
The other thing about slow moving artillery shells is that they're slow, so there's time to effect the flight path. Heat the metal enough and you'll have superheated metal gas ablating from the surface of the shell. The force from that will be enough to alter the course of the projectile. With enough tracking/accuracy, you could theoretically divert the shell to land somewhere harmless (or at least less damaging).
Skip the lasers. Hit the power plants.
...from where it was aimed.
Their they're doing there hair.
1.87m.
You wouldn't say that the distance between two places is 8800 yards, you'd say 5 miles. That's what's good about metric - you can just shift the decimal seperator to get a nicer number if you change the prefix.
Brought to you by the Pew Pew Pew Research Center.
Sharks.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
100 kW is considered to be militarily useful, 1 MW is considered to be a battle grade laser.
There are 100 kW solid state lasers available to the US military so this is not exactly leading edge military laser power. The interesting bit about this article is the revolver design they used.
In a scientific article I'd expect it to be written exactly that way.
50 m/s one significant digit. 50. m/s two.
That said: Significant digits suck. 99 and 10. both have two significant digits. Calling that +-.5 (half the 'doubtful' digit) one has an error of 5% the other has an error of .5% Significant digits is a quick and dirty method for when you can't do proper error analysis (Sum(firstderivativeWRTblah(blah)*blaherror) or better).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
No it wouldn't.
One, or unknown. If anything you can't expect it to have five at least. Round if off to 100 mph if you feel better with that, or just don't do the conversation at all, guess if people want to really know what it said they should go back to the metric measurement.
"it shot down a handful of drones as they nose-dived toward the surface "
Wait until the drones have the lasers.
Then we're in trouble.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Oh yea, it's so easy to put a power plant underground.
Fine then, you can just find the exhaust points and blow those up. Any significant power installation is going to put out a lot of heat, and blocking that heat from being removed is going to cause some serious issues for said installation.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Because people in America are stubborn, arrogant, and resistant to change.
I assume you mean 'pew-pew', unless you are, for some reason, particularly relieved at the successful testing of this laser...
Did anyone else see the headline and immediately wonder if it was that bald dude with the firecracker slingshot that got posted a few days ago. He did mention something about being ready to unveil a "witch beheader" in the last video, after all...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The metric system was adopted in most of Europe on May 20 1875 (the so called Metre Convention) - not a time famous for widespread french occupation.
To add insult to injury, the U.S. was a signee of the Metre Convention of 1875.