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Combat Lasers To Be Added To US Fighter Jets (nextbigfuture.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NextBigFuture:
The US Air Force plans to arm its fleet of drones and fighter jets with high-tech laser weapons.... Ground testing of a laser weapon called the High Energy Laser, or HEL, was slated to take place last year at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, service officials said...
The Air Force plans to begin firing laser weapons from larger platforms such as C-17s and C-130s until the technological miniaturization efforts can configure the weapon to fire from fighter jets such as an F-15, F-16 or F-35. Instead of flying with six or seven missiles on an aircraft, a directed energy weapons system could fire thousands of shots using a single gallon of jet fuel.
The Air Force plans to begin firing laser weapons from larger platforms such as C-17s and C-130s until the technological miniaturization efforts can configure the weapon to fire from fighter jets such as an F-15, F-16 or F-35. Instead of flying with six or seven missiles on an aircraft, a directed energy weapons system could fire thousands of shots using a single gallon of jet fuel.
Gotcha Bitch!!!!
Ground testing of a laser weapon called the High Energy Laser
It will also be referred to by some as the High-Powered Laser, or "HP Laser" for short, and jets with this type of weapon mounted upon them shall be known as HP Laser Jets
Yeah why not plan to add yet another feature to the F35 ? What could possibly go wrong...
Interesting stuff, and since we get a lot of our tech from gargantuan military budgets, it will be even more interesting to see what trickles down.
As opposed to weapons of destruction, lasers plausibly hold more promise disrupting communications in battle.
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Ernest Hemingway
Have laser power requirements really changed that dramatically since the Boeing YAL-1 project ended? The chemical oxygen iodine laser aboard the YAL-1 was a 1MW laser, and destroyed its targets (ICBMs) by heating the target until its fuel tanks ruptured - it didn't destroy the target in the traditional sci-fi sense of directed energy weapons...
Whether you can use the same approach for enemy aircraft, tanks etc remains to be seen - it will probably be more likely that such targets need an ablative weapon to be destroyed, as jet fuel can be heated considerably more than the pressurised tanks on an ICBM.
The YAL-1 carried enough fuel for 20 shots at 1MW strength, and it needed a Boeing 747 to carry it, so the summaries "thousands of shots using a single gallon of jet fuel" sounds a little ... optimistic when you consider the energy densities in play.
Stupid. Enemy planes will just carry a bag of unpopped popcorn as a countermeasure. Lasers cannot penetrate popcorn as we all know...
About the same time they fill a house with popcorn and figure out how to use the laser to pop it all.
John
Well, considering the long-standing figher tradition of painting shark teeth and eyes on the nose of a fighter plane. . . it's going to all depend on whether the laser is on the nose or not.
If under the wing, it will be "sharks with fricking lasers under their fins". . . .
Same as the ancient problem of aiming a gun, but without windage and air resistance.
I wonder what you have to do to do sufficient damage to an enemy?
They talk about starting with 10kW lasers; Steel has a specific heat of about 0.5, so if you trained the laser on the target for one second, you could vaporise a little over six grams of steel (not counting losses from transmission through the air, reflection etc) I can see that if you're using your laser to assassinate someone from a drone, that's certainly enough to kill someone, but is it enough to destroy a truck or an aeroplane? Is the laser even capable of operating continuously for a second?
Is this for fly-by LASIK?
Yeah, I recognize that it's kind of the military's job to maximize their potential for destruction, but this definitely seems like one of those combat technologies that the whole world joins together to condemn after it's been in use for a couple of years, and the US is all like "you other countries are just jealous you don't have it", until one day they do have it, and then all of a sudden we're totally against it too, only we have to keep using it because now everybody's using it. Eventually everybody but Iran and North Korea signs a really unsatisfactory treaty and we all go home feeling bitter and aggrieved for generations to come.
I just hope the inevitable tribunal is available in audiobook format.
Only if they fire it into a disco ball. If it's shining in your eye, It probably also just burned a hole through your head.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Yeah, we keep getting this "Laser based weapons platforms" stuff every once in a while. I guess to keep the funding going. "Until miniaturization" is something I been hearing since the 90s.
But they never really tell us how they solved the energy density problem.
They've developed transparent aluminum, allowing the shark tank walls to be MUCH thinner and lighter.
Unleash HEL!!!
I am sure some "military management" will demand a personal inkjet on their desk still.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Laser far too easy to counter. Smoke and larger air particles can counter for ground troops. For missiles, drones, and airplanes simply roll or make the exterior 'wiggle'. But a rail gun with say a varying 1-16 mj esp with smart ammo, is going to produce hits regardless of counter measures.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
... bystanders blind?
Oh wait, this is the military.
I remember reading somewhere that the laser rangefinders on some Chinese tanks are deliberately designed to be capable of destroying the optics on enemy tanks. I don't think that would count as a blinding weapon since its directed at the optics not the gunner.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
... will certainly have to be redefined.
...didn't help matters ...
Can't wait until we have the return of battleships armed with a Wave Motion gun and maybe with this advancement it won't take so long to charge.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Just let me know when I get to cut my hedges with laser shears. Or better yet, cut my whole yard in one burst!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Apparently, there aren't that many Ace Combat fans in the audience...
So I guess we will have to call a timeout if it is too cloudy, rainy, foggy, smokey or dusty. We'll have a sunny day fighting force. Nice...
However, if it's a side affect of killing them, then that's actually okay.
I think loss of vision is a side effect of being killed in 100% of fatalities.
and up you a bigger, better mirror!
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Oh come ON.
Not a single post complaining about the wasted funding to mount laster of fighters before we have bridged the "sharks with frickin' lasers attached to their heads" gap?
What is wrong with you people!??!
Ill leave it to someone else to work in "ONE MILLION DOLLARS"
They completely missed out on naming it the high energy laser light optical weapon or "Hello weapon."
They should put them in civilian airliners too.
Its an immediate and effective solution to idiots who shine laser pointers into cockpits, and/or fly their drones in airport airspace.
Yo buddy, still alive?
Wanna buy a shirt?
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Disco balls are not required. At this power level, even diffuse reflections of the laser are dangerous to the eye.
Unfortunately, it's also legal to blind three dozen bystanders while killing the crew of a military vehicle, as long as the blinding is merely a side effect of the weapon.
What's Catch-21?
It's like catch 22, but better!
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Maybe one could submit a test for the HEL System? Something like laser etching on the side of North Korean Mig-29 a message like, "Trump 2016"? Just a thought.
But why would lasers make it onto aircraft before ground- or water-based vehicles?
They are both much more forgiving, as far as weight/power requirements.
I suspect this is a mind-game gambit. The enemy now knows some of our planes MAY have a laser, but don't know which, when, or how many. Thus, they feel they have to spend money and weight to counter them. Even though the laser is probably not a significant threat at this time, the enemy is losing some resources and capabilities to counter them.
Table-ized A.I.
This is great for defense. Unlike some people have said, you don't need to physically destroy the entire missile engaging you. For IR heat-seekers, you just have to blind the seeker. For radar guided missiles, deform the radome. Missiles tend to travel at high speeds, if you can screw up the radome or any part of the structure sufficiently it'll make a big difference to the attacking missiles pk (probability of a kill).
Your same offensive weapon makes an awesome countermeasure against HOBS (High-Off-Boresight) stuff that someone might launch using a HMCS (Helmet Mounted Cueing System). If you have decent secure networking, there's no reason why a bunch of your team couldn't target the same target too. So instead of being hit by one laser, you hit the target with N lasers. The enemy having better kinematics becomes moot too. A rotating mirror can rotate much faster than even the most maneuverable airframe.
The best countermeasure to this stuff if you don't have equivalent stealth? It's tough. You can't detect attackers well enough to get a firing-solution, you have nothing on your warning receivers for your team. Best case, let's say you know somethings up there due to VHF radar. So you send up your stuff, and all of them just get swatted from the sky. You ask your best engineers what to do about it, and they say 'Our best idea is to make the environment so nasty we deny the enemy access'. How do you do that? Nuke your own airspace. If you can't see the enemy but your assets start exploding, fire off a pile of SAMS (in nice solid reflective casings, no fine guidance necessary) and nuke your own the airspace.
If they are at altitude then that's one thing (not much fallout). If they are using terrain shadowing / strike teams going in to take out your ground assets, then you are talking about basically carpeting yourself with fallout.
First of all, most of the people who are posting here don't know squat about laser types, and I'd guess that most of the people reading here that do know about laser types and the JSF plans for same aren't talking.
I'll just state for the record that there are lots of laser types other than chemical or diode.
I'll also point out what should be obvious: controlling the beam's phase as well as pointing accuracy is critical to achieving high power density on target.
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I believe there was an issue with laser-based weapons back when a tank-based laser targeting system was determined to be in violation of certain warfighting conventions in regards to blinding weapons. I supposed on the proposed air-to-air platforms it isn't much of an issue, but there would seem to be an issue with air-to-ground use, as it would be trivial to use a 1-megajoule laser to blind anyone in a large area who was looking in the wrong direction at the wrong time. Probably moot as the platform is air-to-air from the description, and probably less effective in real life than chemical explosion propelled metal, but it wouldn't surprise me if the technology got shelved over such concerns.
Then theres the issue of beyond visual range engagements, which is where most of the action happens these days and where missiles excel.
Except when you need to actually have positive target identification. Shooting a missile over the horizon can work but it's a lot harder to be certain you aren't blowing up the wrong target. Missiles have gotten better but target ID is still and problem and they still put guns on fighters for a reason. The F22 has a 20mm cannon and they aren't getting rid of it in the near future.
Plus direct line of sight for a laser system can be beyond visual range for a human eye.
If your fighter carries a laser and no missiles you better hope your laser can shoot down their missiles, which they will be firing at you from over the horizon where your laser cannot reach.
I don't think it is an either/or thing.
Soon, instead of just blowing the Wrong Religion Brown People to bits, now we're also going to intentionally blind even more, just to make sure their families and tribes never stop hating us, thus ensuring permanent, profitable war.
I'd need to know if we're the good guys or bad guys.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Then theres the issue of beyond visual range engagements, which is where most of the action happens these days ...
No. "They" have been saying that since the 1960s and it never works out that way. Pilots nearly always end up being told to get visual IDs. One major exception during an Arab/Israeli conflict (1970s), massive friendly fire incidents. Shooting down your own aircraft returning from a strike, mistaking them for an inbound enemy strike.
This long range missile engagement idea is why they had the early F-4 models with no guns. What a mistake. One that is not being repeated with the F22 and F35. Lasers might offer better range than guns some day, guns are far less than visual range with complex projectile trajectories.
What's Catch-21?
An inferior catch that catch-22 improved upon. :-)
Has anyone considered the amount of damage a laser would cause on the ground when they miss their target? Bullets may eventually slow down and missiles might destroy a small area, but a laser that is on for a few seconds could leave a stripe across a large area of land depending on its strength and the plane's speed. Does a laser even have a range limit before its intensity dissipates or does it just go full strength until it finally hits something?
The Navy did this first. They just strap together a few 10 kW industrial welding lasers.
The problem is that heat dissipation is a major issue, even on a Navy ship where weight doesn't really matter. The business end can be mounted on a standard gunnery mount of a ship – yes. But below-deck is a gigantic transformer to power the laser, and those things get HOT. Cooling at that scale requires liquids, not heat-pipes, making the whole systems extremely heavy.
The won't be in fighter jets for another 20 years, at least in any useful capacity.
CITATION: Navy's "Future Combat Needs", a public document. :-P
I dunno. Putting a laser on an aerospace fighter? First off, we don't have terribly great lasers and they're talking about pulsed operation so we're talking about an IS SPL or MPL at best. And given that (IIRC) vees and aeros need insulation to use energy weapons it's probably a single one. That's six damage with a six hex range on a very expensive aero. Even if we get two that's twelve damage at six hexes. Compared to that the F-16 can mount something like six OS Thunderbolt 10s in addition to a machine gun as a fallback weapon. Thats sixty alpha damage from twelve hexes out.
Sure, the F-16 mounting the MPL can fight longer in theory - but given the abysmal armor coverage on those things it's going to go down the first time someone hits it with an AC-10. And that AC-10 has superior range so to-hit bonus be damned, my money is on the AC-carrying ground unit.
In my opinion it'd be a smarter move to work on getting LRMs or HVACs on those aeros instead of trying to put a short-ranged weapon on an inherently fragile unit before you've even had significant experience using it on the ground.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)