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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.
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
The thing is current hel are 10 kilowatt and are the size of a car(often towed behind a Humvee)
To get to the mega joule requires a lot more fuel than a gallon of jet gas.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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.
Not only that, but this is immensely useful in annoying enemy cats
About the same time they fill a house with popcorn and figure out how to use the laser to pop it all.
John
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.