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The US Army Finally Gets The World's Largest Laser Weapon System (bizjournals.com)
It's been successfully tested on trucks, as well as UAVs and small rockets, according to a video from Lockheed Martin, which is now shipping the first 60kW-class "beam combined" fiber laser for use by the U.S. Army. An anonymous reader quotes the Puget Sound Business Journal:
Lockheed successfully developed and tested the 58 kW laser beam earlier this year, setting a world record for this type of laser. The company is now preparing to ship the laser system to the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command in Huntsville, Alabama [according to Robert Afzal, senior fellow for Lockheed's Laser and Sensor Systems in Bothell]. "We have shown that a powerful directed energy laser is now sufficiently light-weight, low volume and reliable enough to be deployed on tactical vehicles for defensive applications on land, at sea and in the air..." Laser weapons, which complement traditional kinetic weapons in the battlefield, will one day protect against threats such as "swarms of drones" or a flurry of rockets and mortars, Lockheed said.
I hope a system like this will one day make nukes obsolete so that we can start having big wars again....
"We have shown that a powerful directed energy laser is now sufficiently light-weight, low volume and reliable enough to be deployed on tactical vehicles for defensive applications on land, at sea and in the air..."
No mention of sharks.
How much energy goes into the laser to get the 58kW out? 58kW is just over 78 horsepower, so it's not a huge amount of energy coming out and, at 100% efficiency, it could be driven by a fairly small power source.
Are we talking efficiency on the order of 10%, 1%, 0.1% less?
The question comes down to, can the beam be powered by a couple of car batteries or do we need a nuclear power plant?
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But can it make popcorn?
...this upcoming war will be the Pew Pew War.
Reflective coatings tend to not be efficient enough; they ablate and/or lose reflectivity when heated, and then the laser is into the target's vitals. Also, thick armor is heavy; that makes it impractical for missiles. The corresponding truth is that missile skins are very thin.
Also, given a reflective "enough" coating, now the target is easily visible on the battlefield. That tends to work out poorly for the target.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Nothing is 100% reflective; some energy will be absorbed, the object and it's coating will heat, start to char and the reflective properties will be lost.
The issue is holding the beam on the target long enough so that the absorbed energy will start to damage the coating and what's underneath. The time required drops as the energy level increases.
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Chris Knight: Was it a dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun-god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?
Laser weapons, which complement traditional kinetic weapons in the battlefield, will one day protect against threats such as "swarms of drones" or a flurry of rockets and mortars...
That is if their path can be correctly predicted. Some of these missiles/projectiles, especially from Russia, have random flight paths & no one is immune to them I am afraid.
You name it, we'll kill it.
Don't worry, they can become dancers for Katy Perry.
Nothing is 100% reflective
Right - even if you start with a space-telescope mirror quality finish, by time a bunch of GI's handle it and you fly it through the atmosphere you won't, with current materials.
And in the process of making the missile all shiny you've given up any effort at stealth.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
No.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
You could get a cat and mouse game, buy it would not last long as it is much easier to get an order of magnitude more laser power than to get an order of magnitude reduction in absorbed energy in the real world. I've used expensive mirrors in the lab that would never be practice outside of a clean room, and they still get their reflective coating stripped off by an off the shelf laser from time to time if you go slightly too high in power density. When reflective surfaces fail, they become no reflective in a fraction of a second and very quickly absorb a a lot of energy. You would probably buy yourself more time with ablative armor assuming you have room for that.
We could already do that. We needed the increased wattage so we can oppress lighter-skinned people, too.
We could already do that. We needed the increased wattage so we can oppress lighter-skinned people, too.
So this laser thing is really about diversity. I guess that's simply a natural progression of repealing "Do ask, don't tell"
If we gain the ability to disable missiles carrying nuclear warheads, then nuclear warheads will just be delivered in shipping containers.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The best reflectivity is fragile. A 10 W laser can burn a crater in a beautiful lab-grade mirror. (Flaw in the coating? minuscule deterioration? speck of dust?)
This can be translated into time instead. So if the laser damages the target in a microsecond, no coating will help. But if the beam has to be held on target for tens of seconds, some reflectivity will turn this into minutes and may make a difference.
I'm wondering if this actually can be done with parts that are not particularly advanced technologically.
For example let's for the sake of argument assume that they are simply combining hundreds of semiconductor lasers.
I would think that somebody without the budget and resources of the US military could also do this.
Don't know, I'm just wondering exactly how high the barrier to entry is.
Absolute statements are never true
It is worth noting that the same issue applies to the output window of the laser truck, though to a lesser degree. Very high transmission substances are available for windows, and they are much more robust than reflective coatings. A scratch or coating of dust could probably still destroy the system.
Of popcorn with that sucker.
Props if you know where that idea came from.
Ok.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
.. will overwhelm the power output of a single truck-mounted laser, even under ideal conditions.
For example, a 300 gram tungsten projectile will require a full second at 58 KW to be melted, assuming no reflection. An alumina projectile of 42 grams will require the same full second at that power.
Still no 5MW laser
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
How about firing this at the sleazeshitbags who cause people to be homeless, and those who harass and torment the homeless?
You think the A-10 is viable against modern handheld SAMS? They even have them in Syria.
Excellent points. We could also apply this to the space program. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo - designed to do something on a rush basis (less than a decade from scratch to the moon), and amazingly successful. The space shuttle? Immediately compromised by the need to do polar orbits for military spy missions.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Or Hungry Mutant Sea Bass, Hmm I guess that would have be the 'Navy' .... So Angry Mutant Moose would be what the Army would mount them on ..
BTW I want 1 Million Dollars ..................
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
Mirrors
Ballistic Disco Balls — A Tactical Threat Model
Baker S and Modesta R; RAND Corporation
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
200 drone can't carry much payload. And not very far.
I'd be very wary about saying what can or cannot be done with $200 worth of equipment. After all, cheap IEDs kill people, too. And modern SBCs give you a lot of computation for just a few bucks for guidance and control.
Ezekiel 23:20
The "problem" with the Eurofighter is that it was designed as an interceptor, and when it first came into service the argument was there was no need for an interceptor anymore because the cold war was over.
Thing is that Eurofighters are now being scrambled on a regular basis (well I was more aware exactly how often till they moved them out of Leuchars because you bloody well know when they take off on scramble) to intercept Russian planes flying around the coast of the UK.
So while it looked like an unneeded plane when it when into service, it is in fact required for exactly it's design purpose, at which it is pretty decent.
This gets us about 95% of the way through the plot of Real Genius. All that remains is for Val Kilmer to distract everyone by hitting on Melania while someone else hacks the laser to fill Trump Tower with popcorn.
I've used bigger lasers than this for component welding of cases for RF subassy for satellites.
58KW?
Anything faster than sound will cool faster than this idiotic "weapon" will heat!!
Nevertheless the Eurofighter is the only plane on the planet that is in service, excels at multiple roles, and even can be fitted to fulfill more than one role in a single mission, aka an anti tank run with an air to air intercept on the way home. The only other planes that are close to its performance are the Saab fighters and the brand new Su-47 (not so brand new anymore ofc.)
The Eurofighter does not VTOL, though.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.