So having worked on it, do you see it being any more viable with with near future solid state lasers? I can't say exactly (classified), but THEL is **considerably** more powerful that any existing solid state lasers. The more power you have, the faster you kill the rocket and can move on to the next one.
IF solid state lasers could make similar power, I think it would be MUCH more viable. (just plug it in). However, it still has the problem with being overwhelmed and destroyed.
For about a year on the mobile version that was supposed to go on a series of containers on trucks. The cost was going into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and so the army cut the program. One reason was that insurgents in iraq weren't using mortars very often anymore, so there wasn't much use for such a system.
A few months later, hezbollah in Lebanon started firing katyushas again, oh well.
It was the most awesome project I've worked on so far. I actually got to see it take out mortars in flight on monitors while sitting in command and control 5 km away. (The system in new mexico doesn't have very good output scrubbers, so to avoid NF3 poisoning, humans have to be 5km away while it is firing.)
There's also more problems with it than just chemicals. For instance, the glass window in the front that the beam exits from costs 1 million dollars and takes a year to make (got to withstand a vacuum and a very powerful laser).
And the biggest problem is, they overwhelm it by sending lots of rockets, and then send several directly at the device itself. One rocket gets through, and there goes years of work and millions of dollars.
Anyway, thought the slashdot crowd might find some of that interesting.
I must admit I am not an expert on solid state lasers either. I have worked only with chemical lasers.
However, as far as I know, they always use wall outlet power as an example for powering solid state lasers. That is, you could just plug'em in, and they work. The 10% number is just an estimate for the efficiency of wall outlets.
I would hope for a fighter jet they would use an electricity source that is more efficient.
No, the pulses will not "vaporize whatever is in front of them on earth", targeting something several km away from you requires the beam to be very focused.
Therefore, if the beam misses (which is unlikely since the beam would be turned off if the target lock is lost), behind the target the beam would unfocused and not much danger to anything.
Actually, the biggest problem with chemical lasers is not heat, but the output of the chemical reaction. On THEL (Tactical High Energy Laser); while firing, a plume of NF3 would be emitted, which required all personnel to be at least 5 kilometers away.
Solid state lasers are the one with heat problems. I.e. with supplied electricity at 10% efficiency, (like wall power), that's 90% heat that has to be put somewhere. So for a 150 kW laser, that amounts to 1350 kW of heat. That is a lot of heat to deal with on a fighter plane.
I would also like to know what they mean by a "liquid" laser. I used to work in the laser weapon industry, and I have never heard of such a thing.
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IF solid state lasers could make similar power, I think it would be MUCH more viable. (just plug it in). However, it still has the problem with being overwhelmed and destroyed.
For about a year on the mobile version that was supposed to go on a series of containers on trucks. The cost was going into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and so the army cut the program. One reason was that insurgents in iraq weren't using mortars very often anymore, so there wasn't much use for such a system.
A few months later, hezbollah in Lebanon started firing katyushas again, oh well.
It was the most awesome project I've worked on so far. I actually got to see it take out mortars in flight on monitors while sitting in command and control 5 km away. (The system in new mexico doesn't have very good output scrubbers, so to avoid NF3 poisoning, humans have to be 5km away while it is firing.)
There's also more problems with it than just chemicals. For instance, the glass window in the front that the beam exits from costs 1 million dollars and takes a year to make (got to withstand a vacuum and a very powerful laser).
And the biggest problem is, they overwhelm it by sending lots of rockets, and then send several directly at the device itself. One rocket gets through, and there goes years of work and millions of dollars.
Anyway, thought the slashdot crowd might find some of that interesting.
I must admit I am not an expert on solid state lasers either. I have worked only with chemical lasers.
However, as far as I know, they always use wall outlet power as an example for powering solid state lasers. That is, you could just plug'em in, and they work. The 10% number is just an estimate for the efficiency of wall outlets.
I would hope for a fighter jet they would use an electricity source that is more efficient.
No, the pulses will not "vaporize whatever is in front of them on earth", targeting something several km away from you requires the beam to be very focused.
Therefore, if the beam misses (which is unlikely since the beam would be turned off if the target lock is lost), behind the target the beam would unfocused and not much danger to anything.
Actually, the biggest problem with chemical lasers is not heat, but the output of the chemical reaction. On THEL (Tactical High Energy Laser); while firing, a plume of NF3 would be emitted, which required all personnel to be at least 5 kilometers away.
Solid state lasers are the one with heat problems. I.e. with supplied electricity at 10% efficiency, (like wall power), that's 90% heat that has to be put somewhere. So for a 150 kW laser, that amounts to 1350 kW of heat. That is a lot of heat to deal with on a fighter plane.
I would also like to know what they mean by a "liquid" laser. I used to work in the laser weapon industry, and I have never heard of such a thing.