Huge news for real-life ray guns: Electric lasers have hit battlefield strength for the first time — paving the way for energy weapons to go to war.
In recent test-blasts, Pentagon-researchers at Northrop Grumman managed to get its 105 kilowatts of power out of their laser — past the “100kW threshold [that] has been viewed traditionally as a proof of principle for ‘weapons grade’ power levels for high-energy lasers,” Northrop’s vice president of directed energy systems, Dan Wildt, said in a statement.…
The battlefield-strength breakthrough is just one part in a larger military push to finally make laser weapons a reality, after decades of unfulfilled promises. The Army recently gave Boeing a $36 million contract to build a laser-equipped truck. Raytheon is set to start test-firing a mortar-zapper of its own. Darpa is funding a 150 kilowatt laser project that is meant to be fitted onto “tactical aircraft.”
Hmph. Call me old fashioned, but I still believe in lethality via high-velocity iron. Lasers sound cool enough, but furiously pushing to deploy them on the battlefield gives me this “someone watched too much Star Trek” vibe — like there’s a secret cabal of Pentagon geeks out there trying to make the Star Fleet a reality.
So the benefits are… what? Ammunition becomes obsolete, logistics simplify. IEDs will be safer to clear and incoming mortars easier to pluck from the skies. And no doubt the nifty –however pricey– airborne laser would be formidable, if it works as advertised.
But even Boeing, one of the technology’s most vociferous advocates, seems a bit dubious on the awesome factor for battlefield energy weapons, bragging: “…the system also took a step toward demonstrating a counter-unmanned aerial vehicle capability by destroying two small unmanned aerial vehicles that were stationary on the ground.“
Two parked UAVs eh? Suppose the broad-side of a barn was unavailable for targeting.
So color me skeptical. No doubt there’s some practical warfighting application here, but when I picture Star Wars-esque blaster fights, I can’t help but to picture smirking insurgents holding up their bathrooms mirrors as body armor. Though as a matter of record, I will gladly eat my words if Boeing discovers a way to fix these things to a shark’s head.
–John Noonan
{ 49 comments… read them below or add one }
So the benefits are… what? Ammunition becomes obsolete, logistics simplify.
And the costs of fuel, chemicals, and batteries skyrocket. Everything takes resources. Anything that moves requires energy.
Take the UAV-blasting headline and transpose “UAV” for “truck, fire hydrant, or hot dog stand.” All they proved was their laser could hit [something].
I’ll feel better about energy weapons when the eggheads can prove to me that its really more economical and effective to trade my bullets and rockets for battery-powered light-shows.
ok first lasers sound awsome and yea for missile defense maybe but……in a jeep…to take out mortars?,uavs….ok maybe aa, anti missile, etc but untile you can get a laser that works at around 500kw or so waste of time…for space defense satelites maybe yea the laser wont was so much energy just on the air…
And if we have something like that why do we still need a 747 with chemical lasers…..?
Give it time, guys. We’ve had guns for centuries. Of course they work better now.
Lasers? That’s planning for the future. There are two important bits of news here that are exciting. 1) It’s an electrical laser. That’s awesome, because you don’t have to carry around the big tanks of deadly chemicals. You just run power through it and it shoots. 2) It broke the 100 kW barrier. That’s something that only a few years ago seemed impossible. I remember reading something from like 2002 that said electrical lasers were in like the 10 to 20 kW range. That’s a massive improvement over a short time, much greater than any increase in ballistic power over the same time.
Early firearms were VERY retarded too, they have come a long way. In the mean time firearm development, at least on the assault rifle scale has been pretty quiet for the last 30 odd years. Just refinements of existing concept.
I’m not sure on detail, but I suspect one of the values of laser weapons is the efficiency and reliability with which they pass through air. So maybe they will never replace personal weapons, but they could very realistically replace missiles, at least in LOS engagements.
OOOOO, i just had a great Idea…. laser artillery… you have a massive ground based laser, and a semi suicidal pilot flying around in a plane with adjustable mirrors attached… think about it…
And Uncle Sam still cannot make a better assault rifle than the AK-47.
Sigh… just plain sad, sad, sad…
This laser rubbish only reinforces the perception that American equipment is overpriced bells-n-whistles. Somebody please take a baseball bat to these eggheads, or drag them to a real warzone.
What a co-ink-e-dink. Just today I received an email from the NRC/NAS with some of their latest publications ‘of interest’ to me. They had a free download of their “Scientific Assessment of High-Power Free-Electron Laser Technology”. Ties into this article nicely. Bottom line: important breakthrough, but miles to go.
Download the NRC paper at: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12484.html, but make sure to deselect the preset ‘notify’ option or you too will receive articles ‘of interest’.
These weapons hold tremendous potential as ‘game-changers’ on the battlefield. But even if they come to fruition their day too will pass, just like all other game-changers. There is only one ultimate weapon: the mind of man. Aren’t we lucky it can do other things as well?
re: “So the benefits are…”
track, intercept
becomes
track and intercept
the applications at this point are strictly in the C-RAM domain. lasers literally cut the trajectory math in half.
Hey, it might give us some sort of portable light anti-tank weapon. Or a sniper rifle. If anything it’ll probably start off as a large weapon and work it’s way down in size. Phalanx CIWS or an aircraft with a laser would be nice (wouldn’t lasers on an aircraft complement missiles nicely?)
In response to TB, we need the 747 because lasers have limited range and the 747 is able to patrol outside denied areas where a ballistic missile will launch from. Also, these electric lasers have the power to destroy small missiles, shells and small UAVs, but they lack the energy, much less the range to destroy a giant ICBM. These are mainly counter battery weapons – the technology has already been proven, anyone can look up MTHEL videos on youtube.
Re.: “….I can’t help but to picture smirking insurgents holding up their bathrooms mirrors as body armor.”
Well, maybe, if it’s a relatively low-powered system.
Mirrors do not reflect anywhere near 100% of the energy beamed at them. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror, “Cheaper technical mirrors use a silver, aluminium, or gold coating (the latter typically for infrared mirrors), and achieve reflectivities of 90
Pretty harsh skeptics in here- sounds like you guys have written laser weapons off a priori. I have my reservations about this type of technology (mainly with respect to reliability) but laser weapons have made great progress these past few years. 105kW is A LOT of directed power.
As far as hitting stationary UAVs, “crawl – walk – run” is the normal progression; you gradually add complexity. Hitting moving targets is a test of your target tracker and not necessarily of your laser itself. So before you zap moving targets of course you’re going to test things out on stationary targets.
If a viable (non-chemical) laser weapon were available the benefits would be huge. Your main logistics limit is how much diesel fuel you have to power your electrical generators. Collateral damage could be truly minimized. Not to mention that as the technology improved the laser would become ever smaller, lighter, and more readily deployable.
You guys are missing the coolest thing about lasers. They travel at the speed of light. 10 years from now, “evasive manueveur” will be as obselete as “phalanx formation”
I’d recommend that that this laser be adapted and fitted to aircraft as self-defense as fast as possible.
Modern military aircraft are absurdly costly and vulnerable to AA missiles. No matter what this laser costs, it would certainly be a good idea to use it for protection on platforms that cost their weight in gold.
Actually, laser weapons will cause a reversal in the classic armor vs. missile equation. Allow me to explain…
Lasers are, by definition, speed-of-light weapons which can engage any target within their line of sight. Today we rely heavily upon air power, whether from cruise missiles or attack aircraft carrying laser-guided bombs; however, if laser weapons evolve to the point where they can destroy any airborne threat, then the balance of power will shift to massive, heavily-armored ground units with immense power supplies and multiple laser emitters (plus both indirect and direct fire kinetic energy weapons).
The airplane almost drove the tank to extinction. Lasers will reverse that equation because if you can see it, you can kill it – and there’s no way to put enough armor on an aircraft to compete with a ground unit.
For those scifi fans out there, this is a popular theme in the literature. Look at Keith Laumer’s BOLO series or David Drake’s “Hammers Slammers” for some examples….
You’re quite right, the US shouldn’t be wasting money staying in the forefront of new weapons technology.
Far better to let the Chinese develop laser weapons first and follow on after that — maybe a decade or two after they’ve ironed all the bugs out in actual combat.
Hell, look at all that money wasted on the atom bomb when we could just have let the Russians do the research and get there first instead!
We could back up in history to the stone as a weapon and move forward to todays weapons. Few in each generation have thought those of tomorrow possible. Its simple – technology advances constantly. Don’t have to know too much to see that.
Lasers are just another logical evolution of battlefield weapons. They’re coming, they will continually evolve and become smaller and/or more powerful. They’re now proved sufficiently that its just a matter of time and money. In the process they will obsolete a number of existing weapon systems and tactics. They will be yet another one of the game-changers forcing everyone to rethink their strategies. I don’t even understand why there are any naysayers here.
Getting 100k with electrical laser is quite a breakthrough. However, it’s useful roles in combat maybe limited. You can’t replace a howitzer with a laser, but, you could in theory take out the howitzer round with one.
The 747 with the laser would be cool if we could get the developers to admit the chemical laser is a dead-end for an aircraft based laser weapon.
I think we’ll see lasers on the battlefield much sooner than predicted, although, I believe it will be used for defensive systems first.
BTW, for the record and AK47 isn’t necessarily better than a m16. I’ll take the less reliable m16 any day of the week. What’s the point of a gun if I can’t hit anything with it? Plus I’ve seen high speed footage of an AK firing and the way it twists and bucks, it isn’t anything I want near my face.
If you look at the entire spectrum of “new age” weapons as a whole and I include magnetically fired devices such as rail guns and coil guns in this. Then you have the above mentioned magnetically fired weapons, particle beams and lasers. The lasers you are seeing would relate quite nicely to the first breach loading cannons of the pre-WWI time period and logically as each generation takes advantage of the engineering and scientific advances in power storage, material science, efficiency, miniaturization and targeting then they will advance to a “Star Wars” level. But if you cut out the funding especially the military funding then the advance slows to a crawl and maybe just maybe the “other” side gets an advantage.
WTB
Gee, let’s see: crippling sensors, pinpoint disabling of enemy vehicles from antennae to road wheels, battlefield defense against missiles and artillery, etc.
How much does an aircraft carrier cost again? How much does the SGLI work out to on a tank, with the loss of a tank? What about a F-16 or a C-5? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a laser system capable of guarding a runway and/or mounted on a fighter capable of speed-of-light defense?
Save the Star Wars riffs if you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Posted by: Scott Drumm at March 19, 2009 08:35 AM
Yea great point also a more upto date author john ringo in one of his series the enemies had such good anti air tech that it rendered missiles, stealth fighters, and any other rocket or jet proppelled weapons systems immediatly destroyed and worthless…all the fighting was done by ground troops and old naval vessels including the iowa class and ww2 era heavy crusiers…moderatly upgraded of course….(yes im a dork dont care.)
The land based phalanx system can destroy incoming mortar rounds and missiles easily what will the next 10-20 yrs bring in this field.
Good Afternoon Folks,
Ah I knew it was coming another laser story, last nigh on the news I saw a story about cold fusion or table top fusion, some how these two topic always appear at the same time, and always disappoint.
The laser I believe that John Noon is referring to was in a show and tell at Northrop Grumman yesterday for the Army in California. A few tech details: this is a new design solid state laser vs. the traditional gas laser, power source expected to generator off gas turbine engines on land vehicles or ships or the jet engines in fighter aircraft. The range of the 100KW (105KW as tested yesterday), is expected to be about 10Km. once fully developed. It is expected that at that range, this laser when weaponized could take out a tank or an approaching aircraft. Test unit is expected about 2012 fielding about 2020. I’m sure visions UAV laser fighters are dancing in many heads today.
If you believe all the above, you have been reading, or watching way to much Science Fiction.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
If you believe all the above, you have been reading, or watching way to much Science Fiction.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Posted by: Byron Skinner at March 19, 2009 02:19 PM
——————
LOL realy like the nucleur reactor? or the submarine? or the airplane? or moon bases? or etc etc etc………science fiction has long seen things coming down the line no military anylist has.
So while i might not see laser drones i do see new nuke powered and yes eventually fusion (though high doubt about cold fusion)powered warships with laser powered BMD and railguns.
Through imagination determination blood and science man can overcome any obstacl no matter how great or unlikly
If, and I mean a Big IF, speed of light weaponry can be battlefield ready it will revolutionize warfare.
300,000 km per SECOND baby that’s what I’m talking about. It is worth the modest investment.
Obviously, lasers as weapons are still in the developmental phases at the moment. The cool thing is that they’re actually making progress now, as opposed to 10 to 15 years ago when you might as well have been trying to make a lightsaber.
I could see lasers being used for a variety of purposes. Tank hunting? Nah, not yet. We have better and cheaper alternatives. But we could see some modification of the CWIS system with lasers, especially elecrtical lasers mounted on a nuclear carrier with electricity to spare. I could see mounting them on a Predator style drone, something with lots of capacitors to power it. You could use it to snipe insurgents. No noise, in the invisible spectrum, you could shoot targets on the ground with zero warning. Achmed wouldn’t even know his camel was dead until he looked over and saw its smouldering corpse.
Weapon grade lasers will fill niches we didn’t even know existed. Laser pistols? A cannon on the moon? That stuff is science fiction. But as a missile defense weapon that can fire again and again and you don’t worry about intercept time? That could work.
You’re all missing the most exciting use of these weapons; tactical mosquito defense!
Its rebirth as a bug killer came thanks to Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft Corp. executive who now runs Intellectual Ventures LLC., a company that collects patents and funds inventions. His old boss, Mr. Gates, had asked him to explore new ways of combating malaria. At a brainstorming session in 2007, Dr. Wood, the Star Wars architect, suggested using lasers on mosquitoes.
Soon Dr. Wood, Dr. Kare and another Star Wars scientist teamed with an entomologist with a Ph.D in mosquito behavior and other experts. They killed their first mosquito with a hand-held laser in early 2008.
Will we see an anti-mortar system that can dail down the power and blast mosquitoes out of the air?
You’re all missing the most exciting use of these weapons; tactical mosquito defense!
Its rebirth as a bug killer came thanks to Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft Corp. executive who now runs Intellectual Ventures LLC., a company that collects patents and funds inventions. His old boss, Mr. Gates, had asked him to explore new ways of combating malaria. At a brainstorming session in 2007, Dr. Wood, the Star Wars architect, suggested using lasers on mosquitoes.
Soon Dr. Wood, Dr. Kare and another Star Wars scientist teamed with an entomologist with a Ph.D in mosquito behavior and other experts. They killed their first mosquito with a hand-held laser in early 2008.
Will we see an anti-mortar system that can dial down the power and blast mosquitoes out of the air?
Search for the WSJ article “Rocket Scientists Shoot Down Mosquitoes With Lasers “- the anti-malaria folks are building laser-based mosquito killers.
Now scale up to people killing lasers…
I don’t get the negative slant in the article. Lasers can be applied to nearly every kind of aircraft role imaginable. Who needs shorter-ranged missiles when you have a laser that shoots at light speed? If you can see it, you can kill it. Air combat will essentially break down into BLOS missiles and shorter ranged laser fire. Oh yeah, and the higher you get, the better the range you get too. :)
By the way, the only thing this post lacks is a more accurate graphic: http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/72935/
Some time ago I read a story about the creation of a power generator the size of a beer keg that could produce a megawatt. It uses superconductors.
This and the electrical laser sounds like a marriage.
I also recall reading somewhere that they were testing a directed energy weapon on one of the Spectra gunships.
“The airplane almost drove the tank to extinction. Lasers will reverse that equation because if you can see it, you can kill it – and there’s no way to put enough armor on an aircraft to compete with a ground unit.”
True – although one might suggest that only applies to aircraft attacking within effective ‘line of sight’ of the tank – it would lead to a fundamental change in power balance since (depending on the power of the weapon) an A-10 equivalent becomes as much use as a chocolate fireguard against armoured formations.
High altitude bombers….well, enough people have unflattering opinions about their effectiveness on battlefield conditions, but in this case it would depend on the effective ‘kill’ range of a laser versus their attack altitude (which requires some energy dissapation characteristics I’m not qualified to do) and – more importantly – targeting. A laser is, despite initial impressions – a git of a weapon to use in a long-range AA role since you’ve got to align the weapon accurately from its mount – no terminal guidance, no area-effect warhead. This therefore requires the sort of search-and-tracking radar fit associated with high-end surface-to-air weapons for each mount (which given the accuracy involved would have to be on the vehicle itself). Not inherantly a problem but it does, as noted, end up with a tendancy towards weber-style land battleships.
The problem with that is that they get even less use than current heavy armour outside the fulda gap – it wouldn’t be able to operate in a sub-major-metropolis urban environment without utterly demolishing it…not a great way to win over the locals. Of course, again, not inherently a problem depending on how you wish to approach matters, but certainly worth noticing – super-heavy tanks may not win friends but I must admit they would certainly influence people.
Of course, the *real* decider with the ‘invulnerable to airpower’ laser-armed heavy tank is how good it is in an anti-missile role (and that’s terrain-following missiles and close-ranged ATGW, not those that are polite enough to follow a parabolic trajectory like mortar shells) – As noted, if you can see it, you can kill it.
That, however, has been something rotory-wing aviation crew and infantry have been fully aware of for the last half-century or so (nice of the treadheads to finally realise it as well), and is something to bear in mind when talking about a colossal war engine that you’ll hear grinding its way along the roads from really quite far away….
Two things, often forgotten, are relevant to lasers as combat weapons:
1) They’re line of sight! OK, so everybody knows this, but the reverse of this is, that if your target’s behind a building, or a hill, or below the horizon, you’re s**t out of luck as far as hitting it with your super-duper-powered laser gun is concerned.
2) “If you can see it,you can hit/kill it” is only true for a given value of “true”. It assumes that your targeting sensors, your laser pointing mirrors and ditto servos are perfect, and that your laser can fire indefinitely (which it can’t, if nothing else due to cooling issues). The countermeasure to the laser: Rapid manoeuvering and aspect changes (to prevent the laser from dwelling on the same spot) and saturation attacks (as well as, as mentioned in 1), terrain masking).
So yeah, a weapons grade laser would be a neat and usefull addition to anyone’s armoury, but it won’t be a do-all, end-all….
Regards,
Thomas L. Nielsen
Denmark
What about EMPs vs high power lasers…
I have no knowledge of this subject, but I have read somewhere high power gas ionizing lasers could create a cylinder of conductive material. Could a potential adversary send a high power EMP pulse through this ionizing chamber and literally zap the laser source?
Could maybe creating a form of atmospheric pollution increase the chance of this ionizing effect?
I work with metal cutting lasers as part of my day-to-day job. Ours run about 3KW and are pretty good at cutting thin metal. When the metal gets thicker the amount of time to make the same cut goes way up. Simple physics. It takes a given amount of Watt-seconds/square on a particular piece of metal to cut it. A >20 dB increase in power means a couple things. First, if you generate a plasma between the beam and the metal being cut, that slows down the cutting speed. If you have a large beam and just want to soften the metal to a melting point without generating the plasma then you would literally be taking the aircraft apart in flight. Molten aluminum on now exposed wiring would really mess with the aircraft.
I suppose the tactics would be to stand off and wait for a flight of the bad guys to come around and begin picking them off from the rear of the formation. That way they would tend to maintain formation for a longer period of time. Also if you’re firing lasers from say 10 miles away you have a laser to on target time of around 62 microseconds and no one has reflexes anywhere near that fast. Even if you’re 100 miles away the time to target is around .620 msec and a big enough number of good guys to bad would have the bad guys done for. This might change air warfare more than anything since WWI since large formations would be sitting targets esp, if the aircraft attacking them are stealthy.
Again, I don’t understand where some people are getting their data. I don’t think that anybody is suggesting that airborne lasers will replace guided conventional ground attack munitions or even B-LOS missiles. The laser is going to be a specialized weapon that will take the place of the cannon. It’ll obviously have an improved range, but the role is the same. Close-range air-to-air combat is where a laser’s strength really shines. Also, who’s talking about melting down a plane mid-flight? You don’t need to burn through the airframe when you can make a single hole that’ll get ripped apart by the force on the plane.
As far as targeting, I don’t think that’s going to be tricky once we get the focusing problems down – I’m not an expert with modern optics, but I’m sure that we have systems that can pivot fast enough to track a moving target. I mean, don’t we have telescopes that track satellites moving at 4km/s?
If it can save lives & yet scare the H*** from a foe than I say YES R&D & fund them
Add some models to these Mounts:
LPD 17s
CVN carriers
LHDs
Abhrams Tanks
Patton tanks?
B2
F117
DDG 51 types
modified AWACS?
Ground based Fixed with 180 arc sweep.
FFG types
USCG cutters- deter drugs?
B52? fit in bombay & add Laser turrets?
(B52 Flying Fortress 2).
Later, hand held rifle size Man Units?
& Psionic EM beams too.
Sonic beams?
o Before you start looking down on mirrors too much, 80% reflectivity means 4/5 doesn’t get through, and you just get a suntan, its coatings will still be slow to burn because, well, there’s that mirror keeping off most of the heat, and it’s nogo on burning those vehicles. A mirrored missile will prolly getcha before you can burn it.
o Google “corner reflector.” They can reflect beams from any direction to where they came from. I’ve never understood why we wouldn’t expect to see them to be dotted over useful military hardware and targets, making the laser’s life short.
o I’m skeptical of particle beam weapons for the same reason – check out “Faraday cage.” Neutron beams wouldn’t have that problem, but they’re tons harder to make.
o Gimme an ol-fashioned missile any day.
“Before you start looking down on mirrors too much, 80% reflectivity means 4/5 doesn’t get through, and you just get a suntan, its coatings will still be slow to burn because, well, there’s that mirror keeping off most of the heat, and it’s nogo on burning those vehicles. A mirrored missile will prolly getcha before you can burn it.
o Google “corner reflector.” They can reflect beams from any direction to where they came from. I’ve never understood why we wouldn’t expect to see them to be dotted over useful military hardware and targets, making the laser’s life short.”
Think spectrum and wave lengths. At some IR wavelengths a pane of glass won’t allow beam passage and the glass would heat up. Same thing with corner reflectors and mirrors. All Wavelength dependent. A 4/5 reflectivity only means that it would take a bit longer to penetrate through the mirror. 4/5 of 100KW is 20KW. A lot of power.
Jon, you don’t know what you’re talking about. 4/5 reflectivity is going to turn into 0/5 reflectivity really fast when the laser burns through the mirror.
You’re actually suggesting someone cover an entire missile with mirrors? Good way to get a missile that doesn’t fly.
When it gets small enough, i figure these could be useful on helicopters dropping troops into hot-zones. The laser could defend the craft from nasty RPG’s and other small missiles that are cheaply obtained by 3rd world fighters.
Also, a few lasers with morter detectors would help marines and other land-forces in places like Afghanistan sleep better. These lasers could neuter incoming morters fired at the soldiers bunks.
Good Morning Valcan,
The technology will of course develop, but the two questions will always be cost vs target value and can do the same mission with cheaper resources.
Take example one of the systems you mentioned, nuclear reactors. For submarines they proved the right technology but for surface ship other then power hungry carriers they have not been successful. And nuclear power have proven way to expensive for merchant ships.
Again this is a weapon most likely to be kept alive in Science Fiction.
Just to rattle your chain Valcan, do you have an opinion about the possible elimination of CSAR units. Their cost is running into the $ billions, there is the Latin American stand off between the AF and Boeing regarding the CH-47 as a replacement aircraft and the issue of UAV’s don’t leave downed air crews.
This idea though is not with out merit and the absurdity becomes larger when you take into consideration that both the Navy and Air Force maintains duplicate capabilities. Perhaps like in air refueling one service can reduce it capacity and save some more, if not just do away with it all together, use spec ops and regular air crews when (even if) the needs arise.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
The interesting thing here is not just the power level, but HOW they reached it, by combining multiple beams, or by amplifying an existing beam. There are other research projects going on right now to design more efficient single-source lasers, through thin-disk mediums or circular fiber-optic laser assemblies. The net effect of all these developments down the road means we can expect 500kw lasers within a few years. This laser is actually capable of 120kw, it is using 7 of 8 available “modules”.
CTR1(SW): The “beer keg” sized generator you’re referring to was probably a device called a “compulsator”, which when combined with a flywheel is able to convert a mass of kinetic energy into a short pulse of electrical energy. This would be good for a 1-2 second shot from this laser, but my guess is it will be used for long-durations in all it’s practical applications.
SMSgt Mac: Free electron laser operates on a completely different principle than this laser. Free electron lasers do have some interesting characteristics that could possibly be used to augment solid state lasers, but they are very complicated and require a lot more space. The solid state laser is at it’s core an up-scaled version of a laser pen.
I see the practical applications being primarily the defense of small cheap artillery or rockets (qasam rockets for instance). A terrorist could launch a $100 rocket at a mall and you could probably shoot it down with a $100,000 interceptor missile, but this laser could do the job for a few hundred dollars. As sec defense rumsfeld put it, by it’s very existence it will serve as a deterrent to use such weapons.
I think it’s underestimated the effect of this laser on a target. With 100kw you certainly could take out a tank, after a minute or two of lasing and 40 degrees hotter, I’m sure the occupants will get out and run away. You’ll scare the bajeebas out of any person on the ground who witnesses his comrade spontaneously combust (for a few hundred $ worth of shot, no less). The reason they are putting these lasers on C-130 for tactical applications is that it is not meant to provide the same capability as a bomb or projectile does. With a laser everything is toally different. You don’t shatter the structure of the tank, you zap a hole through a critical component (the fuel tank), or you shoot out all the tires on a truck in an instant, destroy the fire controls of a machine gun. You could more effectively take out a convoy of vehicles with a laser by disabling every single vehicle at a pre-programmed attack. Imagine, the operator picks out all the vulnerable areas on all the vehicles to disable, presses go, 2 minutes later they are all just sitting their (waving the white flag, hopefully).
I think Jeff M hit it right on the money. You cannot see, hear, or detect a laser beam coming at you. It’s instant bbq. And as he stated, you don’t need to melt down the entire tank/truck/missile, just hit a critical portion of it. Or even deform the metal enough to wear it effects the aerodynamics of said missle or munition.
150kw is a heck of a lot of laser energy. the enemy won’t know what’s going on until it’s too late to react. No puff of smoke, no tracer, no nothing. Armor would just start blowing up or folks would get the worst sunburn they have had in their lives.
And it will be used as a defensive weapon first. Park two large trucks(will not need a landship or some huge crap like that) in the area you wish to defend, one for power, the other holds the actual laser portion/beam director. All aerial threats could be neutralized.
Byron Skinner: it’s also interesting to note that lasers are capable of igniting fusion on small fuel pellets when fired at quick and powerful levels. This laser at ~20% efficiency is possibly a precursor to a real energy producing fusion device. It has been known by scientists for a long time that laser blasts are much more likely to produce an effective fusion reactor than the tokamak reactors being tested (ITER). This laser could be a truck-sized nuclear fusion reactor at some time in the future, it’s VERY LIKELY in my opinion. There are devices that “shrink” a laser beam in length, in goes a long duration firing, out comes a shorter duration. This beam combining technology has been in use for laser-based fusion ignition facilities for a long time. Of course the lasers involved are thousands of times more powerful than this one.
I hope for UAVs with lasers, they could loiter over Afghanistan and kill bad guys without blowing up the whole village they are staying in. And their would not have to reload that quickly, given that they have a sufficient energy storage capacity.
It aint going to pass muster. Read my article "The First Laser Gun Was Too Cruel to use.
Joseph Connaughton
It's not going to make muster. Google my article "The First Laser Gun Was Too Cruel To Use"
Joseph Connaughton
it's about the only weapon that can shoot down an ASBM fired at an aircraft carrier-
<<I can’t help but to picture smirking insurgents holding up their bathrooms mirrors as body armor.>>
it'll burn through mirrors, it's not visible light, so won't be reflected-