The Pulse Laser is now a reality ...

[Lestradae]

See here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10682693

DaddyHoggy, do you know some trivia you can disclose about this here?

Cheers

L

[DaddyHoggy]

Moi? I know nothing...

Interesting that while Boeing has thrown Billions at the ABL with its horrible nasty toxic COIL system (much greater range to be fair), Raytheon have been gently ticking away waiting for Solid State Lasers to come to the fore.

Also, interesting that they don't mention that it would make a ruddy effective anti-personnel weapon too....

[Dave McRoss]

See also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS40LpYpQss

[Cmdr Wyvern]

There's been a turret-mounted weaponized laser system around for awhile now. The turret looks like a giant, mutated searchlight. However I believe it's a chemical based system, with the toxic fuel and all.

Way back in the day I read of particle-beam and ion laser weapons being developed. I wonder what became of those? I'm guessing shelved as an interesting but impractical experiment like the massdriver cannon.

[Dave McRoss]

Way back in the day I read of particle-beam and ion laser weapons

Sound familiar...
http://shipyards.relicnews.com/kushan/i ... igate3.jpg
It seems Nikola Tesla in 1934 manage to discover the so called "peace ray".
Daddy, read also the last note on this page, 'bout Sandia National Laboratories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle_beam_weapon

[Cmdr Wyvern]

There's been a turret-mounted weaponized laser system around for awhile now. The turret looks like a giant, mutated searchlight. However I believe it's a chemical based system, with the toxic fuel and all.

And this is what I was thinking of: The THEL system. It is indeed a chemical based, high energy laser gun.

[Killer Wolf]

i saw a vid of a laser shooting a drone down decades ago. was a bit pointless at the time, the drone had to be painted (red?) to specifically help absorption and it took a fair while to shoot down. lasers are totally unworkable as a defence system, afaic, and will be for at least a good few years. i'd stick w/ the normal Phalanx or such, tbh.

[Cmdr Wyvern]

i saw a vid of a laser shooting a drone down decades ago. was a bit pointless at the time, the drone had to be painted (red?) to specifically help absorption and it took a fair while to shoot down. lasers are totally unworkable as a defence system, afaic, and will be for at least a good few years. i'd stick w/ the normal Phalanx or such, tbh.

Decades ago we were playing Elite on some pretty primitive computer hardware. Nowadays computers have multiple processors, gobs of RAM, and HDD space out the wazoo.
Technology has advanced a lot in those few decades, and that's not just limited to computers.

Considering that, lasers totally unworkable as a defense weapon? I'd have to disagree. Lasers have advanced enough to shoot down small, fast moving targets, such as missiles and artillery shells, and shrank down enough to mount on a ship or 747. So no, not totally unworkable. Clumsy maybe, what with the most powerful point-defense lasers being dependent on chemical fuels. But, they're very precise. One shot, one kill.

If you want to shoot down larger targets, then by all means break out the guns and missiles. Lasers aren't ready to go blasting bombers or melting tanks yet, but in another couple of decades, who knows.

You mentioned the Phalanx point-defense gun. OK, sure, it can shoot down missiles with a reasonable rate of success. But it does that by slinging a lot of lead into the air; somewhere in the ballpark of a thousand rounds a minute. It's an inefficient "spray, pray, and spray again" approach. I didn't think bullets were all that cheap.

[DaddyHoggy]

i saw a vid of a laser shooting a drone down decades ago. was a bit pointless at the time, the drone had to be painted (red?) to specifically help absorption and it took a fair while to shoot down. lasers are totally unworkable as a defence system, afaic, and will be for at least a good few years. i'd stick w/ the normal Phalanx or such, tbh.

Decades ago we were playing Elite on some pretty primitive computer hardware. Nowadays computers have multiple processors, gobs of RAM, and HDD space out the wazoo.
Technology has advanced a lot in those few decades, and that's not just limited to computers.

Considering that, lasers totally unworkable as a defense weapon? I'd have to disagree. Lasers have advanced enough to shoot down small, fast moving targets, such as missiles and artillery shells, and shrank down enough to mount on a ship or 747. So no, not totally unworkable. Clumsy maybe, what with the most powerful point-defense lasers being dependent on chemical fuels. But, they're very precise. One shot, one kill.

If you want to shoot down larger targets, then by all means break out the guns and missiles. Lasers aren't ready to go blasting bombers or melting tanks yet, but in another couple of decades, who knows.

You mentioned the Phalanx point-defense gun. OK, sure, it can shoot down missiles with a reasonable rate of success. But it does that by slinging a lot of lead into the air; somewhere in the ballpark of a thousand rounds a minute. It's an inefficient "spray, pray, and spray again" approach. I didn't think bullets were all that cheap.

From memory, Phalanx rounds were about £50 each, so a half second* burst will cost you about (25x50 (@ 3,000rpm)) £1,250.

* I don't think Phalanx can fire in half-sec bursts though - 1 sec bursts probably, or it might be done on the number of rounds per burst - I didn't get much involved in the UK end of it - so it'd probably be easier to look it up in Google (although I am fairly certain about the cost of a single round)

[Killer Wolf]

it's radar tracked and very accurate, so i'd hardly call it "spray and pray"

[DaddyHoggy]

it's radar tracked and very accurate, so i'd hardly call it "spray and pray"

Even better since they integrated the FLIR on to our Block 1Bs (that's the bit I was involved in - right on the periphery - from a modelling point of view)

[Sarin]

If you want to shoot down larger targets, then by all means break out the guns and missiles. Lasers aren't ready to go blasting bombers or melting tanks yet, but in another couple of decades, who knows.

I doubt that lasers will ever be used for something else than point defense. There is just too many countermeasures possible against this kind of damage to be really usable on any high value target like aircraft or tanks.

[DaddyHoggy]

If you want to shoot down larger targets, then by all means break out the guns and missiles. Lasers aren't ready to go blasting bombers or melting tanks yet, but in another couple of decades, who knows.

I doubt that lasers will ever be used for something else than point defense. There is just too many countermeasures possible against this kind of damage to be really usable on any high value target like aircraft or tanks.

Blinding the driver/gunner/pilot with a laser is the quickest and currently easiest way to "kill" a tank or aircraft. This is banned of course, but lasers are used to frag optical sensors all the time, if there happens to be a Mk1 eyeball behind that optical sensor then so be it - pictures of post-exploding eyeballs really brings home just what this means - really not nice!

[Cows]

This seems to be a nice laser without the chemicals.
http://www.as.northropgrumman.com/produ ... index.html
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/03/military-laser/