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"We're already well past the physics, now it's just a matter of integration."

Article seems to indicate they'd be for taking out smaller targets such as small boats, drones, missiles and aircraft.

How long before we can mount these on sharks?

Or mutated sea bass?

Are they ill tempered?

I want them to hurry up with the railgun!

Also by time the F-35 is deployed there is a rumor that the Air Force version will have a particle projector.[DOUBLEPOST=1351172794][/DOUBLEPOST]And the Iranian Navy is working on mirror covered ships...


it don't work that way...

It worked for the Road Runner...

Needs more bayonets.

Well now we know what comes next of course. Making the lasers orange colored to differentiate from the bad guys purple or blue lasers.

Yoshimickster said:

Well now we know what comes next of course. Making the lasers orange colored to differentiate from the bad guys purple or blue lasers.

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Green, dude. Red for the good guys. ST < SW.

Bubble181 said:

Green, dude. Red for the good guys. ST < SW.

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Really? I thought it was red for the bad guys, green and blue for the good guys.

Or am I thinking of lightsabers?

bhamv3 said:

Really? I thought it was red for the bad guys, green and blue for the good guys.

Or am I thinking of lightsabers?

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You're thinking light-sabers. Also Bubble181 , I was talkin' more like G.I.Joe or Transformers. Or were those plasma blasters? Fleh, I don't even know any more.

So we're officially two years from this.

Well, the hovercarrier is a bit farther out than 2 years.

And note that the hand held "laser" assault rifles still eject brass with every shot.

GasBandit said:

Well, the hovercarrier is a bit farther out than 2 years.

And note that the hand held "laser" assault rifles still eject brass with every shot.

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Heh, lazy censorship.

I'm just saying that we need to find a way to combine our technological might with the tendency of our Armed Services to occasionally break out in song and dance numbers.

SpecialKO said:

So we're officially two years from this.

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Only good part of the movie. Although if the entire movie had been of that quality my head might have exploded from to much awesome.

Covar said:

Only good part of the movie. Although if the entire movie had been of that quality my head might have exploded from to much awesome.

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They clearly blew all their creative energy on the opening, because the rest of the movie is pure WTF-Am-I-Watching.

So, I'm confused. Is this actually a laser, or some sort of microwave or something. Even high powered lasers are still just light waves, and would thus be susceptible to light bending, like moisture in the air. Having a weapon that can be foiled by a light rain doesn't seem that effective to me. Then again, they don't really go into any of the science in the article.

Lasers. The linked pdf near the end of the article provides a summary of pros and cons to the various systems in development, which notes they are "not an all-weather solution." It also mentions that certain wavelengths can mitigate absorption from water vapor.

How big will these fuckers be? Like straight up turret size? And what are the chances of blowing-upitude? What will we call getting murdered by a laser? SO MANY QUESTIONS!

Yoshimickster said:

How big will these fuckers be? Like straight up turret size? And what are the chances of blowing-upitude? What will we call getting murdered by a laser? SO MANY QUESTIONS!

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I'm just grasping at straws here, but I tend to think that the reason they are to be mounted on a ship and not a plane or tank has less to do with the actual size of the weapon and more the size and strength of the power source. Like, the laser cannon itself might only be the size of a large machine gun or small defense turret, but it needs enough power to light up a city to effectively do damage at the range necessary to take out an aircraft or incoming missile. Furthermore, my guess at the actual weapon size is small also because they claim it can shoot down above fast-moving objects, and so a large ponderous turret or other such limited mobility solution would not be practical. They need to mount this thing on a fast, precise swivel, which means something of low mass and inertia. Unless its beam can be simply redirected by mirror or something, in which case the whole damn laser could be the size of a spinal mount cannon and housed deep in the bowels of the ship for all I know, and then they just reflect the beam up out of the hull and then off an agile "aiming" mirror or something, like the laser shows at planetariums.

GasBandit said:

Unless its beam can be simply redirected by mirror or something, in which case the whole damn laser could be the size of a spinal mount cannon and housed deep in the bowels of the ship for all I know, and then they just reflect the beam up out of the hull and then off an agile "aiming" mirror or something, like the laser shows at planetariums.

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IIRC that's how the majority (or all) laser printers work. The laser is fixed, the mirror directs it to where it needs to go.

Eriol said:

IIRC that's how the majority (or all) laser printers work. The laser is fixed, the mirror directs it to where it needs to go.

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I would think there'd be more to this naval laser though that might defeat mirrors. Perhaps the beam is not just in the visible spectrum, or maybe not in it at all like a maser or something. Otherwise... a chrome coating might render a missile un-laserable. Surely they've thought about that achilles' heel.

GasBandit said:

I would think there'd be more to this naval laser though that might defeat mirrors. Perhaps the beam is not just in the visible spectrum, or maybe not in it at all like a maser or something. Otherwise... a chrome coating might render a missile un-laserable. Surely they've thought about that achilles' heel.

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No mirrors are 100% perfect either. That's often the problem I've heard of with anything like this. (See Perfect Mirror for the theoretical, but look at the image in the Reflectivity article for typical mirrors) Let's say a mirror is 99.9% reflective (a Dielectric Mirror can hit this, and beyond, because it's single-wavelength), which means it's absorbing 0.1% of the energy. That means that for a megawatt (1,000,000W) laser, the surface has to absorb and tolerate 1,000W, or 1kW of energy. That's not massive, but still is non-trivial, and then requires additional cooling to the surface to KEEP it reflective (if it melts, obviously that's bad).

Any word on the numbers they're talking about for the military lasers? That'll give the numbers some realism.

Eriol said:

No mirrors are 100% perfect either. That's often the problem I've heard of with anything like this. (See Perfect Mirror for the theoretical, but look at the image in the Reflectivity article for typical mirrors) Let's say a mirror is 99.9% reflective (a Dielectric Mirror can hit this, and beyond, because it's single-wavelength), which means it's absorbing 0.1% of the energy. That means that for a megawatt (1,000,000W) laser, the surface has to absorb and tolerate 1,000W, or 1kW of energy. That's not massive, but still is non-trivial, and then requires additional cooling to the surface to KEEP it reflective (if it melts, obviously that's bad).

Any word on the numbers they're talking about for the military lasers? That'll give the numbers some realism.

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I suspect the numbers are classified, but at any rate, I haven't seen any.

The laser is typically unfocused when bounced around the aiming system, and the final lenses focus it to a tiny spot on the target.

Therefore the ship mounted mirrors are large, and reflect most of the light without heating up too much, and no matter how reflective the missile is, when you put 100kW into a spot the size of a dime you're going to blow a hole in the missile. It doesn't have to blow up the missile, it merely punctures the skin, and maybe fries some wires, or ideally hits the fuel tank or warhead, and causes the missile to self destruct.

A more reflective missile will need to be accurately tracked and painted longer for the same effect, but here we're talking about laser pulses that take a millisecond each or so.

It's probably easier to thing of a laser as a directed pinpoint heating system. It's just a way to create a ton of heat on a tiny spot on the side of a missile, and it happens instantly in human terms.

If you get the distance to target exactly right you can focus down to a pinpoint and blow a hole through the missile, but that's often not necessary.

GasBandit said:

I suspect the numbers are classified, but at any rate, I haven't seen any.

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Demonstration prototypes, depending on the system, have output between 10 kW and 105 kW. The expectation is that the systems under review can scale up into the 100-300 kW range (depending on the type), and perhaps beyond. Lasers in the MW range are not currently feasible, and are a long-term project.

Seriously, there's a ton of info in that linked pdf. None of the nitty gritty details, but there's still a lot of stuff.

The test done last year on the motor boat took several seconds for the laser to burn through the motor housing. I really hope that is not what they want to release to the fleet.

sixpackshaker said:

The test done last year on the motor boat took several seconds for the laser to burn through the motor housing. I really hope that is not what they want to release to the fleet.

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Several as in 4, or as in 45?

I was thinking around 10, but it has been a while since I've seen the video.

SOON

SPACE LASER HARP! WOOOO!

That looks like a DC Comics space ship carrying one different colored Lantern each.

I count 2 reds. Violet, Indigo, Red, Orange, Blue, Red, Yellow Green.

sixpackshaker said:

The test done last year on the motor boat took several seconds for the laser to burn through the motor housing. I really hope that is not what they want to release to the fleet.

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That particular system had a power output of 15 kW; looks like the Navy is aiming for a minimum of 60 kW lasers for the first generation, but who knows?

Keep in mind that each test is evaluating a different part of the system. Unless the motorboat test was evaluating system power (rather than say, tracking a slowly moving object, identifying objects, etc) then the time to burn through might not be important.

Creating a powerful laser is hard. Identifying a craft, understanding which part is best to target, and keeping the laser on that spot on the moving target is just as difficult. You can't expect a human to be able to do it like a video game - not for missiles, anyway.

/damn

missile command was so fun.

I just hope it makes pew pew noises.

Or, at the very least, star-wars fwat-fwat noises.

I only require when it fires that the enemy makes cursing noises.

If I don't hear a Wilhelm scream every 10th guy I shoot down, I'ma calling on the warranty of this thing!

GasBandit said:

I just hope it makes pew pew noises.

Or, at the very least, star-wars fwat-fwat noises.

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It should sound like Megatron's arm cannon from the original transformers cartoon.

http://tfwiki.net/w2/images2/2/2e/Fusion_Cannon_Fire.ogg

or like the Autobot laser sound effect

http://cybertronchronicle.freewebspace.com/acoustic-warehouse/tvshow/effects/Autobot_Laser.wav

What I'm trying to say is Transformers had rad sounding laser sound effects.

Frank said:

It should sound like Megatron's arm cannon from the original transformers cartoon.

http://tfwiki.net/w2/images2/2/2e/Fusion_Cannon_Fire.ogg

or like the Autobot laser sound effect

http://cybertronchronicle.freewebspace.com/acoustic-warehouse/tvshow/effects/Autobot_Laser.wav

What I'm trying to say is Transformers had rad sounding laser sound effects.

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Damn straight. Laser sound-effects bowadays...fleh. They just bore me.