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Posted: 8/25/2005 5:36:21 PM EDT
www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/25/starwars_laser/ US fighters tooling up with lasers By Gavin Clarke in San Francisco Published Thursday 25th August 2005 22:08 GMT The US military is going all Star Wars with plans to equip its aircraft with laser guns to shoot down enemy missiles and aircraft. The snappily named High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System (HELLADS) program has been tasked with the job of developing, building and testing a relatively small and light-weight laser device for use by aircraft. The device, or HEL laser, must weigh less than 750Kg and be capable of producing a 15kW beam. HEL laser is being overseen by the Defense Research Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA), which manages R&D projects for the US Department of Defense. HEL laser is designed to over-come traditional problems associated with laser-based weaponry. Lasers guns are typically too large to fit in the confines of a fighter and are prone to overheating. The New Scientist reports, though, DARPA believes it has overcome these conventional limitations by combining high energy density solid-state laser technology with liquid laser technology to control the heat-generation problem. Right. |
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Anyone know what kind of damage a 15kw laser will do? Are we talking small clean hole in something, or blown to smithereens type damage?
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I want my planes with frikken laser beams on their frikken pylons....
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15KW is PLENTY to wreck hardware in a big hurry.
Lasers that cut steel plate for fabricated articles are generally 20 watts or so and can cut eighth inch thick steel at the rate of several inches a second. 15 KW focused on an airborne fighter would burn holes in it in a fraction of a second. The chief destruction mechanisms would be setting off fuel tanks and burning the pilot. CJ |
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So what happens if someone shoots at someone else from above and the laser passes through and ignites buildings in a city below?
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Now if we can only get plasma weapons past the 40 watt barrier we'd be set!
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If it's over indian country who gives a flying fuck.
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There are American cities on earth too. |
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I wonder how fast the weapon will pulse? Will it shoot just one time or will it say pulse 10x in 1 second. I guess the power requirements and how much heat can be released will determine how it will be fired.Quick pulses in a pattern will do more damage than 1 long pulse.
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Physics. It's what makes things work. Learn about it. Specifically things like the inverse square rule. To explain...lasers aren't like bullets or missiles. They won't just keep on going with the same destruction potential. The further they get from the source, the wider the beam spreads until it's too wide to carry heat. Now, if you had a nuclear reactor or some such thing powering it, it might be able to travel from 10 or 20,000 feet and still punch a hole in something on the ground (NOT ignite it...you'd have to focus it for a time on one spot to ignite it unless it was a REALLY intense, high power beam) but the power from the turbines of a fighter jet or even a big bank of batteries or fuel cells on a C130 or some such thing wouldn't be enough to create a beam that could do that. We'll be lucky if we can get it to punch a hole in the skin of a fighter at a mile away. |
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Ohh man this is sweet!
Bet the Europeans and peaceniks love this |
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Doesnt say when this is going into the mainstream arsenal. From the sound of the NewScientist report, not until 2090.
More propaganda that will cost lives in war because our public is so complacent and thinks we have death rays from space and laser missile defense systems protecting us. Zzzz wish I had a penny for everything DARPA is wokring on that doesnt exist yet. |
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15KW is a pretty darned powerful laser, but they can actually control the length of the beam by pulse modulation. Been done for years in commercial and scientific applications. |
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When they get it working. They're still working on the YAL-1's laser. And they have a whole 747 to squeeze it into. It may be a while before they replace the M61 in the Super Hornet. |
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What about a cloudy day? Or maybe a shiney surface? The prupose would be the penetrate the skin of the missile and mess up the electronics. Probably no spectacular explosions......unless they miss.
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An easy 90% of a missile is fuel. Puncture the skin, the missile doesn't fly much longer. Airplanes are alot of gas flying around too. |
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A (relatively) small laser weapons system would really kick ass... so long as we didn't share it with any 'allies' too fast. But about it kicking ass, well, combat effectiveness of new platforms would be enhanced dramatically to say the least. It would also make effective space-based weaponry a feasable reality (at least, lasers which don't overheat easily).
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Incoming warheads will not have any fuel left in them. They will be merely falling towards their targets. We can already destroy airplanes without having them in visual range so using a laser in a dog fight scenerio may look good in the movies, but not practical in real life at the moment. Projectile weapons still have several advantages that are hard to beat.
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actually, what they are really gonna do is fry the enemy pilot. it takes an order of magnitude less power to fry a person than blow the plane
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No, the missle will rip itself apart after you punch a hole in it and compromise its structurial integrity and the warhead will fall well short onto its own territory. |
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I thought they were already fielding a modified 747 with a laser mounted on the nose to shoot down missiles during launch. Or like 1 or 2 years away from fielding it at most...
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I'd say it's best bet is to screw up the seeker and then it goes dumb. Just as good as killing it. |
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These are not powered by the aircrafts power system.
They carry thier own solid state system which is charged on the ground and is good for a limited number of shots. The real benefit is that they are being designed to be hotlinked into the helmet site with a turret on the top and bottom of the aircraft to enable over the shoulder see-it-shoot it capability. Dealing the damage at the necessary ranges is not the problem, an immedietly appearing hole almost anywhere in an airframe is lethal in many conditions. The problems are wieght and heat at this point. The F-35 was designed with this system in mind and there is a good deal of literature on how far along things are. We are looking to field them in ten years. |
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Stooopid question: would you be able to see the laser in a form of a beam as it is firied (ala Star Wars), or would it be like a lazer pointer where you see either end but nothing in the middle?
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You will see it very briefly, if it is aimed directly at you. |
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light is only visible when it is reflected off of something, which is why you see the beam when it is shone through smoke. |
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Military Channel did a show on on this ....fuselage was nothing more than a giant powerplant and would be able to target multiple bogies several miles away. |
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Ok....Who here will post a pic of a F-18E Super Hornet with "frikken laser beams on their frikken pylons..."?
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We already have gear to do that… AN/AAQ-24 |
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This assumes the laser is in the visible wavelength. If it's a infared laser (like the carbon dioxide ones), you won't see the beam at all. I think the infrared ones penetrate cloud cover better too. I suspect the govt will add the laser for close in work initially, with missles on the aircraft for beyond visual range. Imagine a F-22 sneaking up on your butt and blasting you before you even knew he was there. No lockon signature, no warning, just WHAP. Fireball city. Of if they can get the energy density high enough, why not use capacitors/batteries to store the power. It would have a limited number of shots of course. |
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Kharn |
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15kw is the power level of the existing ZEUS solid state laser, which is mounted in the back of a Humvee. It weighs about 5000 pounds though.
Its currently used for EOD work. www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldiertech_Laser,,00.html For the F35 the USAF wants one in the 75-100Kw range. From the size it sounds like this new program is for a pod mounted laser or one for fitting onto a aircraft like the F-22 that doesn't have the convinent power supply that the F-35 does. 15kw though wouldn't be powerful enough for air to air combat. ZEUS has demonstrated that it can reach buried devices buried as far as 40cm below ground- but only at ranges of a couple hundred meters or less. While anything that can burn through that much dirt or pavement and a couple seconds would cut up a aircraft- or a person- the range is just too short to be practical. It would seem to be more like a anti-missile weapon. The AC-130 is supposed to get a heat capacity laser even before the F-35 does. Its already been identified as a convinent platform to test out intermediate systems along the way toward reaching the size/power goals needed to fit in a F-35 |
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Ok, a Google search reveals that this is NOT a new program, but another case of idiot newspeople butchering a press release.
Here is the link for the official DARPA release for this program www.darpa.mil/tto/programs/hellads.html Here is the text:
The 15kw its merely a test model. Cant quite make out from the text whether its supposed to be a liquid fueled -or chemical- laser, which would make it just a much- miniatureized version of the MTHEL and YAL-1 technology or if its a liquid cooled laser and this is a approach to try and boost the power of a ZEUS type solid state laser... |
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Ah ha. More research finds this article:
www.military.com/soldiertech/0,14632,Soldiertech_HELLADS,,00.html
This seems to sound like a liquid cooled solid state laser is what they are trying for... EDIT: Yep it is Somwhat informative PDF from General Atomics here: www.ga.com/purchasing/pdf/HELLADS.pdf |
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