US successfully tests a Laser Weapon that can Destroy Aircraft Mid-Flight

Remember no mirror is perfect. At the energy levels involved even a few percent of the beams power is enough to burn off the outmost reflective surface at which point the target is no different than any other lump of plastic or metal being slagged down.
Targets with ablative heatshields (anything hypersonic) are far, far harder to hurt with a laser though. I know of ceramic coatings that are 99.9-99.8% diffuse. You ain't doing shit to that even with hundreds of kilowatts when your engagement time is a second or two.
As much as I want to shill for them, lasers are only a small part of the solution, especially with swarming hypersonic missiles becoming more popular, Russia has fielded them (minus swarming until more recent years) for decades. They are only spreading further and getting cheaper..

Lasers of this power also suffer from turret positioning delay. The laser might be nearly instant but the turret is just as slow as others, if not more - the optical assembly is more vulnerable to misalignment. Even with a shittonne of invar rods they're still going to have flex issues on a large 200-400mm scope. They are not scanner mirrors, they are an entire telescope optic, tracking/targeting optics and range finding/alternative laser emitters that have to be moved. There are other approaches for other targets that are more effective but I can't elaborate any further ;)
 
Shiny only matters below 1Mw/cm2.....
Let's see a real laser.

:D
As all public news about military hardware is about 15 years behind what they actually have today,
you will get your lasers in about X--X years.

Unless you mean the colored star wars 'lasers"
yea we don't do that.
 
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What's the effective range of a laser? I thought it was only a couple of miles in good weather.
 
What's the effective range of a laser? I thought it was only a couple of miles in good weather.
Limited by visibility mostly as scatter will increase significantly beyond visible range. So on a normal day (edit I forgot to complete this lol) 10-20km at sea, sometimes far more if you can see horizon. Basically, attack your target in the fog and their lasers is useless unless it's a magical 94GHz laser (almost like xrays). They can penetrate through the 'optical window' of water vapour practically unhindered.

As all public news about military hardware is about 15 years behind what they actually have today,
you will get your lasers in about X--X years.

Unless you mean the colored star wars 'lasers"
yea we don't do that.
Not really too far off actually, they're pretty close to what is publicly available, 5-8 years delay if any. Really though you need years of R&D to combine the off-shelf components properly but so far word on the street is 20kW single mode from the leading manufacturer (this was told to me last year by one of the employees). Combine 7-8 of them to a single beam and you have a laser weapon source. Next fun part is adaptive optics if you want to do anything beyond 5-10km.. ;)
6-8kW laser modules are the size of a medium-small fridge so you can fit the whole thing including cooling in a 40ft container or thereabouts.

Coloured lasers have significant advantage when impacting reflective surfaces. Vastly higher photon energy especially at blue wavelengths.
blue laser welding AbsorptionGraph2019.png

Actually there is some tech we don't get. There was an ASL (anti satellite laser) called medusa or similar IIRC. It was over 60% efficient and around that point, the waste heat from the pump source was output as part of the beam... the more power you output, the cooler it runs, efficiency increases etc.... sort of a 'free laser' machine lol. This is heard from a good source so take it with some salt, but it would also make sense why public development of such laser was not undertaken as it likely causes some problems with the established rules of physics most have to follow lol. So your limit in that case is the coatings of the various components. Pretty neat. I am not sure what configuration that laser was but I believe it was a bulk laser, not fibre as this was before fibre was very popular or widely-deployed.

P.s. much military laser R&D is published and available to anyone who knows where/what to look for. If you know what you are doing you can piece together the various subsystems and optical components and sources.
p.p.s if anyone wants any serious/unrivaled visible lasers for industrial or other applications, send me a PM.
 
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150kW out might be absolute worst case (older tech) max input power 550kW (CW especially high beam quality is typically lower efficiency) but there are more efficient ytterbium fibre lasers than that (some are 60%-80% but lower beam quality). Sorry bit rusty on my ytterbium non-doubled fibre laser efficiency numbers and they are usually CW, so maybe another 220kW for cooling. They have options for reservoir approaches though, larger chillers use more juice so depends which way you go. All up 800kW for a 1 second shot plus continuous cooling and pump requirements after shot.

Why would you need all that extra power for cooling on a ship? Just use the ocean water to cool it. No need for a massively powerful phase-change system when you can just pump the ocean water though it to cool it.
 
Why would you need all that extra power for cooling on a ship? Just use the ocean water to cool it. No need for a massively powerful phase-change system when you can just pump the ocean water though it to cool it.
They use DI water to cool fibre laser pump sources due to galvanic corrosion. You could heat exchange with salt water BUT these laser sources typically have temperature tolerances within 7°C range. When you go outside of that you can get thermal and laser beam quality issues, even worse is going below dew point.. big problem. If that sea is too hot (or cold and you can't adjust for it properly) you could have issues. But I agree otherwise - my solution would be a large reservoir kept at temperature.. then you don't need all the cooling. That said on a ship the package size and weight isn't as much of an issue. On an aircraft, it's totally different. But also easier to heat exchange with cold air outside.
 
How accurate are these at shooting down bats?
Don't need to shoot bats, shoot the people getting together when you're supposed to be sheltering in place. They're the real reason this shit has gone on so long, everyone stays inside for 3 weeks and bingo bango no more cases. Meanwhile into month 2 and the main reason we are opening up is economic not health
 
Don't need to shoot bats, shoot the people getting together when you're supposed to be sheltering in place. They're the real reason this shit has gone on so long, everyone stays inside for 3 weeks and bingo bango no more cases. Meanwhile into month 2 and the main reason we are opening up is economic not health

You're dreaming if you think a 3 week isolation period is all it takes. It takes up to 2 weeks for symptoms to appear, and then another 2 week recovery period, followed by who knows how many weeks until a person is tested negative. Better testing and contact tracing is needed, but contact tracing borders on privacy issues.
 
Looks like these naval lasers just met another milestone in reaching operational status with a live fire test in the Pacific.

I wonder if they work on shiny aircraft? :p

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-navy-ship-destroys-drone-with-laser-weapon-2020-5

Sure it would - there are no perfectly reflective aircraft.

This could be used to stop a second 9/11.
But at what cost?

No no it wouldn't. That is a false sense of security. There is NO WAY to stop someone who wants to fly a plane into a building. Period. You could not shoot it down fast enough.

I'm wondering if it's actually a cost savings measure.

How much does each SAM cost?

Tomahawks are around 1.5 million.

A shitton, and these laser firings only cost like 30 cents in energy.

Even if their purported cost of "a gallon of diesel" is accurate (its not) its completely ignoring the R&D and cost to build and maintain the weapon itself. The reason why a SAM is so expensive is because ALL of those costs are included. Sure its easy to say "look at the cost savings" of this shiny new laser its only $50 to fire it! Meanwhile they spent $90 million in R&D (estimated cost of the contract to do the R&D) and the device costs will probably at least that to purchase...

I'm not saying it won't end up cheaper but I seriously doubt there gallon of diesel price tag. ESPECIALLY because it comes from Northrop. You can bet your ass its not that cheap when they sell it to the govt.
 
They use DI water to cool fibre laser pump sources due to galvanic corrosion. You could heat exchange with salt water BUT these laser sources typically have temperature tolerances within 7°C range. When you go outside of that you can get thermal and laser beam quality issues, even worse is going below dew point.. big problem. If that sea is too hot (or cold and you can't adjust for it properly) you could have issues. But I agree otherwise - my solution would be a large reservoir kept at temperature.. then you don't need all the cooling. That said on a ship the package size and weight isn't as much of an issue. On an aircraft, it's totally different. But also easier to heat exchange with cold air outside.

We heat exchange megawatts at my work with a small heat exchanger (smaller than you’d think anyways) to +/- 2C with no buffer. They’d just need one with ocean water and one with steam (or likewise, engine heat, ect) from the ship.

That’s assuming ocean water stays cool enough all the time though. Requiring a chiller would be a PIA.

I’d imagine Israel would love a weapon like this since they have a lot of dumb weapons fired at them.
 
The benefits of the laser over interceptor missiles are many. Recognize this was a proof-of-concept. The goal would be much lower dwell times for target destruction. (More powerful laser source, tighter beams, intelligent aiming for weakspots.)

1. Ships carry missiles in VLS. Once fired, that cell is empty until the ship returns to port. A larger vessel carries ~64 missiles. These are split between anti-air, anti-ship, and cruise missiles.
2. Related: ships only have so many anti-air missiles. If it carries 28, then the 29th missile gets through.
3. Hypersonic inbound missiles are VERY difficult to intercept. To physically get an anti-air missile up and to the hypersonic inbound missile's location before it hits the ship (or whatever that ship is protecting) is a VERY difficult proposition. Lasers don't have that limitation. This is the main driver pushing directed energy weapons on ships.
4. Engagement time can be greatly reduced (if the delivered energy can be increased). Pulse, slew to the next target, pulse, repeat as needed...
5. Cost per round. A gallon of diesel vs. millions.
6. Signature issues: ever see the poison gasses come off a missile launch? A snap-shot with sailors on deck would produce casualties. Not so with lasers.
7. A technique to engage targets is shoot, look, shoot. Meaning, fire an anti-air missile. Did it hit? If not, fire a second one. That technique is risky. A better technique would be shoot, shoot, look, shoot. Fire 2 missiles (assume an 85% probability of intercept and do the math), look, fire a finisher if needed. This would deplete the limited magazines even faster. Lasers just shoot as needed.
3. Is not a problem.
In 1998 I went to NROTC CORTRAMID. We spent a couple days on an Aegis Destroyer. IIRC, they said a fully manned Aegis Destroyer, at that time, could defend itself against 24 simultaneous incoming missiles, or 8 simultaneous incoming missiles in a fully automated mode with no sailors aboard. This capability with defensive missiles that would intercept incoming hostile missiles in flight with fully autonomous computer based guidance systems that did everything automatically.

I’m sure the capability has only improved in 20+ years.

That capability not even considering the Phalanx guns which could automatically track and shoot down things as small as Seagulls. They were to shoot down any incoming threat in closer proximity to the Destroyer with a continuous stream of bullets. (Be it missile or plane).

The problem with existing tech was not capability but capacity! Defense Missiles and Phalanx rounds run out. A nuclear powered ship’s lazer weapon would be almost endless.
 
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As long as you shoot the laser up, you don't have to worry about where the spent laser will land, unlike a traditional SAM.
You dont really have to worry about that even shooting it with land behind the target. The laser will dissipate due to loss of beam coherency over distance and not really do any damage.

Rizen speaks the truth. Russia and China both have been stealing military tech from the US and other countries for decades and decades...but look at the poor state of their militaries technologies.

They are great at making a small number of flashy and neat proof of concepts to puff their chests up to the world, but they done have the financial or technological capabilities to enter them into mass deployment.
China already has production on an exact copy of our latest fighter craft. Nothing "poor state" about it. China is fully capable of producing everything they are able to steal.

How well would it work in less optimal weather conditions?
Yes, this is a serious issue.
 
A little while ago I started wondering if it would be possible to build a small laser system for killing mosquitoes. Well, it appears I was not the first person to think of this, but there still isn't one on the market. If there were, I would buy one in a second.
But what I could not tell from the articles I read is why there are none on the market. The only thing that makes sense to me would be the liability issues of shooting someone in the eye. ??
 
A little while ago I started wondering if it would be possible to build a small laser system for killing mosquitoes. Well, it appears I was not the first person to think of this, but there still isn't one on the market. If there were, I would buy one in a second.
But what I could not tell from the articles I read is why there are none on the market. The only thing that makes sense to me would be the liability issues of shooting someone in the eye. ??
Two reasons, the first being as you said, liability. The second is you cannot sell a powerful enough laser on an open market to regular consumers, it is illegal. You are free to build powerful lasers yourself, they just cant be sold without special permits.
For example, Australia bans the use of any laser devices with power more than 1 mW.

In Europe and the UK, due to the rising number of laser attacks in recent years, the power limit for lasers sold legally was downgraded from 5 mW to just 1 mW.

In the US, it’s completely legal to own lasers of any power and any class as long as they’re FDA compliant. This means that the laser product has to pass certain criteria like having an interlock switch, reliable safety features, and quality control.

However, it’s illegal to sell laser products with a power greater than 5 mW while being branded as “laser pointer” or marketed for pointing purposes. Such devices are considered by law to be non-compliant or illegally labeled.

It’s worth noting though that the regulations prohibit selling them but not owning them. It’s also important to check the local laws as they vary between states.

Despite the fact that laws and regulations concerning the safety of laser devices differ between countries, there are some rules that exist in almost every country in the world.

Such global illegal offenses include pointing a laser beam at vehicles on the road or passing aircraft which could cause damage to the driver or the pilot’s eyes and endanger the plane.

In the US, this crime is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine up to a few hundred thousand dollars, according to the law signed by President Obama on the 14th of February 2012. A similar law is also enforced in the UK.

Shining a laser light at a police officer or a law enforcement official is also considered a criminal offense in many places.

If you wanted to kill a mosquito or fly "instantly" as you hit it with a laser beam you would probably need a 10-20 watt laser, which is drastically outside the limit of what you can sell in any country and would also cause blindness in a human if you hit them in the eyes and so you have a major issue there. The device would also be somewhat large, to have a proper power supply and transformer, and the necessary cooling on your laser.
 
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Obviously there are other costs. Equally obvious, I was discussing the cost per engagement, not the fielding cost or the development costs.

I did not include the costs of developing phased-array illumination radars or how to gimbal a seeker in a missile or...etc.

This technology is a game-changer. Ask a Revolutionary War soldier how much is too much to spend for a working belt-fed machinegun.

As always with new tech, the devil is in the details. Seeing it develop under field trials will determine whether or not it will be of sufficient utility to be fielded.

Except cost per engagement INCLUDES all those other costs. Ignoring that is silly. We need to look at the total cost of ownership of any device. Be it a cool new shark with a laser on its head or a brand new super computer.

3. Is not a problem.
In 1998 I went to NROTC CORTRAMID. We spent a couple days on an Aegis Destroyer. IIRC, they said a fully manned Aegis Destroyer, at that time, could defend itself against 24 simultaneous incoming missiles, or 8 simultaneous incoming missiles in a fully automated mode with no sailors aboard. This capability with defensive missiles that would intercept incoming hostile missiles in flight. With computer based guidance systems that did everything automatically.

I’m sure the capability has only improved in 20+ years.

That capability not even considering the Phalanx guns which could automatically track and shoot down things as small as Seagulls. They were to shoot down any incoming threat in closer proximity to the Destroyer with a continuous stream of bullets. (Be it missile or plane).

The problem with existing tech was not capability but capacity! Defense Missiles and Phalanx rounds run out. A nuclear powered ship’s lazer weapon would be almost endless.

Phalanx is capable of shooting down things much smaller than seagulls. Also a nuclear power ships laser weapon would not be almost endless you would still have to worry about heat dissipation. You might not run out of "bullets" but you still remain limited in how fast and often you can fire it. Also there is a problem of charging. Does the reactor push enough power for eveything onboard AND firing a high energy weapon? Maybe. Or will it need capacitors to "recharge"?
 
Except cost per engagement INCLUDES all those other costs. Ignoring that is silly. We need to look at the total cost of ownership of any device. Be it a cool new shark with a laser on its head or a brand new super computer.



Phalanx is capable of shooting down things much smaller than seagulls. Also a nuclear power ships laser weapon would not be almost endless you would still have to worry about heat dissipation. You might not run out of "bullets" but you still remain limited in how fast and often you can fire it. Also there is a problem of charging. Does the reactor push enough power for eveything onboard AND firing a high energy weapon? Maybe. Or will it need capacitors to "recharge"?
You have “unlimited” sea water to cool it.
 
Hopefully, there are some folks here (and out there) that aren't nieve enough to believe that this "public" announcement is anywhere near the full extent of the US's progress in this field...

In 99.9999% of all public disclosures about military tech advancements, whatever you hear about in the news today, is actually about 5 years behind what they have actually accomplished behind the scenes...

In other words, we have had the ability to shoot down incoming aircraft, missles, rockets, satellites etc at will for quite some time now....with ever increasing accuracy & destructive powers, it's just been very tightly locked down and kept out of public & enemy view, making it harder for them to steal/duplicate the tech...

This is just anutha case of what was once thought of as purely science fiction becoming a reality faster than most people thought possible :D

It's funny because I automatically think that, for the USA, anything revealed to the public is likely not even close to whatever crazy stuff that is being kept secret. For pretty much anyone else, especially China and North Korea, I automatically assume the opposite.
 
If you wanted to kill a mosquito or fly "instantly" as you hit it with a laser beam you would probably need a 10-20 watt laser, which is drastically outside the limit of what you can sell in any country and would also cause blindness in a human if you hit them in the eyes and so you have a major issue there. The device would also be somewhat large, to have a proper power supply and transformer, and the necessary cooling on your laser.

Lethal beam isn't fired until it recognizes the wingbeats of a female mosquito.
No clue what percentage of zaps get aborted due to insufficient target identification.
Reasonable assumption: every unnecessary zap not fired saves power and eyeballs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser

Working prototype:


For limited power, might I suggest a more practical solution. Break out the cwiz.
 
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I think about 'stimulated emission' all the time !!
Bahaha
--------

The free electron laser has the best theoretical conversion rate, and is tunable to near gamma-ray frequencies.
frequency=energy and 'frequency variablity' means penetration.
-
The problem is a physical thing. We don't have materials capable of withstanding the energies required yet....
It's like railguns.
It's a known phenomena, we just can't properly harness it.

:ROFLMAO:
 
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