Laser Weapon System

[ktlight]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px87SP01eKw

"Published on Mar 6, 2014
It's a new era: the Navy is about to take a big step for military-kind. This summer they will add the first ship-mounted laser to their fleet, and that's just the beginning.

Here's the LaWS in action.

http://go.usa.gov/K2RP
http://go.usa.gov/K2R4"

[Lifebringer]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't a "mirror" shield reflect it back at the plane? Doesn't a mirror reflect it back, or has science changed the last few centuries. Egyptians used mirrors to deflect energy power sources, didn't they?

If the average mirror is able to deflect this, then there's a lot of money being spent on something that's worthless if the enemy can use one to deflect it.:wizard:

[swoods_blue]

I think the idea with this is to hit not only missiles, but ships as well. You could coat your ships with mirrors, I suppose, but that might make them a lot easier to find in the dark, too. If lasers bounce off your planes/ships/missiles, radar does, too.

Double-edged sword.

[Frank V]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't a "mirror" shield reflect it back at the plane? Doesn't a mirror reflect it back, or has science changed the last few centuries. Egyptians used mirrors to deflect energy power sources, didn't they?

If the average mirror is able to deflect this, then there's a lot of money being spent on something that's worthless if the enemy can use one to deflect it.:wizard:

A mirror will only reflect part of the energy. When we're talking of very high-powered lasers such as this one, the mirror will most likely reflect a small part of the energy, but the laser will still be powerful enough to cut through the mirror.

Tactical lasers such as this one are commonly calibrated in either the ultraviolet or infrared spectrum. An infrared laser conveys more heat, whereas an ultraviolet laser has more of an abrasive effect due to the higher frequency and thus also the higher energetic state of the photons.

One should not compare a laser to sunlight. A laser of this magnitude is thousands of times more powerful than a beam of highly concentrated sunlight. In addition to that, one should also keep in mind that mounting mirrors on a plane or a ship will ruin the craft's camouflage, especially at night, when the light from the stars and the moon reflects off of the mirrors.

[Tesla_WTC_Solution]

Aragorn said it best!

Remember too that this is a truly scalar weapon, it's got lots of settings -- from STUN to DEEP FRY I am sure!

and it's mounted on a Destroyer ;) (i think)


The Laser Weapon System or LaWS is a directed-energy weapon developed by the United States Navy. The weapon is to be installed on the USS Ponce for field testing in 2014

actually it's a LPD landing platform.


so they put the laser on a big amphibious troop carrier.

Huh.


Amphibious transport docks perform the mission of amphibious transports, amphibious cargo ships, and the older LPDs by incorporating both a flight deck and a well deck that can be ballasted and deballasted to support landing craft or amphibious vehicles.


p.s. it's actually really smart to put that laser on the older boat, lol

it sure gets them "up to speed"

[Tesla_WTC_Solution]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't a "mirror" shield reflect it back at the plane? Doesn't a mirror reflect it back, or has science changed the last few centuries. Egyptians used mirrors to deflect energy power sources, didn't they?

If the average mirror is able to deflect this, then there's a lot of money being spent on something that's worthless if the enemy can use one to deflect it.:wizard:

there will probably be some research into new metamaterials and ways to simulate a totally smooth surface or barrier.

mirrors aren't purely smooth and the small imperfections would trap heat.

Not to mention, modern lasers can literally vaporize SILICON.
I think there's one that even does this without heat, although I dont' understand that.

p.s. superconductor tech could overcome this too but it might be really expensive

[Frank V]

Aragorn said it best!


Thank you, Tes. :-)



Remember too that this is a truly scalar weapon, it's got lots of settings -- from STUN to DEEP FRY I am sure!


Well, technically, it won't have a stun setting because it's just a beam of photons. However, the US military-industrial complex has already developed a laser-based weapon that can stun, as well as kill, called an electrolaser (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolaser).

It uses the principle of blooming, which essentially means that the laser beam is not powerful enough to cause any physical damage, but still powerful enough to ionize a duct of air between the weapon and the target - and thus turn that duct of air into an electrically conductive plasma - along which then an electric bolt is fired. So basically what you then get is a taser without the wires and without any limitation in distance. Depending on the power of the electric charge, they can thus silently stun or kill a person at great distance, and at a high enough power setting, it can do some serious damage to any kind of electronics as well, or even ignite a fuel storage into combustion. Just imagine the possibilities. The laser can be used to cut a little hole in the surrounding metal, and the electric discharge - an artificial lightning bolt - does the rest.

There is however a downside to this type of weapon, namely that it becomes very dangerous and unreliable to use such a weapon during a thunderstorm or in the vicinity of powerful transformers, because those are conditions where the atmosphere already locally becomes imbued with plasma, with as a result that the electric discharge could end up "not quite where you want it to go", including that it could backfire on yourself, or trigger an actual lightning strike from an overhead storm.



and it's mounted on a Destroyer ;) (i think)


Yes, it would make sense that they would eventually equip the Navy with it as well. They already have an experimental aircraft-mounted laser such as this one - it's a modified Boeing 747 - by which they can shoot down ballistic missiles, and they also already have ground-to-air implementations of it.

By the same token, they also already have vehicle-mounted versions of the electrolaser, and by now possibly portable versions as well for use by infantry troops. As I understand it, the vehicle-mounted electrolasers were already being deployed in Afghanistan several years back.

Now couple this to the development of actual cloaking technology by the US and UK military-industrial complex, and we're looking at the Predator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predator_%28film%29) whom the former Guvnah of Kalifohnia was up against in 1987. :p


I love the Predator movies, by the way. I've got them all here on my computer. :-)

[Frank V]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't a "mirror" shield reflect it back at the plane? Doesn't a mirror reflect it back, or has science changed the last few centuries. Egyptians used mirrors to deflect energy power sources, didn't they?

If the average mirror is able to deflect this, then there's a lot of money being spent on something that's worthless if the enemy can use one to deflect it.:wizard:

there will probably be some research into new metamaterials and ways to simulate a totally smooth surface or barrier.


Incredible, Tes - you just read my mind. :-)



mirrors aren't purely smooth and the small imperfections would trap heat.

Not to mention, modern lasers can literally vaporize SILICON.
I think there's one that even does this without heat, although I dont' understand that.

p.s. superconductor tech could overcome this too but it might be really expensive

I think that the metamaterials approach is probably the best one when it comes to lasers. After all, lasers are high-powered beams of light, and the military does already use metamaterials which change the diffraction for cloaking purposes - see my post here-above. So if those metamaterials can bend the light around an object, then they will also bend the laser around the object - at least, if the light-bending effect of the metamaterials covers a wide-enough spectrum of electromagnetic radiation to include the wavelength of the laser beam. If not... Kaboom! :p

[Frank V]

Forgot to address this one...:



Not to mention, modern lasers can literally vaporize SILICON.
I think there's one that even does this without heat, although I dont' understand that.


These would be the ultraviolet lasers, yes. They convey far less heat onto the target and are mainly ablative in nature. They use this type of lasers in corrective eye surgery, for instance. The energy of the photons is so high that they ablate the tissue rather than actually burn it, so it's more of a "pulverizing" effect than a "vaporizing" effect.

And, like infrared lasers, ultraviolet lasers are invisible to the human eye. So there's no "laser dot" on the target, which eliminates the chances of the target going into hiding.

[Tesla_WTC_Solution]

Once upon a time, I felt smart, but then I saw Aragorn's posts and realized I wasn't. lol

:) that's actually really cool and scary about UV.

[Tesseract]

There is a general rule of thumb that I often find useful:

long wavelength light behaves more like a wave, and short wavelength light behaves more like a particle.

For example, radio waves tend to diffract (property of waves) well around objects so that the receiver does not need to be in direct line of sight of the transmitter. At the the other extreme, x-rays and gamma rays tend to just smash electrons off whatever atoms that they hit, and are less prone to diffraction and reflection. This rule of thumb also is useful for wavelengths that are closer together than the examples I gave.

[Frank V]

Once upon a time, I felt smart, but then I saw Aragorn's posts and realized I wasn't. lol


Oh but you're definitely one smart cookie, Tes. Everybody here on Avalon knows that. :-) :hug:



:) that's actually really cool and scary about UV.

Well, ultraviolet light in itself also has lots of other properties - think of a black light and how it causes things to fluoresce, or on how UV can trigger chemical reactions (including causing skin cancer!) - and even though we don't actually see the UV light itself - albeit that many animals do - it could be dangerous to our optic nerves nevertheless. Think of welders and how they have to wear eye protection. But then again, infrared light can be just as dangerous. Even visible lasers - e.g. a green laser beam - generate a lot of infrared radiation, so one generally has to wear protective goggles when using a high-powered visible laser to filter out the IR in order not to burn one's eyes.

Light is such a powerful and versatile type of energy. It can even be used for propulsion, because even though photons are said to have no mass, they do have a kinetic impact. It's fascinating. :-)


P.S.: Optics were a hobby of mine when I was 13-14. I was fascinated by what one could do with light, and particularly with laser beams - even though I didn't possess any of those at the time, of course. And these days, everyone uses lasers without even knowing or thinking about them - they're in our CD and DVD drives, to name but an example, and there's a new headlight design out which uses a (diffracted) laser for greater visibility. Fascinating stuff. :-)