I read this item with interest as it shows a major difficulty with the flying laser battlewagon has been solved.
The big laser gunships use powerful chemical lasers in which fairly toxic chemicals are used in massive quantities to fire missile-killing rays thousands of miles through the atmosphere and space. Even a very large aircraft can carry only enough ‘ammunition’ for a handful of shots. For this and other lesser reasons I have not been enthusiastic on the viabiliity of the current developmental generation of laser weapon systems for defense against anything beyond a single missile. I do admit I have always appreciated the major cool of a 747 with a battle laser on board!
Not surprisingly the USAF has seen the same problems I have. The referenced article shows they have worked on and perhaps solved it. If the chemicals are recycled onboard the aircraft, the number of shots becomes very large, limited only by the recycling efficiency and the onboard power available to carry it out.
The chemicals become a sort of ‘capacitor’ or rapid discharge ‘battery’ rather than a consumable ‘bullet’. In operation an airborne laser would fire one or more shots and then over a period of time use lower density power systems to recharge for the next salvo.
I seems to me a weapon of this type would be critically dependent on the astmospheric conditions, as well as the makeup of the target.
I’m not sure it would be a viable weapon in enough instances to make it worthwhile.
“I’m not sure it would be a viable weapon in enough instances to make it worthwhile.”
What I *am* sure of is that the manfucturers are well-connected in Congress. So, this project will continue. And, maybe, we’ll end up with some kick-ass weapon after all.
Being so rich, and so well-endowed with weapon-making expertise, allows the USA to go ahead and pursue weapons that might not work as advertised. This makes real and potential enemies have a tough time. I’m OK with keeping it that way. If the US Government is going to spend monstrous amounts of money anyway, and it is, my attitude is the more of it that is spent on weapons, the better. That is one thing that may actually do the country some good at some point.
trainer:
For a vast majority of the time, conditions in the atmosphere are good enough for a visible or IR laser to work quite well, as far as human eyes can see (and usually much longer distances, when you get down to it).
IR is especially nice, since it will cut right through haze that obscures regular vision systems. Generally, any situation that needs a gun or a short range air-to-air missile would be just fine for a decent laser.
If the US gov’t is going to spend horrendous amounts of money on weapons would you not ratehr they spent that money on weapons that will actually be of some use to the average GI on the ground. Servo assited body armour, Handheld lasers, and other cool toys for the soldiers to maim and kill with, rather than a frankly daft idea whose only practical use is to shoot down a missile attack which will probably never happen (because nobody, not even North Korea or Iran, is that stupid). But then why spend money making sure the infantry has an easy time of it when they are the chaepest and most expendable part of the military machine. People will always breed, whereas the resources needed to make the tech are finite and realitvely expensive.
This is just too cool. Giant frickin’ lasers on a C-130!
Put some of these on a platform in low Earth orbit, and then we can really have some fun. Any target that can be seen can be smoked!
“Target acquired – target destroyed. Next!”
“…Servo assited body armour, Handheld lasers, and other cool toys for the soldiers to maim and kill with…”
All of it. That stuff, too. In fact, that kind of stuff first.
All of it.
This is pretty good news. Of course it will be years before it gets into the field. This C-130 mounted tactical weapon is not a major Missile Defense system. It will replace the AC-130 gunships that can, under the right circumstances, provide excellent close up support for the guys on the ground.
Servo assisted body armor is being worked on, as are other types of lightweight body armor.
Long range missiles are going to be used more and more. To assume that the Norks or Iran are not crazy enough to fire them off, well dosen’t that depend on who is the target. I suspect that we may see missiles with non nuclear warheads being used as harrassing weapons by all sort of people.
If he got his hands on one, Mugabe might think its a good idea to blow a hole in some London parking lot, just to show Blair that he can’t be intimidated by sanctions. I know it sound like a crazy example, but the nature of asymmetric warfare is to do things that are so crazy the enemy never thinks to defend against them.
Throughout the history of warfare, weapons advances have always been resisted by some one. During WW1, there was huge debate about replacing cavalry with mechanized units, propeller planes with jets, artillery with surface – surface missles and development of ABMs. What it usually comes down to is some one with government conncetions would rather their multi-billion dollar pet projects get funded at the expense of advances in defense technology.
It is the height of wishful thinking that the Norks or Mad Mullahs would not attack us or our allies at a time of their choosing.
As a side note, it seems to me that any vehicle with a reduced radar signature would be particularly vulnerable to laser and any vehicle with laser defenses will have a pretty serious radar signature.
I know they are in substantially differenct parts of the spectrum, but it still seems the effect will be pronounced.
Yes, but when it’s ready, such a laser in a *military blimp* or its equivalent could do wonders on the asymmetric-warfare scene.
In operation an airborne laser would fire one or more shots and then over a period of time use lower density power systems to recharge for the next salvo.
Erm, haven’t the programmers who made computer games featuring spaceships known this for years? You always had to wait for your laser to recharge in spaceship games. Most of the time you could divert power from your shields to the laser, too. I’m sure all this was worked out in the Wing Commander games in the early 90s.
Correct, Tim. But you’re overlooking a crucial element: we currently lack cat-people to zap.
Hmm, perhaps that could be a viable source of research for our biotech folks.
I was thinking more along the lines of a Yamato cannon targeted at Zergs.
JJM
“we currently lack cat-people to zap”
I hear there are some in Australia circling the uncovered meat, according to a Mr Hilali.
(Or was that joke in bad taste?)
Lex, developing a diverse armory of weapons helps ensure that you find out first what works best and also helps keep your enemies guessing at what you’ll come up with next.
For a while, the US Dept of Defense was developing a high-altitude bomber, the XB-70. The Red Air Force got wind of it and in response developed a short-range, high-altitude interceptor, the MiG-25. The US Air Force had so many problems with the XB-70 that they cancelled its production, especially since in the meantime they had learned to build air-launched cruise missiles which could be fired at a distance even from their antique B-52’s. By then, the Red Air Force had a fleet of interceptors built to stop bombers which were never going to come and unable to stop cruise missiles which might.
I can see how this could result in useful anti-missile and anti-artillery weapons. I still struggle to see it being useful against much else. I always thought the major problems of lasers were cooling, and atmospheric conditions. In particular, penetrating any kind of armour is hard because the first layers of armour vaporise and produce localised smoke and gasses, and then the rest of your laser energy goes into superheating that rather than damaging the remaining armour.
As the Israelis have discovered, and others have taken note of, the principal threat today is missiles, mortars, and rockets. Tanks are easy to find and take out. Infantry stands no chance. Katushas, Fajrs, and Zelzals launched from the backs of pickup trucks on the other hand had Northern Israel living in shelters for a month. The only other significant threats are IEDs – truck bombs and splodeydopes.
I agree that having just high energy lasers is not sufficient – you still need the full spectrum of military hardware – but the point of THELs is to at least partially plug a gap in our capability. There are limitations and countermeasures, of course, and as usual the enemy will move to a different tactic when this one stops working, but that’s what this is all about: who can adapt faster?
“… the first layers of armour vaporise and produce localised smoke and gasses, and then the rest of your laser energy goes into superheating that ..”
I would assume they would use a pulsed laser. This would also help with the power and recharge issue.
I recall reading some time ago that pulsed lasers would also allow the clearing of the atmosphere for subsequent killer pulses.
Not my area of expertise, but it sounds reasonable.
Wow! now can I have a car that recycles the exhaust into fresh gasoline and oxygen?
Even a nodding acquaintance with chemistry and thermodynamics should raise a big red flag about this release. If you have an onboard power source capable of pushing the reaction products back “uphill” to fresh reactants… why wouldn’t you simply power the laser with that?
Somebody’s confused here — I suspect the writer of the USAF press release.
Mandrill argues that he cannot see any use for a laser to shoot down missiles, on the grounds that not even mad Mr Kim of North Korea would fire a missle at a neighbouring country. That’s quite a statement, Mandrill. Not sure I’d want to bet the ranch on that. I prefer to play it safe, rather than bet on the rationality of a dictator.
In fact, as I said on this blog about a month back, a true defence policy, rather than one of interventionism a la Iraq, would put the focus on things like anti-missile defences. So the idea of using lasers to knock out inbound missiles is something I would hope and expect the Western military establishments to focus some of their attention on, in much the same way that they focussed on things like radar in the 1930s.
Pete –
There is no reaction per se going on (read the wiki page on laser for a very basic guide. It’s cooling (and poss. purifying) the gain medium that’s the trouble – pumping is never 100% efficient (20% is quite good, and the more power, the greater the problem. They’re prob. using a CO2 laser which, in the deep IR (~10,000nm) would get through a lot of atmosphere very easily. I wouldn’t want to get in the way.
See the linked page on chemical lasers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_laser
For more discussion, see
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_energy_weapon
“There is no reaction per se going on… They’re prob. using a CO2 laser …”
Uhh, Chem baby: it’s an oxygen-iodine laser, and there most assuredly is a reaction going on. Keep that good information coming; it sounds nice through your hat like that…
Until someone comes up with a practical (neither theoretical nor lab bench nor I-am-sure-we-can-build-it) the chemical lasers are the most powerful we have available. Of course the energy would be more efficiently used directly. Human beings would be more efficient if they had green skin and photosynthesized directly rather than letting cows and grass act as an intermediary.
Someday, some years or decades from now, we may be able to use FELS or nanotech built solid state lasers or any of a bunch of techniques which have been considered and which are not useable today.
Until then, the fact that we can recycle the chemicals slowly (relative to the firing time) on board is a big win.
The ABL is really designed to take out ballistic missiles during their boost phase when they’re full of fuel and still accelerating. The plane keeps the laser on target until the heating makes the missile skin pop leading to the destruction of the missile. A good friend of mine used to work on the ABL project and I can tell you there is some amazing technology being used. The aiming mirror uses active compensation – thousands of small actuators slightly deform the mirror many times a second to counteract any distortion from atmospheric turbulence. The range is classified, but from hints he’s dropped, I would assume that all of North Korea can be covered from South Korea or international waters.
This weapon will be ready in time for President Hilary Clinton or Barak Obama to be selecting the targets… why am I not enthusiastic?
This weapon, like the atom bomb, is the instrument of greater state control. Lord Acton’s dictum surely applies here: “Absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.” Or as Galadriel responded to Sam Gamgee’s suggestion that she would do good if she took Sauron’s Ring in the Lord of the Rings: “It would start that way…”
In fact, if the USA or any other government gets orbital laser cannons before others, we could see the rapid emergence of a global despotism. Preemptive strikes against any research facility capable of designing a similar piece of equipment. Stasis (Ken McLeod’s Star Fraction covered this ground).
I wouldn’t trust Mother Teresa with this kind of power.
Death Star, anybody?
Weapons have uses and they have limitations. Boeing 747’s or Hercules C-130’s loaded with tons of laser are not going to be used against ground targets any time soon. This is not your SciFi lasercannon. it has a particular use: damaging thin skinned aerospace vehicles. If you have a flying object of very high value, very far away on a line of sight then this is the weapon system for you. Against a ground target it would be rather useless. I suspect it would take quite some time to blow holes through a roof. Someday perhaps, by which time same technologies might arm some soldiers with lasers. I think the slug thrower will be around a long time to come though, at least as long as the sword coexisted with the gun as a major combat arm.
It does give control of the high ground but it does not prevent construction or research by others. If there really were a will to do so, the newly deployed SDB or the proposed HE tipped ICBM are much better fits to the purpose.