Air Force Looks To Laser-Proof Its Weapons 347
slugo writes "This wired.com article has probably the coolest laser destruction video you have ever seen. The video shows the Israeli and US Air Force working on laser defense systems. The US Air Force is starting to look for ways to laser-proof its bombs and missiles — with spray-on coatings, no less. They think everyone is going to figure this laser thing out sometime and need a defense against what they are already very good at — shooting things out of the sky with a laser."
Not so obvious... (Score:5, Interesting)
Doesn't necessarily work as well as it does in scifi. Mirrors aren't perfect, and tend to gather things like dust, which reduce their efficiency even more. Not to mention different mirrors vary in their effectiveness with different spectrum lasers.
Shouldn't matter much, but at the high powers weaponized lasers operate at, they quickly destroy mirrors.
As for working on anti-laser stuff, well, it's best to keep three steps ahead militarily wise - tends to keep your casualties down.
Armour them and spin them. (Score:4, Interesting)
The problems with lasers is that the need to punch through the armour in the time they can stay on target.
#1. Spin them. If the laser cannot hit the same spot for X fragments of a second then it cannot burn through (unless you get a bigger laser).
#2. For when the enemy gets a bigger laser, you coat the missile in a nice insulator. Something like carbon.
So now the laser has to punch through the carbon armour before the missile rotates new armour into sight.
Re:Not so obvious... (Score:5, Interesting)
a simple chrome coating can add a few seconds of protection for a shell, enough to prevent it from being destroyed before it reaches its target. Mirrors are vulnerable because the reflective surface is usually very thin and poorly heat-protected. Chrome a shell and the shell serves as a heat sink to dissipate most of the energy the chrome actually ends up absorbing in the first place. Chrome's a lot hardier than a few microns of silvering.
The lasers weren't blowing holes in the shells, they were cooking them. They aren't nearly as devastating as you might at first believe. Several of their demos required several seconds to detonate the incoming round. If you can buy another 3 seconds of time on a shell, that's probably enough to beat the laser. You only have to survive the heat from the time you are acquired to the time you pass out of view of the laser.
I'm more interested in how they are generating that much laser energy. Most lasers of that calibre are chemical, and I didn't see what I would expect of a chemical laser. Being able to engage several targets one after another rapidly is a big plus over traditional chemical lasers, which require large amounts of chemicals which have to be pumped in, triggered, and vented to be replaced with more chemicals to fire again. The large flying laser beds work this way and I don't even know if they can fire more than once without landing and refueling with more chemicals. (though they are certainly more powerful than the one demo'd here)
They also demo this in the desert every time I see it. No clouds, low humidity, line of sight. Guess what laser weapons don't do well in?
Re:Laser-proof first post (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Has gotten so far in that last 12 years of focused development that it has finished "target illumination" testing.
2) Has 40 shot maximum payload (according to the entirely optimistic marketers of this project). They admit that it is only really specced for 20 shots now, though.
3) Does NOT have any variety shark attached to it.
I think Northrop Grumman, Boeing and all the other defense contractors had the following plan when they met with Reagan:
1)Convince The Gipper that Green lasers is just what's needed to kill the Red Communists. ("It'd be just like that recent film by that young George Lucas, and we know how much you love movies, Mr. President."
2) (optional) ???
3) Profit!!!
EESTOR (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Armour them and spin them. (Score:3, Interesting)
As a guess, the artillery round was spinning as was at least one of the rockets engaged (visible in the video). Any sort of insulator means taking out either shell casing or explosive or both. Tends to make the round less lethal and may also mess with the ballistics. The other guy has to do this to all of his rounds since he doesn't know which ones will be engaged by a laser defense. So you end up making the other guy let's say 25% less effective everywhere because you have a laser defense at a few places.
Cheers,
Dave
Use an optical cloaking device (Score:2, Interesting)
The resulting dispersal of the laser energy would prevent the missile from being seriously damaged.
Re:It seems to slow for mortars. (Score:5, Interesting)
We already have this. It's called the Phalanx sometimes, or just CIWS (close in weapons system). It features a 20 mm vulcan cannon, multiple radars, autonomous operation, and on top of that it can track multiple (dozens) incoming targets as well as its own outgoing projectiles. They can also network together to form a basewide protective shield. They are loaded with a tracer every 20 or 30 rounds and at night the bullet stream looks like the world's most powerful and accurate garden hose- one continuous stream of projectiles. The sound and feeling even from 200 yards is something you'll never forget, especially after you clean your pants the first time they fire without warning. Watching 5 of them fire in synch during a test is awe-inspiring (in good and bad ways, I guess).
Yeah, lasers, great... But in a deployed area, the CIWS provides early warning and interception of incoming mortars and missiles and doesn't require anything more than a generator and a full magazine. Someday lasers might provide an even better shield but until then we could use a few more CIWS in the field.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgpQBZF2sZQ [youtube.com]
You should watch that video- dove or hawk, any geek has to admit that the phalanx is one bad ass mutha.
-b
Re:It seems to slow for mortars. (Score:5, Interesting)
Three words: Counter Battery Fire :)
Heh. Reminds me of a story about a sort of makeshift counterbattery fire someone once told me. Small Lebanese army military camp in Lebanon during the civil war, and every afternoon they'd go outside and play volleyball. Local shia militia jerks noticed the pattern and started dropping mortar rounds in the middle of their volleyball game every day. Immediate patrols trying to find them turned up nothing, as the shia militia jerks simply drop a few rounds, picked up the mortar tube, kicked sand over the base plate, and ran. Tiring of this, the Lebanese army guys measured the angle of the holes at the bottom of the impact craters made by the fuse assemblies being blown into the ground and used trigonometry to figure out where the rounds probably came from--- about a quarter mile away. Based on the size of the rounds, they knew the shias weren't taking the heavy base plate with them when they ran. They went out there in the middle of the night and, sure enough, right where they calculated, they found the mortar base plate. They picked it up, buried a big antitank mine underneath, and carefully concealed the plate just as they found it. Next day, they went out to play volleyball. Five minutes into the game, they head a loud explosion from the direction where the plate was. No mortar rounds ever interrupted their game after that.
Re:Not so obvious... (Score:3, Interesting)
phenolic resins are pretty heat resistant or maybe something that breaks down endothermicly when irradiated with IR.
Re:It seems to slow for mortars. (Score:3, Interesting)
Eh, if you can turn 15 mortars into 5, if have done yourself pretty good. On top of that, realize that the longer you fire mortars (especially against Americans or Israelis), the far more likely an artillery shell is going to come your way. Every time you toss up a mortar, a radar station is tracking it. The Israelis have gotten so good at it, that they can practically return fire before the rocket/mortar has hit the ground. These days, the only way Hamas and the like can take a pop shot across the border is to do it from a place of high civilian density, and then seriously run like hell the second they have unloaded.
Personally, I am kind of surprised that Israel hasn't put something like a phalanx in spots that are prone to rocket attack... though I suppose a few thousand bullets coming down into civilian areas might have something to do with it.
the battle isnt going to be won on the field (Score:1, Interesting)
its going to be won in the economic arena, and the US is losing. in 30 years, we will have only fry cooks and customer service reps, everything else will have een outsourced or made automatic. a bunker will hold about 5000 computer/robot engineers, and massive hospitals will form the basis of the economy, as there will be no other jobs.
meanwhile, china will have a base on the moon, and still have only invaded tibet, and no other countries. but at least they cant shoot us with a laser.
Re:Use an optical cloaking device (Score:3, Interesting)
Or perhaps just use transparent materials. World War III will be fought with Molotov cocktails.
Re:It seems to slow for mortars. (Score:3, Interesting)
I can see one huge advantage however to a laser based system:
1) It can be deployed in heavily populated areas without fear of killing an entire village down range.
If that minigun drops below 45* wouldn't it become a lethal weapon to all parties who happen to be down wind? Those .50 caliber rounds aren't light.
Re:The answer is mirv (Score:1, Interesting)
(not the original poster)
Fine. Grow more crops to use as fuel. Not like I ever gave a frack about the starving people overseas anyways. They really want to play ball with us, how about oil-for-food programme. Our food, their oil. Or they starve, and we take the oil after they're all dead. (I'm a cynical motherfucker, that's just how I roll.)
If what's in the open literature is any indication (...D instead of H for better atmospheric propagation as has already been discussed in this thread, NF3, and some other hacks that should be obvious...), we've got some pretty cool laser capabilities. I don't have a need to imagine, let alone know, what's behind the veil, but I'm kinda hoping we get a chance to find out just how far ahead we are.
And again (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not a crop growing problem. The problem isn't that crops can't be grown in Africa, for example. The problem is that the governments there are unwilling to do so. A good example is Zimbabwe. It used to be the bread basket of Africa. It was like the farm states in the US. However, Mugabe has put a stop to that. Now they are a net food importer and their production is next to nothing.
Food shortage these days really isn't a problem of production. We have the technology and the land to handle it. It is a problem of distribution. The places with large starving populations have governments that are not interested in allowing the problem to be solved, or sometimes have no real government at all and are anarchys more or less.
This isn't an easy "just throw money at it" kind of problem.
Re:Not so obvious... (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder if the US could use lasers to shoot down Chinese missiles fired at Taiwan?
Actually from what I've read Chinese missiles are not a mortal threat to Taiwan now
http://meizhongtai.blogspot.com/2005/11/chinas-ballistic-missiles.html [blogspot.com]
Assuming the Chinese missiles are on the more reliable end of the estimates, 10% (or 47 missiles) are still lost to mechanical malfunctions. That leaves 420 missiles headed for Taiwan
I personally would guess that the [Taiwanese] Patriots [missile defense] would have a 50% kill rate, but to be honest I have no data to back that estimate up. Based on my estimates, Taiwan could kill 100 missiles before they reach their targets (with their current Patriot capabilities), bringing the number that would cause damage down to 320
CSS-6s have a circular error probability (CEP) of 280 meters. CSS-7s have a CEP of 200 meters. With this limited degree of accuracy, it would take 44 CSS-6s or 23 CSS-7s to destroy a target with 75% certainty.* Thus, if China's missile batteries are composed equally of CSS-6s and CSS-7s, China could expect to destroy ten buildings with 75% certainty using all of its missiles (except the 233 it has held in reserve). If no missiles were held in reserve and thus 530 missiles reach their targets, 15 buildings could be destroyed with the same degree of certainty.
Though it actually seems like Taiwan should develop its own missile defense system in parallel with trying to buy PAC3 batteries and missiles from the US.
Re:Environmental Impact (Score:3, Interesting)
Imagine this: You have a culture. Let's say, a western culture. You grew up with that culture and for some odd reason, you think it's good. Sure, it ain't perfect, but hey, what is? You have your believes, which may or may not include some sort of God, you have your financial and commercial system which you consider ok, if not good, and you have your country which you consider the best on this planet by default.
Now someone comes in and says that everything you do is wrong. You're forced to work for The Man and his cronies, they are oppressing you and make you to work for pennies while they get rich, you lack the spiritual guidance of a strong religion and you have to be liberated from such an oppressive and outright spiritually and mentally sickening system.
Question for 500: Would you fight the Islam invasion? Let's assume for a moment that they and not you have the aircraft carriers, the ICBMs and tanks that outgun yours by a mile.
Because that's essentially what happens.