Northrop Grumman Markets Weaponized Laser System 246
stephencrane writes "Northrop Grumman is making available for sale the FIRESTRIKE weaponized laser system. The solid-state laser unit weighs over 400lbs, sends/receives instructions and data via an RJ-45 jack and can be synchronized with additional units to emit a 100 kW beam. It looks like some piece of stereophonic amplification equipment out of the '50s. Or Fallout 3. The press release suggests that FIRESTRIKE 'will form the backbone of future laser weapon systems.'"
Re:More details? (Score:4, Informative)
from here: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m998.htm [fas.org]
Sounds like the Hummer can carry quite a FEW 400 pound laser packs. In fact, a light and fast platform like the HMMWV is IDEAL for a weapons system like this. I expect we'll see this deployed within 10 years.
Re:More details? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:so what next ? (Score:4, Informative)
Not quite... a reflecting surface has to absorb all the energy and then re-emit it when it is reflected. With a regular mirror, it's a piece of glass with a silvered back. This would rapidly heat up and destroy the glass, and the silvering. With a highly reflective metal surface, it would still heat it up and destroy its reflective properties with hasty abandon. Do a google search for anti-missile lasers to read how a laser weapon actually works.
Re:In other news (Score:3, Informative)
way too big and heavy for a shark's head
You need to do more shark research. At a mere 400 pounds, it wouldn't bother this shark [wikipedia.org] at all to carry several around.
Re:15kW is not very much. (Score:5, Informative)
Unless it is a pencil-thin or smaller beam, 15kW is just plain not very much. I mean, it's a lot of energy, I wouldn't want it pointed at my couch... but it is only about as much as you would get out of 150 light bulbs. Maybe even less, considering the conversion factor.
I guess it is on the verge of being practical. But not much more, yet.
Well, lessee...a 100mW (20dBm or 0.1W) collimated burning laser [google.com] will pop ballons and burn dark objects such as electrical tape. This one is 15KW (~72dBm) so that's ~72-20=52dB times the power, or about 15KW/0.1W=150,000 "burning lasers", assuming Northrop-Grumman can collimate a laser as well as some guy on Instructables.
Re:15kW is not very much. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:More details? (Score:1, Informative)
Exactly. The article states that the laser is only 20% efficient, thus the 100kw beam requires a 500kw power source. It would take one heck of a diesel engine to run a 500kw generator.
However...
An M1 Abrams tank has a 1500 horsepower turbine engine which would be more than enough, and is easily capable of carrying the 1.5 tons of laser modules and probably 0.5 - 1 tons of cooling equipment. You could theoretically replace the main gun with one of these, though I have no idea if it would make tactical sense to do so.
Re:Blind soldiers (Score:3, Informative)
"The advent of this kind of thing may indeed precipitate an interesting change in how military personnel dress and expose themselves in combat situations. Mirrored helmets for everyone who could possibly be in range would seem a likely first step ..."
Mirrored helmets are sniper bait, but a full-face combat helmet system with auto-darkening lenses would reduce eye damage from reflections. Auto-darkening welding lenses are cheap to produce.
http://www.millerwelds.com/products/weldinghelmets/ [millerwelds.com]
Re:In other news (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Power? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:so what next ? (Score:4, Informative)
Check your quantum physics. In fact, there are only a couple of ways that photons interact with matter... if there's no interaction at all, the photons pass right through. That's "transparency". There's also the photoelectric effect, where photons interact with electrons, which rise to higher energy states, absorbing the photons. The new configurations aren't stable, so the electrons rapidly fall back to their original state, which emits a new photon. On a reflective surface, the atoms are aligned in such a way that the new photons are lined up very precisely, such that they match the photons that were absorbed. Otherwise, you might get a spectral reflection (i.e. shiny), but not coherent. In non-reflective surfaces, the photons are absorbed and the electrons either remain in their excited state, or photons are emitted that are different than the photons that were absorbed (for example, when you shine a black light on a white surface, the emitted photons are at a different wavelength than the absorbed photons). Either way, the entropy of the material is increased (i.e. it is heated), though the entropy is obviously greater when no new photon is re-emitted. There are other quantum interactions possible at higher energies, but the idea is the same.
There's a good layman's explanation here [asu.edu], and a more comprehensive look in Dick Feynman's book [wikipedia.org].
Pure Speculation (Score:3, Informative)
Mine.
7.62NATO (used in the old Phalanx Anti Missle System's miniguns) delivers about 400 joules at 500m. This laser needs about 27ms of on point contact to do that. Of course I'm assuming that the laser isn't affected much by water vapor in the air. And that heat is as effective as kinetic energy.
75kW Generators (TFA says it's 20% efficient) are basicly small trailer/pick-up bed sized. But that includes a 4L Diesel engine and a fuel tank. Share the vehicles motor and add some energy storage like a bank of capacitors so you can move and fire. Put a big radiator on the roof for cooling 600 Prescotts :) and you're good to go. I think you could shoehorn it into a Hummer sized vehicle.
Really, it sounds like a replacement for something like the Phalanx or semi-fixed medium to heavy machineguns. It has the bonus of being really accurate, so set up however many automated turrets you want and slave them to a targeting or master laser.
Re:Pure Speculation (Score:3, Informative)
Phalanx doesn't use 7.62 NATO. It uses a 20mm cannon, not a minigun.