Army Creates a Directed Lightning Bolt Weapon 214
Sparticus789 writes "Army researchers at Picatinny Labs in New Jersey have developed a prototype weapon which uses a directed lightning bolt to destroy vehicles and unexploded ordinance. The weapon works on the premise that 'A target, an enemy vehicle or even some types of unexploded ordnance, would be a better conductor than the ground it sits on.' Are we one step closer to C&C:Red Alert Tesla coils?"
it's "Ordnance" (Score:5, Informative)
Ordinance = A piece of legislation enacted by a municipal authority; An authoritative order; a decree.
Ordnance = Military weapons, ammunition, and equipment used with them.
Bad summary and old news (Score:5, Informative)
What a terrible fucking summary. Also, this has been all over the web for nearly a week.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolaser
It works by ionizing the air with a UV laser to create a path of lowered resistance for the arc to follow.
Re:Skin Effect Anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
With all apologies to Nikola and his 'Death Ray', wouldn't the skin effect of ultra high voltage used for these kind of arcs make this totally useless as a weapon? The bits you want to zap are inside the external metal casing. They are not the easiest path to ground, therefore they are not getting any significant juice.
Only at high frequencies is the skin effect a notable factor, though it is present at a minor degree at lower frequencies. The proximity effect is more of a detractor anyway. Besides - actual lightning is pure electrostatic DC anyway, though the high speed of the pulse up/down state carries an AC component due to the changing magnetic field that results.
So no, the skin effect would not turn any arbitrary casing into an alternate conductor unless HF is used. But if the target is surrounded by a dense gold shield rammed deep into the earth, they are safe from this weapon (though bullets not so much).
-Raphael, Silicon News [silicon-news.com] author.
A product of Applied Energetics (Score:4, Informative)
This is from Applied Energetics. [appliedenergetics.com] It's not yet clear if it's militarily useful. Range is going to be a problem. It has potential as "something to shoot at a potential IED that causes less damage than an IED".
Unless it becomes a more generally useful weapon, though, it will probably suffer the fate of most overspecialized weapons.
Not "Electrostatic DC" (Score:5, Informative)
Lightning normally consists of two pulses, one up and one down. The latter usually contains most of the current, but as it is a pulse with a rapidly rising leading edge, the EM field is considerable. The terms "AC" and "DC" do not really apply in this case.
The significant thing is not so much the frequency spectrum of the pulse, but the actual cross section of the ionised region through which the current is passing. If this is relatively large, the current density is low and a Faraday cage is effective. If it is small, the current density may be so high that the actual resistance of the target becomes important; the heat generated may melt a hole in the target resulting in the penetration of ionised gas into the target and current flowing down it. This explains rare cases where a lightning rod has not sufficiently reduced the potential gradient over a building, and the first strike has blown a hole in one of the conductors and then perhaps jumped into the building and started a fire. (I have seen photos of this effect but not seen them anywhere on the net.)
The idea of a target surrounded by a "dense gold shield" is just plain silly, by the way. All gold is dense...and a thick gold shield would be impracticably expensive. Copper is fine (higher melting point and greater thermal capacity than aluminum) but reinforced concrete with the rebar internally welded together would be much cheaper, more generally effective, and should easily be able to cope with the very limited power available from any human-built weapon.
Re:it's "Ordnance" (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The army's budget (Score:5, Informative)
The surrender was already under negotiation.
Not by anyone who had authority to surrender. Which makes it a pretty useless observation.
Re:lightning to stop cars ? (Score:5, Informative)
Not much on reading are you? That's exactly what this does.
The lightning is guided in a laser-induced plasma channel, then it deviates from the channel when it gets close to the target and has a lower-resistance path to ground.