Laser Cannons Coming to an F-16 Near You 757
dxprog writes "Reuters is reporting that the US Pentagon is designing a laser cannon that's small enough to fit onto a fighter jet yet powerful enough to knock out a missile. "The High Energy Laser Area Defense System (HELLADS), being designed by the Pentagon's central research and development agency, will weigh just 750 kg (1,650 lb) and measures the size of a large fridge." Now all we need to do is make fighter jets space worthy for that true Star Wars feel."
let's just get this out of the way: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:let's just get this out of the way: (Score:3, Funny)
Will there be friggin sharks on them too?
Who needs a shark when you've got a veritech?
Kids today...
Re:let's just get this out of the way: (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:let's just get this out of the way: (Score:3, Interesting)
It apears that we can cause the propelent to expload before we actualy cause damage inside the shell of the aircraft. This was the basis of the ground based lasers and the ones mounted in the jumbo jets. I guess the trick would be doing this before the warhead is armed and mounting a laser capable of this task on a jet fighter might give the extra advantage.
At less then 1700lbs, this setup well within weapons pay
Re:let's just get this out of the way: (Score:3, Informative)
The laser is ultraviolet, thus it would allow an F22 to loiter in an area and attack ground targetes (Geneva conventions state that we can't attack people with lasers) However, we can cut the truck they're driving in half and thus detonating the fuel tank...
Not the F-22, or the F-16 (Score:5, Informative)
It is the F-35 or the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) that has a laser on the drawing boards.
The thing about a laser system like this is that it need a lot of electricity to run, and the vast majority of fighter aircraft do not produce the kind of juice needed to run one of these. The thing that makes the JSF capable of handling a system like this, is the way the VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing) version of the aircraft was designed. Unlike previous VTOL fighters (AV-8 - Harrier and the Boeing consept for JSF) which use a series of nozels to redirect thrust the engine was already making to get vertical thrust, the Lockheed JSF (the one that was selected) has a secondary fan, driven by a shaft from the main engine and door that open above and below the fan.
Using the lift fan in the VTOL plane means that the engine in the CTOL (Conventional Take Off and Landing) and CV (Carrier Varient) has the capacity built in to drive a shaft, and the aircraft themselves have a lot of room right in front of the engine/behind the cockpit. This shaft can then drive a large generator to fire the laser.
I used to be an analyst at the company that builds the engines for the F-22 and the JSF. I worked on both programs.
The laser is ultraviolet, thus it would allow an F22 to loiter in an area and attack ground targetes (Geneva conventions state that we can't attack people with lasers) However, we can cut the truck they're driving in half and thus detonating the fuel tank...
Conventional fuels (gas/diesel) do not detonate unless they are vaporized, or atomised. They will burn pretty fast though.
Re:let's just get this out of the way: (Score:4, Funny)
thats a bit to heavy
then again... suppose 2 sharks carry it together... (to lazy to check monty python quote)
Re:let's just get this out of the way: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I hope not. Here is why. (Score:5, Funny)
Episode IV: A New Lack Of Hope
It is a period of civil war. Rebel guerrillas, striking from hidden bases, have won their first victory against the PENTAGON. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to America's ultimate weapon, the MISSILE FRIGATE, an armored aircraft with enough power to destroy an entire peaceful wedding party.
Pursued by the sinister agents of CONGRESS, Princess Raghad Hussein races home aboard her taxi, custodian to the stolen plans that can dominate her people and change type of tyrannical rule in force in the country.
Re:I hope not. Here is why. (Score:3, Insightful)
The answer to this paradox, IMO, is that war i
Re:I hope not. Here is why. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I hope not. Here is why. (Score:4, Insightful)
You give people alot of credit where none is due. People do not have to dehumanize anyone to kill them. Case in point? Most murders (76%) are comitted by people that know the victim. 22% of the murders in 2002 were comitted by family members.
Logically it would semm to be much more difficult to "dehumanize" (whatever the $%^@ that referrs to in a psychological sense) someone that you know personally than a total stranger. Seems to me like it takes knowing someone to be able to to kill them, not the other way around.
Re:I hope not. Here is why. (Score:3, Insightful)
Some would say that civil societies won't exist if they're not willing to make war.
Re:Wow (Score:3)
I didn't mean to suggest that they are themselves are less human or mindless, just that the fact remain that they must kill people, and that that can not be sanitized.
Infantry use derogatory names for the enemy, they hoot and holler after a kill, and they do lots of other things that people don't like to think about. The OP thought that was inappropriate.
Yeah, the last bit was pretty trite. How about "There will always be a disconnec
Re:I hope not. Here is why. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I hope not. Here is why. (Score:3, Insightful)
Right. It happened because some people are assholes, and some of them got jobs with the National Guard, just like some got jobs with the Post Office, and some work the cubicle down the hall from you. Further, some are in the chain of command supervising (or not, in this case) the people pulling guard duty at a prison. If your theory is correct, and this is policy all way from the top, there would be many, many
Re:I hope not. Here is why. (Score:3, Insightful)
Or perhaps war is the inevitable result of the existence of politics. Politics is necessarily competitive and adversarial. The rewards are immense and the most desireable seats are naturally limited (the smallest bodies governing the largest areas have the most concentrated power and the highest prestige).
Politicians need to be seen to be "doing something". Successfully governing a quiet Utopia will be boring and loo
Re:I hope not. Here is why. (Score:4, Interesting)
"researchers have documented how soldiers will often go to great lengths to avoid firing directly at enemy soldiers, especially if they can seem them - and the distress they suffer when they do kill.
A famous example is the Battle of Gettysburg, where thousands of soldiers on both sides loaded their weapons over and over to avoid having to fire them. Similarly, during the second world war, S.L.A. Marshall, a US army historian, found that on average only 15 to 20 per cent of American infantry troops actually fired at the enemy when they had the oportunity to do so."
The article goes on to talk about how the US army managed to increase the firing rate in later wars by de-humanising the enemy and training soldiers to shoot on impulse.
The main articles are about the Post-Traumatic Stress suffered later by the soldiers as a result of this.
Re:I hope not. Here is why. (Score:3, Informative)
This argument is fallacious because it assumes the only possible cause for recovered rifles having multiple loads is intent by the bearer. The battlefield was noisy and frightening, so a perfectly valid premise held by many historians is that the soldiers failed to realize that their weapons did not fire. This happened on other battlefields- not just Get
Re:I hope not. Here is why. (Score:5, Funny)
By the way, you write like a schizophrenic dope head. Nothing personal. I'm just glad you're in the NRA.
Re:let's just get this out of the way: (Score:3, Funny)
Colonel: Well, we got some good news and some bad news, sir.
General: OK, what are the bad news?
Colonel: Due to some unexpected turbulence, we missed the target and had a friendly fire incident.
General: *Curse*
General: And the good news?
Colonel: The good news are that your car rental's been upgraded to a convertible without touching the budget.
Great... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Great... (Score:3, Informative)
Number Two: Sea Bass.
Dr. Evil: [pause] Right.
Number Two: They're mutated sea bass.
Dr. Evil: Are they ill tempered?
Number Two: Absolutely.
Dr. Evil: Oh well, that's a start.
Will they make noise in space? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Will they make noise in space? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Will they make noise in space? (Score:3, Insightful)
It would take a ludicrous amount of fuel to make a spacecraft fly like a jet fighter.
It would also prevent the pilot from doing many maneuvers that can only be performed in space.
Of course, by the time we have genuine spacefighters, piloted fightercraft will be a thing of the distant past. Remote
HELLADS? (Score:3, Interesting)
So what's the other L for?
I swear, the military just loves acronyms, whether they make sense or not! And what's an area defense system?
Re:HELLADS? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:HELLADS? (Score:5, Informative)
"Liquid". HELLADS actually stands for "High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System", despite what Yahoo! would have you believe. Maybe Yahoo! are employing ex-Slashdot editors now; they do seem to copy everything else Google does... ;)
Re:HELLADS? (Score:5, Informative)
4 out of 5 swinging dicks recommend... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:4 out of 5 swinging dicks recommend... (Score:3, Insightful)
Today's Humvee armor problem stems from the parameters for the Humvee project, which were laid down fifteen or more years ago.
Since then, the nature of battle has changed dramatically, and the kinds of missions the military now faces aren't really ideally suited to the Humvee project the military had already committed to.
So in another ten
nature of battle (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:4 out of 5 swinging dicks recommend... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:4 out of 5 swinging dicks recommend... (Score:3, Funny)
Dude, he's totally got xxx in front of his name and after. He's a total bad ass and you sir are out matched.
Re:4 out of 5 swinging dicks recommend... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:4 out of 5 swinging dicks recommend... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:4 out of 5 swinging dicks recommend... (Score:5, Insightful)
Action leads to reaction, and no matter HOW much armor you put on something, you can always penetrate it - just takes a bigger bang. The say that some of the bigger IEDs actually pick something like a APC and throw them a couple of hundred yards, and up-armored HUMVEES just get blown to bits
Re:4 out of 5 swinging dicks recommend... (Score:3, Informative)
Nice, (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Nice, (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Nice, (Score:3, Informative)
Depending on its uses and where it's aimed, there's a good chance that the beam will simply fire off hamrlessly into space, presuming that enough of it makes it through th
Re:Nice, (Score:3, Informative)
Incidentally, the ancient Romans did the same thing. T
Borealis? (Score:2)
I'd love to see a pulsed-fusion plane...
Laser cannon my eye (Score:2, Funny)
Okay, now I have to enter this stuff to avoid the caps filter. Talk about spoiling a joke....
Power Source? (Score:2, Insightful)
Battery system? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, I seem to recall reading (albeit in a 'Popular Mechanics' or some such light fare) about the larger all-liquid versions. These things apparently derived their power from a chemical reaction, the reactants being stored in big tanks. I believe that was a big reason for needing a 747-sized platform.
Re:Power Source? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Power Source? (Score:5, Interesting)
F-16 Aircraft use a powerplant ranging from 15,000 to 19,000 (28,000 to 32,000 with afterburner) pounds force of thrust.
To convert between thrust and horsepower, use this formula: [(Thrust in lbs x Speed in mph) / 550] x 1.47 = horsepower (formula link [americanjetcars.com])
So let's assume an airspeed of 400 miles per hour.
Without afterburners:
Low: ((15,000 * 400) / 550) * 1.47 = 16,036.3636
High: ((19,000 * 400) / 550) * 1.47 = 20,312.7273
And with afterburners:
Low: ((28,000 * 400) / 550) * 1.47 = 29,934.5455
High: ((32,000 * 400) / 550) * 1.47 = 34,210.9091
So let's say about 18,000 horsepower on average regularly and 32,000 horsepower on average with afterburners.
A 150 kilowatt laser requires 1.1% of the total engine power produced (on average) by an F-16 turbofan engine, and 0.6% of the engine's power with afterburners engaged.
In other words, I think they've got all the power they need.
Re:Power Source? (Score:3, Informative)
Not to be too pointed but... (Score:2)
Missile defense (Score:2, Funny)
& yes, defending against laser is that simple.
Re:Missile defense (Score:4, Informative)
You ever felt how hot a mirror gets in sunlight? Well, a lot of the light that hits it is converted to heat. Even a highly mirrored surface would get incredibly hot under a 150Kw laser beam. A missle is essentially a flying tube under a lot of stress, so a small non-uniform structural weakness would have the capability to tear it apart if it was travelling at high speed....
Re:Missile defense (Score:3, Funny)
& yes, defending against laser is that simple.
So how come Queen Amidala's ship had such difficulty getting past the blockade?
Re:Missile defense (Score:5, Informative)
Do you actually have some evidence to back that claim up? I thought not. The people who come up with ideas like military lasers are actually smart enough to have thought of things like mirrored surfaces on enemy missiles. They wouldn't have put all that time, effort, and money into the project if it could be stopped by such a simple countermeasure.
Common mirrors are not 100% efficient; they absorb some fraction of the light rather than reflecting it. The actual reflecting layer is also quite thin. The small amount of absorbance is enough that a high energy laser will destroy an ordinary mirror very quickly, at which point the remaining energy is absorbed efficiently. The kind of extremely efficient mirrors needed for ultra-high power lasers are fantastically expensive and fragile enough that it's hopelessly impractical to try putting one on military gear.
Re:Missile defense (Score:5, Informative)
The reason for using very high-power lasers is the same they prefer to use hyper-kinetic missiles: at some energy density, no plausible molecular material has sufficient bond strength to withstand it, effectively obsoleting armor.
Link to DARPA (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Link to DARPA (Score:4, Informative)
From a DARPA PDF:
"To help arm tactical platforms, the High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System (HELLADS)
program is developing a new high energy laser (HEL) tactical weapon system whose unique
cooling system might allow the system to be 10 times lighter, significantly smaller, and
approximately half the cost of current developmental HEL systems.
The HELLADS design goal of less than 5 kilograms per kilowatt would enable, for the first time,
high energy lasers that could be integrated into several air and ground tactical platforms,
including unmanned combat armed rotorcraft (UCAR), UCAV, Predator B, the F/A-18, and
future ground combat systems. HELLADS could protect fixed installations or population centers
from attack, patrol a border, or patrol a demilitarized zone with the capability to react to hostile
actions and engage tactical missiles, rockets, or artillery at the speed of light."
This is from 2003, so this has been steeping for a while... is it soup yet?
SO will they go (Score:5, Funny)
ouch (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmmm, I'm torn.
On one hand, IF it hits its intended target, that is one less "consumable" missile defense that has to be manufactured and paid for--> not a "one and done" defense.
On the other, it's one thing when stray bullets strafe a school like in New Jersey, but oh my, imagine the holes this could leave.
measure your fridge from the air? (Score:5, Funny)
JSF (Score:3, Informative)
Anti-satellite? (Score:5, Interesting)
F-16 operating ceiling = 15.240 kilometers [danshistory.com]
Minimum LEO satellite altitude = about 150 kilometers [wikipedia.org]
I couldn't find any information about the range of the HELLADS system; that information is probably classified. However, TFA claims there will be a 150 kilowatt version of the laser by 2007. Any laser experts know if that power of laser can take out a target 135 kilometers away? Is the idea even feasible?
Re:Anti-satellite? (Score:5, Informative)
The f 16 will be above of >90% of the athmosphere at the ceiling hight, so absorbtion in the atmosphere isnt that big of a problem. But divergence is.
No matter what movies will make you believe, lasers arent perfectly parallel beams of light.
Not to go too much into the details, a laser needs to have a large diameter to have a low divergence (hence the used large telecopes for the moon reflection experiments: a 5m laser diameter here will be a few km on the moon, wile a few mm here will be 100s of km there
I cant see how a jet-fighter mounted version would fullfill the requirements. The lens crossection has to be small enough not to fuck up the aerodynamics of the supersonic plane, and you cant just put a streamlines glasshood in front of hit because of the high pulse energies...
So you could get some light onto a satellite, but not enough to knock it out...
Otoh, I think it could be strong enough to permanently blind the CCDs of enemy spy-sats...
That Star Wars Feel (Score:3, Insightful)
what if it misses its target? (Score:3, Insightful)
i mean, the laser has to be powerful enough to work at a distance of several km, and a plane is only several km off the ground. normally if a missile does not hit its target it detonates in midair (raining debris on the ground), but this seems a bit more problematic.
So what if it does? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:what if it misses its target? (Score:3, Informative)
Nice armchair logic. So when is a plasma torch no longer a plasma torch? When it no longer has the characteristics of a plasma torch. If you divide the energy output by the distance it covers while going mach 2 you get a really small amount of energy per square inch that doesn't last hardly any time at all for any given patch. Could you construct something that would still cause damage? Sure, but that would be orders of magnitude greater than the je
Re:what if it misses its target? (Score:3, Insightful)
At high angles the moving beam at the actual impact point (a miss) may be well ABOVE mach
Cool! (Score:3, Interesting)
HELLADS (Score:3, Funny)
I think Gasseous Optical Nuetral Area Defense System would have been a better name. What do you suppose would instill more fear in the enemy?
"Run for your life! The HELLADS are coming!"
"Run for your life! The GONADS are coming!"
These Aren't Laser Cannons (Score:5, Informative)
Lasers were covered and I had a brief chat with the Air Force representative after the briefing.
The USAF is sticking lasers in 747's and the army is testing ground-based systems.
The aircraft-based lasers cannot inflict any physical damage. They are powerful enough to scramble electronics. The goal is to target a missile shortly after it is launched so that its guidance systems fail and the missile lands in the enemy's territory, never reaching its target (us). Their goal is to use this as a powerful deterrent by making it very risky to launch missiles.
The ground-based systems can inflict physical damage, but are nowhere close to being airborne (they're much too massive). They are, as I was told in July, still "in the lab." (I later saw a full-page ad in "The Hill," a capitol hill newspaper, promoting Lockheed Martin's ground-based laser systems as though they were about ready. I'll trust the USAF officer's discussion more than the corporate advertisement.)
A key misunderstanding of lasers is in the kind of damage they inflict. Lasers will poke holes through objects but do not cause a target's destruction or explosion -- however, shooting through or over-heating a target's fuel tank will cause an explosion. And of course, to re-emphasize my major point, we don't have airborne laser cannons --- their goal is basically to inflict a kind of EMP-like damage to missiles. I asked about getting these things into UAV's and was told they'd love to do it, but don't expect anything for another 50 years.
Re:Forbidden? (Score:5, Informative)
"Protocol IV on Blinding Laser Weapons prohibits the use of laser weapons specifically designed to cause permanent blindness to the naked eye (or to the eye with corrective eyesight devices). Countries that are party to the Convention and Protocols will not transfer such weapons to any country or other entity."
So I guess to conform to the Geneva Convention, the lasers will just require the same stickers that they put on childrens water guns: "Point Away From Face"
Re:Forbidden? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Forbidden? (Score:5, Interesting)
"M16's are not designed to kill, they are designed to maim, because a wounder soldier is more of a liability to the enemy than a dead one."
But we still use M16s... odd... (well, WE use M2's or something like that)
Re:Forbidden? (Score:5, Informative)
The M2 is a retired weapon, and pretty much has been since the 60s. The AR15/M16 was adopted to replace it then. It wasn't really accepted until the 80s, however.
The 5.56mm NATO round is also used by the Steyr AUG, FN FNC, British L85, FAMAS F1, HK23/53, the Israeli SAW and TAR21, several Berettas, and the standard police rifle (Remington 7615). There are quite a few more than those, though, these are just popular.
The older 7.62mm NATO round was used in a lot of weapons, including the M14, M60, Kar-98k, and the Winchester model 70. It was very popular, as well.
The M16 isn't designed to maim, but they are easy to do this with. They are rather accurate, have a good range, and don't do full auto. One of the major design goals of the platform was penetration of combat helmets at range. It was designed to kill, like most other modern firearms. The general exception to that rule is for things like PDWs, where the goal is defense of wielder. They will still kill very effectively, but you're aiming a lot less.
Re:Forbidden? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know why the M2 is coming up in this thread about rifles, since it is a
See http://world.guns.ru/machine/mg04-e.htm [world.guns.ru] for details.
Re:Forbidden? (Score:3, Informative)
At that kind of range, the only way to hit a small, say 6-12 inch target, is to be in the prone position, with proper hand position, proper eye relief to the scope/sight, and shooting between breaths AND heartbeats.
I was a Marine designated marksman and even after sniper school the biggest factor was still the shooter and not the accuracy of the weapon. There are VERY few people who possess the skill to
Re:Forbidden? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Forbidden? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Forbidden? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Forbidden? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Forbidden? (Score:3, Informative)
That's not entirely accurate. A dum dum bullet to my heart would kill me as easily as a FMJ bullet. It just so happens that unless you kill, you're likely to leave a maimed person. Same with lasers, it doesn't matter if the laser is strong enough to kill, if it means someone who managed to duck for cover, or everyone that was around and looked at its reflection go blind. While obviously an ideal that can never be
Re:Forbidden? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Forbidden? (Score:3, Informative)
You may be thinking about weapons in space, if I remember correctly the USA and Russia agreed not to militarise space, which essentially meant no orbitting satellites with either lasers on them or nuclear missiles. (it may have taken kinetic weapons into account too, i'm not sure on that)
Re:Forbidden? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Forbidden? (Score:5, Informative)
source http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2585 [newscientist.com]
Re:Forbidden? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Forbidden? (Score:5, Interesting)
You can even combine defensive concepts. Missiles being relatively small, relatively mass produced items, processes that normally cost a lot can be proportionally cheap compared to the cost of the guidance systems, propulsion system, and handling costs. So, for a multipart defensive system:
* A "shiny" ablative system on the nosecap and leading edge fins - perhaps something as simple as silicon-impregnated cork mixed with aluminum, silver, or gold (better at IR) powder.
* The nosecap and leading-edge fins made of silvered (again, with a good visible/IR reflecting material) RCC (again, since they're small and the process to make them can be automated, the costs shouldn't unreasonable). RCC can take extreme temperatures without becoming ductile.
* Other parts of the body made out of unpainted, shiny aluminum or a silvered surface.
It's less extreme than other defensive mechanisms used for various kinds missiles - MIRVed warheads, anti-ship missiles that hug the water and then take a sharp climb and descent, etc. And it's certainly simpler than many of the counter-countermeasure methods used by modern missiles.
Re:Forbidden? (Score:4, Informative)
When "Star Wars" was heavily funded in the '80s, the Russians did a little bit of investigation into what it would take to thwart both kinetic vehicles and energy weapons. The actually deployed the Topol-M [armscontrol.org], which has a lower arc and "jinks" in-flight, makeing it almost impossible to hit with another missile. It takes so long for your interceptor to get to the intercept point that a really tiny course deflection on the part of the target means you'll miss by a hundred miles.
On the energy side they came up with ablatives (which could be refitted to existing missiles) with, literally, a twist.
Since you have to hold the laser on a specific spot for some length of time (governed by the power of the laser, atmospherics, etc), you could significantly enhance the survivability of the missile by having it slowly rotate during the launch phase. We're talkin' about a reasonably simple software change that makes it 10x harder to shoot down with a laser.
Re:Forbidden? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Forbidden? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Forbidden? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Top Gun (Score:5, Funny)
I'm too close for lasers, switching to Scientology.
Hello Mr. Enemy Pilot, may I Audit you?
Re:Top Gun (Score:3, Funny)
> I'm too close for lasers, switching to Scientology.
> Hello Mr. Enemy Pilot, may I Audit you?
Maveric: You don't know the history of frickin' lasers on sharks' heads. I do!
Goose: We regret to inform you that your son is broke because he is stupid.
Re:Top Gun (Score:5, Funny)
You call that benevolent?
Re:Compact? (Score:4, Insightful)
It'd be smaller than a 370 gallon external fuel pod.
No one said it was gonna be shaped like a cement block.
Re:Great... (Score:3, Informative)
OT: Re:OTOH (Score:3, Insightful)
Everything the US did in Europe in the last century was seen as in the best interests of the US. Many Europeans found that that suited them just fine and have been forever grateful. But to suggest that 'Europe' has any obligation to the US is stupid. There were no US towns firebombed. It wasn't US citizens of being herded into camps outside Tulsa. Tanks didn't obliterate an entire county in Virginia.
Fact is, 'Europe' knows what all that shit is about. And too many in the US don't have a fucking clue. Tie
Re:OTOH (Score:3, Informative)
Ah! Now I understand why the US is trying to force it's RI/MPAA and copyright/patent laws on Europe!
"europe used to be as bad as the middle east."
True...but that was in the 18th century...about when you had some unrest too.
"a powerfull laser could also make air warfare obsolete."
Yup...just like missiles made dogfighting obsolete.
"[x] is actualy saving lives because it is incredibly more accur