"OHPs carry four 1-megawatt generators"

No one told me an Over Head Projector had such a large generator in it, I'm off to the nearest school to nick one and plug it into my house, free leccy!

You sound like my neighbour. He has a 6 kw pool heater and when I comment that it must cost a bit to run, he replied that its o.k., he has a generator. Presumably one that doesnt take fule in one end.

I have taken the bait.

Re: Heat

This is just a guess, mind you, but when you're sitting in the middle of the ocean, it would seam to me that finding a heat sink isn't high among your worries. Now, if they start using these on land, it may be a bit different, but you also have to remember that they will probably be fired in pulses, so you're still probably talking about considerably less than 400KW sustained heat output. Just liquid cool the damn thing and then use a HUGE radiator.

Flames, because that's what you'll get if the coolant boils off.

-d

Cover them in half-domes and have a voice synthesiser shout out "EXTERMINATE" every time they fire!

"IOW, anything in the beam evaporates"

God, I hope the Royal Navy doesn't get them, I like the Isle of Wight.

When rain, fog, or a dust storm pops up, your laser will be next-to-useless.

Electrically powered anti-missile and anti- aircraft laser cannons with no ammunition worries

Just the job for a couple of electrically powered aircraft carriers being built by a small north european country

... I had a 4MW beam laser on my Cobra Mk III...

Let me know when they get them small enough to mount on sharks.

" ...and wouldn't use up space in the ship's magazines."

Aside from the presumably astronomical rent in ship's magazines, there's also that problem that ammunition is to some degree or another what I like to call "explody". So lasers have the advantage that keeping them fed doesn't mean storing a steady supply of small bombs in a room on your boat. (Just fuel for the generators.)

Paris, because she's like a laser in more ways than you might think at first.

That would be Scotland if anyone cares which happens to be appart of quite a large European Country called the UK. If they ever get full independance (for all of 5 min until they get injested in to Europe with even less powers) then you can call them some insignificant blip on the map of Europe.

Lets hope these carriers actually get built and hte RAF and Army realise that without the Navy the UK is screwed if we ever need our armed forces some place else.

Spoken from Sunny Snowy, hot wet and windy Scotland

You'd think that these things would cause a bit of a paradigm shift in warfare. Its only a matter of time before you get a practical range of 10K out of these things. Put a decent radar and you'll cover a heck of a lot of airspace. Only problem that I see, is some idiot tripping over your power cord.

100kW, does that amount to a Light laser? We could mount five of these then onto an 80 tons Charger and have invented the white elephant. Though the sorry remains of FASA might sue us.

Still, I´d wait a couple of years and get a medium Las on a Locust.

anyway: I, for one, Welcome Mr. Grayson "Death" Carlyle.

No? Then please install it, to speed up the development of railguns.

Didn't you know, by installing a smaller fusion reactor on said Charger, & upgrading it's Internal Structure to Endo-Steel, you can mount a couple of PPC's on said mech...

Mine's the mech with Variable Speed Pulse (VSP) Small Lasers fitted....