You could easily fit that to a whale
But could people please stop saying "hence why". 'Hence' makes the 'why' redundant.
Military test centre for frikkin' laser cannon opens in Hampshire
British miltech boffinry outfit Qinetiq has opened a testing centre named the Dragonworks for the building and tweaking of giant laser cannon. So named after the Dragonfire weapon which will be its first product, the Dragonworks is located near Farnborough, in the heart of the leafy Home Counties. The facility, which includes …
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Monday 27th November 2017 09:53 GMT Michael H.F. Wilkinson
A pity Megalodon is extinct
It might have been the right fit.
On second thoughts, it is perhaps a good thing that Megalodon went extinct. Even though they were probably deep ocean sharks, a predator with a mouth that fits six humans with room to spare could put people off bathing in the ocean.
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Saturday 25th November 2017 09:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Perfect climate
Well, it will be a perfect match for the F-35 which can't take off (or even be outdoors) in the rain. Not without a hoodie at least.
In ancient and medieval times campaigning stopped in the winter due to unfavourable weather (and a general lack of food).
Maybe getting back to that custom would be a good first step. Then it would merely remain to extend the "no fighting" season through the summer.
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Saturday 25th November 2017 17:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Perfect climate
"In ancient and medieval times campaigning stopped in the winter due to unfavourable weather (and a general lack of food)."
Confucius remarked that "In Spring and Autumn there are no righteous wars."
Double meaning: because fighting in the planting and harvesting seasons is very bad for the economy, but Spring and Autumn was the name of the official Chinese history book.
You have Confucius on your side.
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Sunday 26th November 2017 13:35 GMT macjules
Re: Perfect climate
We build a gigantic laser cannon, mount it on one of our 'Aircraft Carriers' (which have no aircraft to carry apart from the occasional Gypsy Moth) and use the second carrier as a fuel supply since they failed to install nuclear propulsion on either ship.
The other, more sensible, option is that we train up 20 very angry Great White sharks and mount lasers on them.
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Saturday 25th November 2017 00:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: re. LDEW
"why waste money developing another version of sometimes effective weapon?"
A good reason would be to, for example, avoid buying into something like the USA's F-35B project with no real control or oversight available to the UK government, delays, ever-escalating costs (mostly going to US firms), and operational dependence on totally and utterly friendly and reliable foreign nations - such as Turkey for engine servicing, at the insistence of the USA.
- after all, there's no really good laser weapon system yet in service which can do something conventional weapons can't so there isn't one you can just buy now. The Yanks are fielding one example of their apparently effective AN/SEQ-3 Laser Weapon System but when the ship it's on is decommissioned next year, the laser's not being shifted to its replacement.
A credible reason would be that the defence contractors involved in Dragonfire are good at lobbying the government and MOD.
Take yer pick.
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Saturday 25th November 2017 22:03 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: re. LDEW
"The Yanks and Ruskies are about five to ten years ahead of us, why waste money developing another version of sometimes effective weapon?"
The UK is pretty good with original research and even building prototypes. What we are shit at is development and production of a final product. Weapons systems are not generally mass produced so we might possibly do ok with this.
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Friday 24th November 2017 19:39 GMT israel_hands
Re: Dragonstrike
Hampshire is rarely considered part of the home counties, and certainly not the heart of them.
Aside form that, the point that got me was the mention of reduced effectiveness due to water vapour. While lasers sound cool, they really work better in the absence of atmosphere*. The idea that ramping up the power behind it to compensate for foggy conditions is probably not the best. The only way to penetrate water vapour is for the beam to be powerful enough that it superheats it instantly. Which would take a lot of power and create massive amounts of steam which would a) add to the problem of beam decoherence and b) draw a very obvious straight line between the target and the weapon platform along the path of your supposedly invisible death-ray.
At the end of the day, kinetics are simpler, more efficient and more effective. Yes, you could potentially build a laser powerful enough to punch a hole through battleship plate, but there are more than enough ways to do that already which are simpler, proven and already in production. If they want to spend money on researching better weapons I'd strongly suggest they look into coil guns. Using a strong magnetic pulse to accelerate a solid projectile is way more efficient than lasers and can, if you can get it efficient enough, provide benefits over chemical accelerants.
* I'm not suggesting that lasers are particularly useful in space, either. I've read enough of Project Rho to understand that they're essentially a good way of cooking your crew with waste heat while doing very little damage to your target compared to the total energy output of your "weapon". The only practical use for them is to damage fragile sensory equipment but even then, it's probably cheaper to keep hurling chunks of metal until you either knock out something important or just wreck the target completely.
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Sunday 26th November 2017 01:13 GMT ThatOne
Re: Dragonstrike
> I'm not suggesting that lasers are particularly useful in space, either.
Lasers do have one huge advantage over kinetic weapons of all kinds: The speed of light.
In close combat it doesn't make a big difference, but over huge distances without dust or haze like you might find in space that advantage means that you can destroy any missile crawling towards you. Evasive maneuvers also get a lot more difficult when somebody shoots light beams at you.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
