DARPA orders 'fridge-sized' laser energy cannon American weaponry researchers have awarded a $21m contract for the design and development of a 150-kilowatt energy weapon, high-powered enough to blast missiles out of the sky yet light enough to be carried by a jet fighter. The cash-in the newly-inked deal goes to Textron Defence Systems, who will in return "fabricate and …
said so in a previous comment to the ABL article that the aim of the ABL is not to build 747 based weapons, but to improve on the tech so to reduce the size and fit into fighter aircraft.
try dodging a laser beam hitting your fusilage, you'll wish for the days of missles when one of those beams hits the cockpit, or even better, the fuel tanks of your SU-27
If they're going to put them in jet fighters, they may as well be used in air to air dog fights against other planes. How much does a firing of this laser cost compared to a single air to air missile?
And I suppose there's no reason why the laser couldn't be used on various ground targets too? Cars, tanks, factories.... people?
Yes, cool tech!
I cant remember the name of that quite chunky fighter aircraft that essentially has a front mounted minigun. Well rip that heavy lead chugging beastie off that aircraft, and fit this fricking laserbeam weapon to it, probably better fitting it to something like this than your typical F15, as its going to be very heavy.
The other coo thing is that its likely you don't actually need to point the laser at your target by pointing the aircraft. More likely a computer will highlight designated targets in line of sight and potentially zap em all in one go by redirecting the beam off a mirror. Knock a whole squadron out the sky before they can even get in range to use an AIM missile!
Sweeet.
Then that begs the question: what about a GROUND-borne laser? The article mentions such a tactical airborne laser being able to shoot down an anti-aircraft missile. But what if the shoe's on the other foot, and the jet is targeted by an anti-aircraft LASER? Undoubtedly, it'd be capable of a power output superior to anything possible on a mobile base, and I would think hitting a moving target is about at tricky as hitting a stationary target while moving, and both are mitigated because a laser moves at the speed of light and is not affected by the wind.
"[T]hat quite chunky fighter aircraft" you're thinking of is probably the US A10, aka The Warthog.
Just two niggles: It's not a mini-gun. I think the term "mini-gun" refers only to Gatling guns under 20mm, and usually "just" 7.62mm. The A10's weapon is a terrifying 30mm!
Secondly, it's not so much a plane with a nose-mounted gun as it is a gun with a breech-mounted airplane! :-)
You mean the Fairchild A-10(a)? Thing that has a bloody great big cannon in it? It's a close support craft, not a fighter, but yeah, it can rip the front armour off a main battle tank. Can't fire for more than a couple of seconds at a pop, or it stalls and drops out of the air, either.
Oddly, the A-!0 is very old tech, much loved by pilots (argh, typed "pirates" twice there), as it actually uses mechanical control rather than "fly by wire" - cables and levers to move the control surfaces. It apparently has a very nice feel to fly. Can't say I've ever flown one myself, but there you go.
The A-10 flies quite low and slow, and it's a beast. I guess a power plant could go where the huge magazine for the cannon lives. Fricken laser beams on such an old plane could be pretty amusing.
Dodgin'? If the enemy is not blinded in the first tens of a second - not a problem actually. I would not expect anything fighter based to be tourette mounted. There is not enough tolerance in the aerodynamic envelope of a modern fighter jet to add the ugly blob that sits on the front of a B747-ABL to direct the beam. So we are probably looking at the fire-control system coupled with the autopilot and the pilot pushing a button and praying for 30 seconds while the autopilot aims the whole fighter at the target and keeps it that way. During those 30+ seconds this fighter is one BIG SITTING DUCK. Yeah, it may take out one Su27 this way. The remaining units in the "enemy" wing will pulverise it into atoms.
There is a fundamental contradiction in "in-atmosphere" laser weapons for anything different from creating a discharge channel to zap something with a few MVolt. The higher the power, the more likely that the air will ionise. The moment the air ionises in the beam path, the beam becomes useless. A beam capable of damaging a fighter jet in less than 1 second simply cannot exist and 30 seconds in air-to-air combat is simply unrealistic.
Lasers are not the answer. They are the question and the answer is NO. Masers and "smart" kinetic weapons are much more promising routes for future weapons.
"Can't fire for more than a couple of seconds at a pop, or it stalls and drops out of the air, either."
That's actually a myth.
"probably better fitting it to something like this than your typical F15, as its going to be very heavy"
An F-15 can lift a LOT more than an A-10. The F-15 is _monsterously_ powerful.
The F-15E strike eagle happily lifts more bombs longer distances than the A-10.
That said, 750 kilos isn't THAT heavy compared to the weaponry any of these jets normally carry. An F-15 could carry over 10 of these things if you could find a place to stick them.
So the peak power output of this thing is 150kW. Marvellous.
How long can it do 150kW for? It won't be very long, unless there's also a large heavy supply of raw materials outside the fridge. As already noted, there's also the small problem of waste heat to get rid of too. Not a problem for a quick flash, but if you want sustained death ray output... If the pulse is not very long, say a few ms, then the thermal effects of the death ray on the target may well be minimal, once any water droplets (er cloud, y'know) between laser and target have been boiled away. The energy emitted in 5 ms at 150kw is the same as 5s at 150W. How much damage can you do with a 150W light bulb (or three car headlamps) close up for 5 seconds? OK hopefully it'll go for more than 5ms, but you get the idea...
Flame icon, 'cos there's no way this laser's causing flames on its target unless the target is specially prepared (and Boeing Lockheed Raytheon etc would never cheat in tests just to get their contracts extended, would they).
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