Damn! Forgot you misthreaded your post.

"Havent you ever heard of A10s or low flying aircraft? You are right about the weight and the energy source. That would just take time. But it can be done"

not with present technology, the problem is energy density (the same issue with electric cars) it is hard to get a fuel onto a plane with a high enough energy density - jet fuel is carefully filtered to get the maximum energy density, and gasoline is currently far ahead of electric batteries in terms of both energy per weight AND refueling time.

Weight become a massively important factor in aircraft (whether helicopter or jet) and the power requirements of this kind of laser (given the losses guaranteed for firing through any distance of air) are enough to make this a rather useless one-shot weapon at best.

The caterpillar drive is a really cool idea, i'm not sure if it has been completed, but i really like the ideas of using a magnetic drive with no moving parts.

Combat robots are great, but ultra-expensive. Unmanned aircraft probably cost a little less than manned ones, and reduce the risk of pilots dying. Unmanned combat tanks are probably easily doable, with some possible communication issues, it would likely be easiest to block communication signals from Unmanned tanks, but they could have auto-pilot and local network communication so a battalion could talk and co-ordinate it's attacks without needing remote control...

Electronic hacking of such a system would be the next major issue. And i'd guess this has been investigated by the US at least...

Microwave and sonic weapons have been looked at lately, mostly for crowd control... on the edge between lethal and non-lethal weaponary. (like how pepper spray is a chemical weapon, and thus likely a banned under international convention... but it's fine for civilian use :)

Unmanned aircraft already exist. UAVs like the predator are relatively low cost and can do everything from one bunker strikes to aerial reconnaissance,

one *way* bunker strikes...

Also, for mounting that laser on a plane and targeting a tank with it, wouldn't it be almost impossible to keep the laser aimed at the exact same point on the tank for 3.5 seconds? I think more likely it wouldn't stay at the exact same spot for more than a second, not only not cutting through at any particular point, but resulting in just an squiggly engraving line down the length of the tank. The question is really if the laser is powerful enough to cut through in that short amount of time and if the plane can handle powering it.

Well, he did say some gawdawful 23 feet of steel or some such. Hardly the kind if armor even a tank could haul around, so more likely only needs a fraction of a second to go in and out the other side and if the target was the tank's fuel cell or munitions store, then *boom*. Realistically, lasers were the idea behind the Star Wars SDI system fro the Reagan years. Depending on how far along that research progressed, the idea of a weapons satellite that could blow up a ground or sea target is not that outrageous.

I guess it boils down to this. Do we have the tec to build a energy powerful enough to give the laser enough juice to enable it to fire from a far distance, and yet small and light enough to put into a plane. I believe in 10-15 years it could be done.

If done right, the power source need not be fully contained on the plane as a dedicated battery or something. Maybe a transmitted energy to a capacitor or a build up of energy from burning a fuel source like an extra engine dedicated to charging the capacitor. A lot will depend on the ability to quickly discharge energy into the laser and the real strength and time required for the desired shot.

Suddenly "Real Genius" is running through my head. I may go have to pull that out of the collection and flop it in the DVD player. :-)

Capacitors are decades away from that sort of power density.

We could certainly have laser weapons pretty much any time we want, but there's no indication they would be anywhere near as effective, so people don't really bother.

As effective as conventional weapons

Think of it this way. When muskets first came out they were lame, horable, heavy, expencive, weapons. You would do better with a sword then a gun in those days. Now? Good luck with a sword. Point is once lasers are developed they will be deadly even more then conventional weapones. Thats my theory anyway.

Thinking of it another way, when muskets first came out they were out performed by the longbow in almost every respect. As they became more popular they were still a far inferior weapon to the longbow, and by the time they were replaced by the rifle they hadn't got any better than a bow.

Or, if you're feeling pessimistic, laser guns may be the new pigeon-guided missile. An interesting idea, but one doomed never to revolutionise the battlefield.

M. Ezra,

Interesting point. The problem with your reasoning is that you misunderstand the motive behind advances in firearm technology. Firearms quickly became the military weapon of choice, not because they were more effective than bows (they are not) but because they were easier to learn than bows.* A proper bow (long-bow) takes a decade or so to learn shoot accurately. Firearms became popular with military procurement guys because you could teach a peasant to operate one with military-grade effectiveness in a matter of weeks.

The problem with energy weapons is that they really have no point. It's not like any of the major militaries have firepower problems these days. Bullets, rockets and missiles are still plenty-capable of killing people. Lasers are a bit silly because their use is being explored to solve problems that aren't actually problems.

Where lasers become interesting is space combat, where recoil is a lot more of a concern than in terrestrial combat.



*Admittedly I'm citing information that a friend of mine (military historian) gave me. I've never been in the military and I'm not a historian

Draug adds an interesting point, what if you don't mount the power supply on the aircraft.

You can basically make a flying mirror, which reflects the energy from some power grid and directs it at a target... just need a good wavelength for not being absorbed by the air, easy to produce a coherent beam (so it doesn't disperse) and is easily reflected by some material you can mount on the aircraft...

only problem is, i don't know what wavelength suits.

@ora

Wireless power transmission is outrageously complicated. Mounting a laser on a battleship or aircraft carrier seems much more reasonable. They already are moving power plants. But what would you target? No enemy fleet will ever get in range of a US carrier. Lasers aren't as effective for bombardments, either.

Use the laser as a defensive weapon against incoming aircraft? IF the sustainable time or the rapid fire rate could make it better than typical ship board AA guns, it might be feasible. Also, while strength suffers over distance, the laser could theoretically have a better range than the typical big guns on a battleship or even the missiles on a guided missile destroyer.

Ohm and laser accuracy isn't affected by gravity or wind.

*Oh and... Although accidentally typing ohm in reference to lasers is a funny typo.

Oh i understood that Al swearoengen. China would arm peasents with muskets and the military that was well tranied would use their bows and swords. Lots of countries would do that. The point im trying to get at is guns have come along way. Way not lasers too? Lasers are still in the early stages of development. If you could just come up with a energy powerful enough to be able to use it at its best imagin the things you could do with a laser. Its fast and practicaly unstopable. (The only way i know of stoping it is to eliminate the source its coming from.) it would seem that it could blast the bunker under the bunker of a bunker. Not that it would replace guns no. But it would be very helpful in certen situations. Especially when attacking fortified areas and if you could get it in a plane that would be hard to fight against.

Lasers for naval AA is an interesting possibility. The ships are certainly big enough. In the long run, it may actually save space if you don't need to house so many munitions.

Oh but its too far to shot a laser that far. Or is it? Ships just happen to shoot miles away from one another. A plane would be much closer to the ground then that.

This is where railguns come back into the discussion. I heard that a railgun with a subcaliber sabot projectile could potentially bombard targets from more than a thousand miles.

With lasers, you would presumably have to worry about line-of-sight, right? With a railgun indirect fire becomes a possibility, and subcaliber sabot rounds can boost the range.

+ 1 to Octavious for the B.F. Skinner reference.

Interesting insights. What many of you do not take into account, I feel, is that current trends in military technology de-emphasize firepower and emphasize stealth and targeting ability. "Smart weapons" became the vogue around the turn of the last century, a trend that has continued. Maybe some reading about cluster-mines (a type of smart weapon), drone technology, etc. might help.

You guys ever read Danger Room? It's a wired magazine blog. They have a lot of cool articles about stuff like that.

Firepower isn't so much an issue because the major militaries have had enough explosive penetration, coverage and deployment capabilities to wipe out the rest of the globe. It's old hat.

The exciting developments have been in stealth capabilities, smart weapons, guidance systems and missile defense systems.

i'm not sure about indirect fire from a railgun, at high enough velocities the gravity of the earth is neglibile. As far as i understand the issue with a rail gun is that your projectile creates so much friction that it quickly becomes a glowing ball of plasma. As the curvature of the earth curves away the plasma heads out into space. (air resistance goes up with the square of velocity, but once your projectile begins to shed a plasma layer it is possible that the friction is effectively reduced, i'm not 100% on this, the plasma acts as a surface interface like adding oil to a motor to make it run more smoothly)

I'm not sure how much power you need to run one of these, but it is pretty high...

if on the other hand you fire something at lower speeds, then the air resistance is pretty important and aiming become a serious problem. Firing things over the horizon is great, but if you can't hit what you want it is nowhere near as good as current cruise missiles....

Of course cruise missiles are liable to run out, while ammo for a rail gun should be much easier to find... maybe a combined solution would be optimal - cruise missile for precision targeting, and railguns for stupidly inaccurate destruction.

The other thing I'll point out is that lasers may violate the Geneva convention. AFAIK* weapons that cause burns are discouraged and I think this may be the reason that flamethrowers were banned, as well as the use of white phosphorous.

Lasers just don't do anything that guns don't already do better.

Now railguns, as mentioned above are a more interesting possibility. I built one when I was a teenager that could hit people hard enough to cause welts. Wasn't terribly accurate, but I'm not really that handy.


*Again reminding you that I'm not a munitions expert. Citing a friend who works in arms control.

@ orathaic

Railguns require less energy than a laser, because the projectile does all of the damage. All you need to do is charge the barrel once and that projectile is on its way. A ship with a big enough nuclear reactor could charge a railgun.

Indirect fire with a railgun would be possible with a low enough velocity. Current research into railgun technology shows that the projectile only turns to plasma on impact, and that no railgun currently exists powerful enough to shoot a projectile to an altitude where air resistance drops off enough to allow a space shot.

As for accuracy, you could figure in wind, target movement, air pressure, air temperature, range, Coriolis effect, et cetera like they did back in the good old days of gunpowder-facilitated naval artillery.

Fin-stabilized (possibly with an active guidance system) munitions would also be a possibility, but it would be beyond current technology to develop a guidance system robust enough to handle the massive forces of acceleration.

The big advantage of railguns (and older gunpowder guns such as the Mark 7 16"/50 caliber gun) over cruise missiles is that you can carry a lot more ordinance into battle and that you can sustain heavier fire much longer than you could with cruise missiles for a much reduced cost, with the two big drawbacks being first-shot accuracy and range.

I would contend that railguns could serve as a replacement for older equipment such as the aforementioned Mark 7 16"/50 caliber gun, which were inadequately replaced by missiles in my opinion.

"no railgun currently exists powerful enough to shoot a projectile to an altitude where air resistance drops off enough to allow a space shot."

but in the future the only limiting factor is the power source.

Our magnets currently developed for CERN and being used in ITER are, i think, more than up to the task.

The power of a railgun is adjustable for the application, right? Adjust a relatively weak one for the purpose of sustained, accurate, indirect fire.