Posted on 05/08/2020 10:42:19 AM PDT by BeauBo
The Army is working overtime to ramp up to output of one of its next-generation vehicle-mounted laser weapon systems.
Defense contractor Dynetics is currently working to increase the power of the 100 kilowatt High Energy Laser Tactical Vehicle Demonstrator (HEL-TVD) to roughly 300 kw, roughly the output needed to defeat an incoming cruise missile, the company announced on Friday.
Initiated in 2017, the HEL-TVD program sought to develop and mount a 100 kw laser on an existing Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) truck to provide a counter rocket, artillery, and mortar (C-RAM) capability...
In its announcement, Dynetics noted it had formally transitioned from the HEL-TVD program to what's called the Indirect Fires Protection Capability – High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL) effort, which is designed to deliver four prototype laser weapons to a platoon by fiscal year 2024...
The ramp-up is big news not just for the Army, but other laser weapons across the U.S. armed forces which are looking to the HEL-TVD prototyping efforts to inform their own directed energy capabilities.
"Under the new directed energy strategy, the Army is leveraging progress made in that effort in order to merge the HEL-TVD with similar technologies in development by the Navy and the Office of the Secretary of Defense," the service said in August 2019, adding that this partnership "will allow the services to achieve a higher power system ... that can protect sites from RAM and [unmanned aerial systems] as well as more stressing threats."...
"Even if you take all the other elements of a laser weapon and have them be perfect" – the targeting, the cooling, the beam control — "we still don't have enough power," as Frank Peterkin, a senior scientist at the Office of Naval Research, put it in a recent CRS report.
(Excerpt) Read more at taskandpurpose.com ...
When I was in college, I took a laser from the EE lab. i put saran wrap over the top of my Bose 501 speaker and taped a little mirror on it.
We aimed the laser at it. WE watched all the amazing light patterns it made on the wall to a Joe Walsh CD for hours.
It makes no light? sure. This one did. a laser pointer makes no light either right?
I do question the illustrations above though.
I'm not sure where you are getting your information. Lasers can emit electromagnetic radiation at a varieties of wavelengths, many of them visible to the naked eye. I agree that some of them might be difficult to see (hence the enhanced visibility when talcum powder or the like is sprinkled in the beam). Is that, like sunlight, you can't actually see it until it interacts with an object?
They named it a "Phaser"
> WE watched all the amazing light patterns it made on the wall to a Joe Walsh CD for hours. <
Well, yes. A laser does emit radiation that, if in the visible spectrum, will show up as a dot on a wall or whatever. I was referring to the beam itself, as was seen in that Star Trek posting.
Maybe they do exist. I am not an expert on all types of lasers. But I have never worked with a laboratory laser where the beam itself was visible without putting some sort of scattering material in it.
Bkmk
CO2 lasers emit in the infrared and are therefore invisible. Other lasers, like Ar or ruby, emit in the visible and show color. Example - a lasr pointer.
The military has shields that can do this, but there is no need to produce them yet. No sense ramping up high cost of production on something that isn’t needed.
A lot of electromagnetic energy can be coaxed to synchronize into a beam - many frequencies of light (visible and invisible frequencies, such as infrared), microwaves, Radio frequencies, X-Rays, etc.
Lasers would just be those that operate in the light frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum, while the broader category of Directed Energy Weapons (which includes lasers), would include those many types of invisible (to the human eye) frequencies as well.
It’s a secret.
Please see my post #24.
As for sunlight, consider a picture of the sun taken from space. You don’t see any light rays. It’s not like those friendly, smiling sun pictures you see in cartoons.
To see those rays, the light must interact with particles. That is my understanding of the phenomenon.
As to where I am getting my information, I spent many years running chemistry and physics labs. But my specialty is inorganic chemistry, not optics. So I am certainly open to correction here.
Depends on the type of lasers...there are many. Some emit visible light (typically red or green...see laser pointers), some infrared (basically heat), which is invisible to the eye. Then you get into the exotics, like the "free electron laser" which can be tuned to output many wavelengths...but only one at a time. It's been a few years since I researched available laser tech, so this is certainly a very incomplete summary.
Please use it on jihadis first then show us the videos.
Only a quarter million apiece from your friendly government contractor.
I think you may be right. Space is dark except when visible light interacts with something.
start the research in a bar around 0200....
“A smart entrepreneur would now be designing and manufacturing
laser proof goggles which can protect the eyes of troops and air force pilots from these upgraded laser units.”
We already have them.
“A 5 inch shell will blow your head off but the Army couldn’t make proper ear/hearing protectors for those in the vicinity.”
The damnedest thing is from post-Vietnam let’s say around 1975 until 2000 something when the 3M plugs started being issued the Army issued silicone single or triple flange earplugs that worked just fine.
I’ve been around M109 and M110’s when they fired while wearing the triple flange plugs and I have had no issue with hearing loss.
Personally I would want to know which senator or congress critter had their skids greased by 3M to push for the new earplugs.
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