Posted on 12/16/2021 10:00:36 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Yeah.. a type of Shark-nato if you will...
back in the mid ‘90’s, they mounted a laser on a tank.. looked like a big searchlight..
25 miles downrange, they lit off a 155mm howitzer..
this thing locked on and shot down the projectile IN FLIGHT..
3 times in a row!!!
mid 2000’s..
sorry
Race, my experience has been that when Uncle Sugar says he’s working on something, you can safely assume that he already has a working model of a much advanced version sitting in a warehouse somewhere.
Will it work on ICBM’s could solve many problems and set China and Russia back years.
Depends on the laser and power level. Short answer: not really. You might have to shoot twice. Basically, no mirror reflects 100% and a laser powerful enough to be militarily useful is going to dump enough energy in the first shot to ruin the mirroring, then the second shot will do what would happen to the target if it wasn’t mirrored. Also, forget stealth or sneakiness if you’re riding around in a vehicle that looks like a disco ball.
Long answer, with math: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent2.php
That ended in the 90s.
This one won’t, at least not before the warhead reaches effective airburst range. Also, the Russians and Chinese have reportedly provided their warheads with some armor to mitigate laser kills. (Both have had laser anti-satellite and anti-MIRV programs for a long time now and have possibly demonstrated some success against orbital targets.)
Like so many things, depends on the laser and power level. At a sufficiently high power level, the laser will burn off anything between it and the target with the first shot though it will have considerable power attenuation.
A microwave laser will basically ignore any non-metallic clouds, smoke or fog between it and the target - minimal power and focusing loss. And I think but am not sure that an X-Ray laser will do the same.
Back to the drawing board more power.
If you are thinking about CIWS types, here’s the stats:
Rate of fire: 4500 rounds per minute, 75 rounds per second.
Number of rounds in the Phalanx mount: 1550
Round cost: $30 per round.
Minimum engagement: About 1.3 seconds - 100 rounds.
This means you only have about 15 or so potential engagements before the CIWS is useless for about 15 minutes while sailors attempt to reload the mount. Attackers will likely not be limited to sending just 15 drones.
Additionally, you spent $3000 per engagement against drones that may cost 1/10th of that to produce. Not exactly economically sustainable.
This is the laser system in the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/SEQ-3_Laser_Weapon_System
It costs about $1 per shot and can keep firing as long as it has power. It has no immediate consumables and it doesn’t run out of ammo. It also has an effective range of at least 1600 meters versus Phalanx’s 1486.
More power isn’t the real problem. Political will/funding is the largest one, only then followed by engineering sturdy, reusable lasers (many suitably powerful laser designs that could be used for this are chemical fueled and somewhat fragile). Extremely high powered lasers aren’t exactly easily portable either.
In the short term, I suspect we’d do better to advance railguns over ABM lasers - you’re not going to stick enough armor on a MIRV to defeat a railgun projectile moving at a multiple of escape velocity.
A high powered micro wave gun can do a lot of damage if it’s in the works if it could effect the guidance system?.
It’s actually pretty easy to armor a MIRV against currently possible microwave interference. Right now, the utility of such systems appears to be limited to defeating aerial drones and low-flying manned aircraft. One example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_High_Power_Operational_Responder
This means you only have about 15 or so potential engagements before the CIWS is useless for about 15 minutes while sailors attempt to reload the mount. Attackers will likely not be limited to sending just 15 drones.
THOR sounds looks a good start
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