They haz lasers
- Thread starter Mr-White
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Soldato
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Have you seen some of the navy's research with rail guns. Awesomely cool 
A little length but cool
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And a bit of info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun
A little length but cool
.And a bit of info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun
Only issue with the FEL.. is it's 14 mile range to the horizon (or shorter in heavy seas). Just wait for the hypersonic missile that can cover the 14 miles quicker than the system can bring on line and target...
Just waiting for the combination FEL & rail gun underwater weapon. The laser vaporises the water and the railgun puts a high speed shell down the vapour tunnel to the target..
Just waiting for the combination FEL & rail gun underwater weapon. The laser vaporises the water and the railgun puts a high speed shell down the vapour tunnel to the target..
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I also quite like the Russian rocket powered 'supersonic' torpedo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VA-111_Shkval
Not quite supersonic, but nothing can outrun it. Ssometimes you don't need new technology to have the best underwater weapon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VA-111_Shkval
Not quite supersonic, but nothing can outrun it. Ssometimes you don't need new technology to have the best underwater weapon
Soldato
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One word. Aegis. The ship mounting the laser won't have to detect the target itself, as the Aegis combat system would be fusing sensor data from other ships throughout the battlegroup, allied assets, satellites etc. Imagine the presence of a carrier perhaps, and the E-2C/D Hawkewe AWACS that would come with it. I'd imagine the laser would be online, orientated towards the target and prepared to fire long before the missile came in range.
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Pales in comparison to the 1.3 petawatt laser at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.
Pretty sure there's a large difference in size
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I thought that, but you could have a mirror in geostationary orbit above the laser, laser shoots straight skywards, mirror directs beam over a huge area.
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They use satellites as well as radar, so they can see them coming
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It's not that though is it, it's the fact that you've got such a small area covered, and if you're defending something, you're leaving it pretty late to shoot it down.
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How do you think they do it now?
A laser is faster than a rocket
A laser is faster than a rocket
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Eh? My point was that a laser fired from the ground has only got a limited range (i.e. it's straight line seeing distance).
i'm not overly sure on the feasibility of that, whether the laser would reach, due to their height "One disadvantage of geostationary satellites is a result of their high altitude: radio signals take approximately 0.25s to reach and return from the satellite..."... Also surely wouldn't the geostationary satellite only be able to protect a certain area, tell me if i'm wrong i havnt studied satellite physics in a while...
Doesn't matter about the range of the actual laser as the detecting and aiming would be done before the target gets within range.
A missile would have to be fired over the horizon as nothing would get closer than that to the fleet. It would be easily detected as soon as it was fired. The laser would then be powered up, aimed and be ready to fire, probably within seconds and then would simply wait for it to come into range. Even traveling at 5000mph, which no current anti-ship missile does, it would take a missile 7-10 seconds to travel the range of the laser, more than enough time for it to be shot down.
The FEL would take some time to power up. Not as long as current lasers I suspect but still it would take time.
I like the satellite bounce idea, however the atmosphere and weather within it could prevent this. (although part of the spread spectrum for the FEL is probably for all-weather use and the other half is to make it difficult to block/reflect.
Doesn't invoke quite the same BFG CAABOOM smile that the gatlings have (or if looked like a starwars pulse cannon).
The US will miniaturise this and put it into a Hercules for Spooky v2...
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