I was reading this thread and it brought up some related but off the subject questions.
Tranquilis wrote
I agree, there were skeptics in the thread as well, but my thought is if we have this why is it that we don’t make a smaller version and put it in the hands of our soldiers. After all, the “aquire, track, engage,” steps of an attack are something that humans are fairly good at.
If this thing can fry a speeding missal out of the sky imagine what it could to an enemy soldier, chopper, personnel carrier etc. etc.
So that’s it, why no hand held lasers, I know some gun scopes use them but they don’t fry the target.
The fact that a laser has been used to blow artillery shells out of the sky doesn’t mean that a cheap, low-maintenance, high-power blaster straight out of Buck Rogers is remotely possible. We’ve got miniturized conventional artillery in the form of mortars, but no one seriously thinks of them as replacing the rifle. I’ve listed a number of problems with the idea below. And Mr. Moto, one thing that the laser can’t do that artillery can is indirect fire - being able to hit the enemy without line of sight is absolutely vital to modern artillery.
Bulkier power source than gunpowder - the lasers used for the test were not exactly powered by D-cells.
Less able to penetrate obstructions (being behind a cloud of smoke will provide much more protection from a laser than from a bullet).
Requires tighter aim (the laser has to be held on target for longer to cut through)
Doesn’t gain accuracy (the laser in the test was more of an artillery setup than a rifle setup, you can get a lot more accuracy out of a howitzer than a rifle despite humans’ natural aiming ability).
Requires more maintenance (it’s an electronic gadget, not a basic mechanical device like a rifle)
More expensive.
I have heard that the lasers involved in these high-powered tests aren’t electric powered, but operating directly off chemical fuel combustion - basically, a rocket engine that emits a laser beam. Anyone know anything about this?
Another thing to consider is the way the shell was brought down. The article wasn’t clear, but most articles I’ve read on the subject say that the laser doesn’t just zap it to atoms. They usually heat up the side of the fuel tank enough to cause a rupture and then explosion. That tactic wouldn’t work on humans. You’d get a lot of burns, or burnt clothing, and a whole lot of blind people* but probably not a lot of fatalities.
(I read recently that weapons made specifically to blind are prohibited by the Geneva convention or some similar pact. But unintentional blinding is apparently a loophole. Came up during talk of a ground-based anti-tank laser or something like that.)
Look at the pictures that were in the article and related sites. This thing was huge and had several support buildings. Tht’s the penalty for putting out the power needed.
Even the air borne anti-missle laser needs a 747 to carry it.
The laser sights for guns are small because they have very little power.
Lasers work best when it is clear. The high power lasers will just boil water in the rain. This reduces their effective range. If your first few shell are smoke shells, it will help you if they hit them and disperse the smoke in the air.
Early tests on laser weapons came up with a couple of important snags:
It’s much easier to heat metal and destroy circuitry than it is to boil enough water to kill a human (that 98 percent water thing rears its ugly head). Long before you burn a hole through somebody, he’s going to say “ouch!” and duck, unless the laser is really, really, really powerful, which leads to…
If the laser is powerful enough to kill a human, the reflected light is bright enough to permanently blind anybody looking at it, out to the effective range of the weapon. This means that if a dozen soldiers shoot at a dozen targets, and one of them hits some metal, everybody in the killzone (including the guys with laser weapons) is permanently blinded unless they’re wearing the right color goggles. So, everybody on that side wears red goggles. Along comes the other side, with green lasers… with the first shot fired, they’re all blind. Game over.
Side note: the anti-personnel blinding device, the Dazer, was developed based off of the laser targeting sight used on the main gun for the M1.
It is almost certainly a chemical laser, and probably an all gas phase laser rather than an aqueous one. There are several types of chemical lasers and it is usually easier to get high power out of one of these babies than it is with solid state lasers. Solid state lasers are good for aiming, pointing, measuring, etc., but if you really want to toast something, you need a chemical laser.
The way the things work is simple to grasp, yet hard to do. A rocket engine was a good comparison. The chemical reaction in a rocket engine produces two types of energy: heat (that’s the force that makes it go up - expanding gasses) and light. There are different chemical mixtures you can try to maximize the heat, and thus the thrust, but you really don’t care how bright the flame is.
A chemical laser is just the opposite. The combustion is still going to produce two types of energy, but here you want to maximize the light given off and minimize the heat. Optics then focus and polarize all that light into a laser beam. The power is all in the chemical mix so electronics are theoretically unnecessary. I doubt TRW is going to come out and say exactly what they used, but you usually need some nasty stuff to do this (like molecular fluorine). Because these things use such mean fuel, don’t expect them to be carried by the average foot soldier any time soon.
Even when it’s sitting out in the rain or dipping into a river, exposed to lots of mud, dirt, dust, and sand, constantly banged around, and has field maintenance done by someone with a few hours of training during basic training, not an engineering degree?
A weapon like this has a high potential for “friendly fire” accidents, so the brass probably would want to use it only when connected to the battlefield tracking networks so that GI Joe doesn’t take down an allied aircraft or civilian jetliner or the like by mistake. At least for awhile.
Y’know if the laser beam misses, it just keeps going and 500 yerars from now when it destroys a building on Mendinar II (a planet 500 light-years away), they’re going to be pissed.
Yep, Whenever I feel like I’m getting just a tad to smart, I head on down the SDMB. Some of the more enlightening and lucid points were…
From ** Riboflavin **
First, the power issue. Obviously the things are not powered by D-cells. But that does NOT tell me what kind of power a mini version would take, I realize there is some fundamental difference between my pocket laser, that I use when giving a presentation, (or when I want to annoy my dog) and a laser that actually burns things, but what is that difference, MY laser uses watch batteries, so why not D-Cells?
Well, I really whiffed it there on the smoke point hadn’t thought about it.
More expensive, Bah, If enough of the right people wanted it, it would certainly be researched.
From ** Mr. Moto**
No doubt, I still like the direct approach myself, nothing like a nice satisfying KERBLEWEY! that lets you know it’s Miller time.
From gonzoron
And a related observation…
From ** **
So I see, the laser needs time to work, It doesn’t just melt a hole straight through whatever is in its path, you have to hold your laser on target for some time, (Oh yeah, that’s real efficient, while your trying to burn a hole in your enemy he just pulls out a rifle and shoots you. POP.) This whole laser thing is beginning to remind me of frying cock roaches with a magnifying glass, they have to hold still or it doesn’t work.
From Beeblebrox
I’m getting the idea.
From hammerbach
I just could not agree more!
From Urban Ranger
Uhnhhh, I don’t know about you but, I think having my left ventricle,
or my brain for that matter, play host to neatly cauterized little hole
would be one hell of a “whoopee”!
Yep, Whenever I feel like I’m getting just a tad to smart, I head on down the SDMB. Some of the more enlightening and lucid points were…
From ** Riboflavin **
First, the power issue. Obviously the things are not powered by D-cells. But that does NOT tell me what kind of power a mini version would take, I realize there is some fundamental difference between my pocket laser, that I use when giving a presentation, (or when I want to annoy my dog) and a laser that actually burns things, but what is that difference, MY laser uses watch batteries, so why not D-Cells?
Well, I really whiffed it there on the smoke point hadn’t thought about it.
More expensive, Bah, If enough of the right people wanted it, it would certainly be researched.
From ** Mr. Moto**
No doubt, I still like the direct approach myself, nothing like a nice satisfying KERBLEWEY! that lets you know it’s Miller time.
From gonzoron
And a related observation…
From ** **
So I see, the laser needs time to work, It doesn’t just melt a hole straight through whatever is in its path, you have to hold your laser on target for some time, (Oh yeah, that’s real efficient, while your trying to burn a hole in your enemy he just pulls out a rifle and shoots you. POP.) This whole laser thing is beginning to remind me of frying cock roaches with a magnifying glass, they have to hold still or it doesn’t work.
From Beeblebrox
I’m getting the idea.
From hammerbach
I just could not agree more!
From Urban Ranger
Uhnhhh, I don’t know about you but, I think having my left ventricle,
or my brain for that matter, play host to neatly cauterized little hole
would be one hell of a “whoopee”!
This reduces their effective range. If your first few shell are smoke shells, it will help you if they hit them and disperse the smoke in the air.