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Curious, says range is at most 400mi if used ballistically. I wonder even at Mach 9 can a laser stop this thing or would ships just use railgun/lasers against e
by jcun4128 5y ago
Curious, says range is at most 400mi if used ballistically. I wonder even at Mach 9 can a laser stop this thing or would ships just use railgun/lasers against each other? Maybe it's surface to ship.
- wongarsu 5y agoThe problem with ship-to-ship laser combat is that line-of-sight only a couple kilometers. Two objects mounted in 20m height can only see each other for 36km. Railguns are a lot more likely, but I think we still don't have "barrels" that survive firing more than a couple shots before replacement.
- mc32 5y agoCan they bounce the beam off of a sat or flying object?
- wongarsu 5y agoMaybe a good use for quadrocopters or other low-cost drones. If you use a satellite, you might as well put a larger concave mirror on it to focus sunlight. A nearly 100 year old weapon concept that luckily never happened [1] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_gun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_gun
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sudosysgen 5y agoIf your lasers can be reflected easily by mirrors, then the missile will simply be painted with a mirror coating.
- chrisseaton 5y agoYou need ballistic weapons to get around the fact that the surface of the earth is curved.
- bernulli 5y agoThe key point of hypersonic weapons is that they are maneuverable.
- chrisseaton 5y agoRight - ballistic or guided - I really meant kinetic as opposed to energy weapons like lasers.
- jhgb 5y agoIf it's heading at you at Mach 9, just dump a load of BB pellets against it.
- rbanffy 5y agoUnless you dump a significant amount of BB pellets, you’ll still have high-speed missile parts flying in your direction.
- jhgb 5y agoAt the altitude at which you can reasonably fly at Mach 9, destroying the aerodynamics of the vehicle means that you have low-speed parts of a formerly high-speed missile flying in your direction. And unless the interception happens in the zenith, whence they could just fall down on you, they won't keep flying in your direction for long.
- sudosysgen 5y agoI don't understand your description. Where do you want to put shrapnel in front of the missile? Because you're not going to be able to do it until shortly before impact. Also, flight at Mach 9 can be done at low altitudes. Just not for very long and only once.
- pie420 5y agoThose high speed middle parts will get slowed down by insane air resistance down to sub Mach 1 speeds in a couple hundred meters would be my guess. Non-aerodynamic, non-propelled middle chunks are not a threat to battleships, especially compared to Mach 9 missiles.
- sudosysgen 5y agoHow do you shoot projectiles at a hypersonic missile within a hundred meters of impact? Also, I don't think you appreciate the amount of energy in a 5 ton missile going at hypersonic speeds. For it to slow down within 200m, it needs to basically stop in 0.075 seconds.