8 ms·

So Lockheed recently showed video of its laser weapon. as the technology matures I assume energy consumption will drop, and intercepting drones or anything is n

by AnonMO 4y ago

So Lockheed recently showed video of its laser weapon. as the technology matures I assume energy consumption will drop, and intercepting drones or anything is no longer limited by number of misses, drones, or ammo but energy. Imagine nuclear aircraft carriers pumping an indefinite amount of energy at least in the short term into multiple lasers basically creating an energy barrier around the craft. Not a laser expert btw.

kumarvvr 4y ago
Can't a laser be defeated by deflecting the light or reflecting it? Or dispersing it? Afterall, its just a focused heat beam of electromagnetic radiation.
- scottyah 4y ago
  The weaponized ones are rarely just in the visible spectrum. But yeah just like radar there’ll probably be a lot of cat and mouse games
- somerandomqaguy 4y ago
  I'm not an expert in laser systems but just from my layman's understanding: A polished mirror surface might slow the heat build up a little bit but the best mirrors on the planet will still heat up if you're throwing enough energy at it; no mirror has a 0% absorption rate. What's more, any imperfection on the surface will act as an focal point for the heat to build up; a spec of dust, a dew drop, a little oil from your fingertip, anything that can absorb the heat from the laser basically turns it into a hot spot that the laser will burn through rather quickly.
  - picsao 4y ago
- saulrh 4y ago
  Small imperfections on a reflective surface will absorb energy, heat up, and cause damage, causing more imperfections which absorb even more energy and heat even more rapidly. Positive feedback loop. The emitter gets around it by keeping the beam diffuse and focusing it onto the target downrange; you can very reasonably field a laser with a half-meter aperture and a one-centimeter spot size. Dispersal requires consumables. You leave consumables behind when you move and you have to move because the laser can keep going indefinitely, so it's a losing proposition. Consumables are heavy and limited.
  - asdff 4y ago
    You can't just have a drone deploy a reasonable enough mirror that tracks the beam wherever it goes? So what if there is an imperfection if the drone is cheap and you can have a replacement come online instantly behind it with a fresh mirror. If it costs less energy to make the drone than it does to fire this high powered laser downrange, you win the war over time.
- Jensson 4y ago
  A mirror is like a trampoline, there is a limit to how much it can reflect before it breaks. Or an electric circuit if you want a closer comparison, at low loads you wont notice any problems but as you turn up the voltage it will start to absorb energy and at high enough levels it will break.
kragen 4y ago
Suppose you have five lasers on your nuclear aircraft carrier, they have 20km range, they need five seconds on target to destroy it (plus an insignificant amount of time to switch to the next target), and your radar/OpenCV/whatever is good enough to detect all the incoming drones. Suppose they go 200 km/h (56 m/s), which is a pretty leisurely clip for aircraft. If they all come into range at the same time, you have six minutes to burn them all up. In this scenario it takes 361 drones to land one on an aircraft carrier, sinking it unless the attacker totally fucks up. If they're like these Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones the article says have destroyed 750 land vehicles (I guess in the Ukraine war alone?) that cost US$5M each, that's US$1.8 billion dollars to sink the aircraft carrier. That's not too bad; you can build a new aircraft carrier for US$9 billion or so. But what if the drones cost US$5000 each? Or US$50? Or what if they travel at mach 2? Or are submarines, like loitering torpedoes or guided mines? It may be more economical to just send drones to the country where the aircraft carrier is from to kill the family members of its military officers, or at least the ones who don't cooperate. Although I have no particular love for US foreign policy and military adventurism, I fear we are passing out of a period of relative peace and entering a period of extreme unpredictability. There is no guarantee that the new stable equilibrium will have states or civilization in it.
- AnonMO 4y ago
  My comment wasn’t this serious but I don’t think any munition that can damage an aircraft carrier will be that cheap. Also im no expert but with more energy isnt the distance at which the heat from the laser remains effective becomes longer right? So if the tech is truly mature isn’t 20km a bit naïve also what if each laser system is an array of lasers with independent movement maybe 10-20 laser per system this configuration will definitely out power drones at the scale you speak of. The future is hard to predict.
  - kragen 4y ago
    I think that beyond 20km the horizon is between the laser and the drone. Maybe aircraft-mounted lasers could defend the carrier over a wider area. If each drone costs US$50 then you can launch 180 million drones for the cost of an aircraft carrier. I don't think increasing the number of lasers from my 5 to 10-20 is going to help much. I don't know what is needed for a munition to damage an aircraft carrier, but I feel like once it's on the deck it's already past the strong defenses and into the soft targets. It could be as simple as a wheeled robot that runs around stabbing random people, or a poison gas canister that fills the interior of the ship with mustard gas, or hundreds of hand-grenade-sized mini-claymores that deploy to random parts of the ship and conceal themselves quietly until a sailor happens to walk by.

by AnonMO 4y ago

kumarvvr 4y ago

Can't a laser be defeated by deflecting the light or reflecting it? Or dispersing it? Afterall, its just a focused heat beam of electromagnetic radiation.

scottyah 4y ago
The weaponized ones are rarely just in the visible spectrum. But yeah just like radar there’ll probably be a lot of cat and mouse games
somerandomqaguy 4y ago
I'm not an expert in laser systems but just from my layman's understanding: A polished mirror surface might slow the heat build up a little bit but the best mirrors on the planet will still heat up if you're throwing enough energy at it; no mirror has a 0% absorption rate. What's more, any imperfection on the surface will act as an focal point for the heat to build up; a spec of dust, a dew drop, a little oil from your fingertip, anything that can absorb the heat from the laser basically turns it into a hot spot that the laser will burn through rather quickly.
- picsao 4y ago
saulrh 4y ago
Small imperfections on a reflective surface will absorb energy, heat up, and cause damage, causing more imperfections which absorb even more energy and heat even more rapidly. Positive feedback loop. The emitter gets around it by keeping the beam diffuse and focusing it onto the target downrange; you can very reasonably field a laser with a half-meter aperture and a one-centimeter spot size. Dispersal requires consumables. You leave consumables behind when you move and you have to move because the laser can keep going indefinitely, so it's a losing proposition. Consumables are heavy and limited.
- asdff 4y ago
  You can't just have a drone deploy a reasonable enough mirror that tracks the beam wherever it goes? So what if there is an imperfection if the drone is cheap and you can have a replacement come online instantly behind it with a fresh mirror. If it costs less energy to make the drone than it does to fire this high powered laser downrange, you win the war over time.
Jensson 4y ago
A mirror is like a trampoline, there is a limit to how much it can reflect before it breaks. Or an electric circuit if you want a closer comparison, at low loads you wont notice any problems but as you turn up the voltage it will start to absorb energy and at high enough levels it will break.

kragen 4y ago

Suppose you have five lasers on your nuclear aircraft carrier, they have 20km range, they need five seconds on target to destroy it (plus an insignificant amount of time to switch to the next target), and your radar/OpenCV/whatever is good enough to detect all the incoming drones. Suppose they go 200 km/h (56 m/s), which is a pretty leisurely clip for aircraft. If they all come into range at the same time, you have six minutes to burn them all up. In this scenario it takes 361 drones to land one on an aircraft carrier, sinking it unless the attacker totally fucks up. If they're like these Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones the article says have destroyed 750 land vehicles (I guess in the Ukraine war alone?) that cost US$5M each, that's US$1.8 billion dollars to sink the aircraft carrier. That's not too bad; you can build a new aircraft carrier for US$9 billion or so. But what if the drones cost US$5000 each? Or US$50? Or what if they travel at mach 2? Or are submarines, like loitering torpedoes or guided mines? It may be more economical to just send drones to the country where the aircraft carrier is from to kill the family members of its military officers, or at least the ones who don't cooperate. Although I have no particular love for US foreign policy and military adventurism, I fear we are passing out of a period of relative peace and entering a period of extreme unpredictability. There is no guarantee that the new stable equilibrium will have states or civilization in it.

AnonMO 4y ago
My comment wasn’t this serious but I don’t think any munition that can damage an aircraft carrier will be that cheap. Also im no expert but with more energy isnt the distance at which the heat from the laser remains effective becomes longer right? So if the tech is truly mature isn’t 20km a bit naïve also what if each laser system is an array of lasers with independent movement maybe 10-20 laser per system this configuration will definitely out power drones at the scale you speak of. The future is hard to predict.
- kragen 4y ago
  I think that beyond 20km the horizon is between the laser and the drone. Maybe aircraft-mounted lasers could defend the carrier over a wider area. If each drone costs US$50 then you can launch 180 million drones for the cost of an aircraft carrier. I don't think increasing the number of lasers from my 5 to 10-20 is going to help much. I don't know what is needed for a munition to damage an aircraft carrier, but I feel like once it's on the deck it's already past the strong defenses and into the soft targets. It could be as simple as a wheeled robot that runs around stabbing random people, or a poison gas canister that fills the interior of the ship with mustard gas, or hundreds of hand-grenade-sized mini-claymores that deploy to random parts of the ship and conceal themselves quietly until a sailor happens to walk by.