US laser shoots down artillery shell

[piniped]

So how long before they start taking down aircraft?


See story here (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20021105/ts_nm/arms_usa_laser_dc_6)

[DuckDogers]

If i can't see it coming then at least it will be oer quickly. This is great news from a good guys point of view at the moment let us just hope that the French et al do not go ad sell the tech to people we may end up going to fight, especially given the implications of it being used against aircraft.

It opens up the entire debate about countermeasures and warning receivers for aircraft! The Futures Bright The Futures Invisible!

[A Civilian]

Its unlikely that it would be an IR laser due to atmospheric absorption at certain wavelengths. If you find out the colour of the laser and its input enery you could get a rough idea of its range.

[WE Branch Fanatic]

It won't work too well in an environment where there is a reasonable amount of water (or vapour) in the air. Remember the problems with Laser Guided Bombs during the Kosovo campaign.....

[BEagle]

"So, Baldrick. Some sort of mirror thingy would seem to be in order then......"

Sometimes it's the obvious which defeats the boffins. Like using high pressure water jets to hose away the BL755 'minelets' which were supposed to destroy the bulldozers which the boffins assumed Ivan would use to move them.....

[ORAC]

It's a deuterium fluoride chemical laser, based on MIRACL technology, operating in the 3.6 to 4.2 micron band.

FAS (http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/news00/18-e411623b.htm) Press Kit (http://www.trw.com/presskits/detailinfo/0,1067,2_12%5E3%5E12%5E23,FF.html) MIRACL (http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/asat/miracl.htm)

[Talking Radalt]

Does the operator have a bald cat called Mr Bigglesworth and pronounce it "lay-zurrrr":D

[the funky munky]

The USAF has also fitted a laser to a 747 and are carrying out tests against ballistic missiles.
The aircraft has a tracking laser mounted behind the cockpit area and the main laser is fitted in the nose. At the moment the 747 is one of the few aircraft able to carry the main laser, if I recall correctly the laser weighs approximately 65,000 lbs.
The idea of the project is to have the 747 flying very high above an area where ballistic missiles will be launching. The tracking laser picks up the missile during its boost phase and slews the main laser to the target destroying it milliseconds after acquisition.
Saw the mock up model on the Boeing stand at Farnborough and also spoke to a nice lady scientist from the USAF on the US DOD stand who knew all about it.
Very impressive, I wonder when they'll be able to shrink it down to fit on a fighter?

[ORAC]

Strange that you should ask. This week's AW & ST:

Laser weapons with long, easy-to-cool, fiber-optic amplifiers may arm next-generation fighters, said Raytheon officials.

Better than chemical or perhaps even than emerging solid-state lasers, fiber-optic lasers may solve some of the sticky heat and power generation problems that plague energy weapons development. Fiber-optic lines could be routed to positions on the skin all over the aircraft.

"You could have all these little fiber ends everywhere, and if you phase them right, you could point [a strong, combined beam at a target]," said Chan McKearn, director of high energy lasers. "We've done that with two or three fibers."

The individual beams in the appropriate area of the aircraft could be focused on the incoming air-to-air or anti-aircraft missile to destroy it, much as multi-element, electronically scanned antennas are focused in the radars developed for the F-22 and F-35 fighters.

Michael Booen, vice president for directed energy weapons, said the company's development efforts are geared to deliver a 25-kw., solid-state laser by 2004; demonstrate a 100-kw. laser weapon by 2007, and have a useful system ready for the F-35 joint strike fighter and other platforms by 2010 at a cost of as little as $5 per watt.

[myrddin]

The shrewd readers of this thread may recall Joseph Hellers account in "Catch 22" of the 150mm Leppage gun that could glue a formated sqaudron of heavy bombers together whilst on ops over northern Italy. Technology has clearly moved on since then eh!

[BlueWolf]

Here is the news.

An Official report says that an incident which occured several days ago was not properly reported due to a computer error.

The incident involved the shooting down of an unmanned aerial combat vehicle belonging to the enemy, by an allied unmanned aerial combat vehicle fitted with a new generation laser gun.

The allied craft was reportedly operating in autonomous mode at the time, patrolling a defined sector of enemy airspace, when the incident occured.

It is understood that the enemy craft may have been operating in autonomous random mode.

The allied craft's datalink functioned properly in reporting details of the contact to the allied command data processing centre. A computer at the centre, which was unmanned at the time, scanned the report for permissable detail, and forwarded the information to the allied press headquarters for release.

Unfortunately, due to a programming error, a computer at the allied press headquarters, which was not manned at the time, released the information to the automated news server for immediate release, at a time when everybody was asleep.

It was this fault which resulted in the incorrect reporting of the incident.

Details of the incident were confirmed by an allied satellite-based monitoring system, which also reported to the allied command data processing centre. The centre was reportedly not manned at the time of confirmation.

An officially generated press release has apologised to the public for this reporting fault and for any inconvenience caused.

This has been an automatically generated message.

[A Civilian]

Computers dont make mistakes as by their nature they are infallable. However computers are programmed by humans who are :)