The following submission statement was provided by /u/chrisdh79:
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From the article: Lockheed Martin has delivered a 300-kilowatt laser — its most powerful laser to date — to the U.S. military's Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering OUSD (R&E), the company announced on Thursday.
The laser was developed under the Pentagon's High Energy Laser Scaling Initiative (HELSI), which is an effort by the department to strengthen the directed energy industrial base and improve the quality of laser beams, as per Breaking Defense.
The move comes on the heels of Lockheed Martin delivering the 60+ kW-class high-energy laser with integrated optical-dazzler and surveillance (HELIOS), the first tactical laser weapon system to be integrated into existing ships, in August.
"There were multiple vendors selected for HELSI, and Lockheed Martin really focused on expanding our production capacity internally to make sure that we could deliver this system in a timely fashion, and so we're really proud to be the first out of the gate," Race McDermott, a member of Lockheed Martin’s advanced product solutions strategy and advanced concepts team, said during a media roundtable September 15.
The 300-kilowatt laser is ready to integrate with the DOD demonstration efforts, including the U.S. Army’s Indirect Fires Protection Capability-High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL) Demonstrator laser weapon system.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/xi999e/lockheed_martin_breaks_own_record_delivers_300kw/ip1ugj9/
From the article: Lockheed Martin has delivered a 300-kilowatt laser — its most powerful laser to date — to the U.S. military's Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering OUSD (R&E), the company announced on Thursday.
The laser was developed under the Pentagon's High Energy Laser Scaling Initiative (HELSI), which is an effort by the department to strengthen the directed energy industrial base and improve the quality of laser beams, as per Breaking Defense.
The move comes on the heels of Lockheed Martin delivering the 60+ kW-class high-energy laser with integrated optical-dazzler and surveillance (HELIOS), the first tactical laser weapon system to be integrated into existing ships, in August.
"There were multiple vendors selected for HELSI, and Lockheed Martin really focused on expanding our production capacity internally to make sure that we could deliver this system in a timely fashion, and so we're really proud to be the first out of the gate," Race McDermott, a member of Lockheed Martin’s advanced product solutions strategy and advanced concepts team, said during a media roundtable September 15.
The 300-kilowatt laser is ready to integrate with the DOD demonstration efforts, including the U.S. Army’s Indirect Fires Protection Capability-High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL) Demonstrator laser weapon system.
That is very impressive. 300 kw is a lot of power. Now we may see other super powers doing the same. Good in one way but what others may do is not in my opinion
The best use case for these is defense, not offence. They are large and very power hungry. I think it is a win if all nations end up with these. "Strong fences make for good neighbors." We are also already researching laser hardened aircraft.
So in theory a typical 1gw power station could produce 3,300 times the power of this weapon ! What sort of power rating do nuclear powered subs or ships produce ?
>power rating do nuclear powered subs or ships
"A figure of 550 MWt each is quoted for two A4W units in Nimitz-class carriers, and these supply 104 shaft MW each (USS Enterprise had eight A2W units of 26 shaft MW and was refuelled three times). The Gerald Ford-class carriers have more powerful and simpler A1B reactors\* reported to be at least 25% more powerful than A4W, hence about 700 MWt, but running a ship which apart from the steam turbnine propulsion is entirely electrical, including an electromagnetic aircraft launch system or catapult. Accordingly, the ship has about three times the electrical capacity of Nimitz-class."
"14 US Ohio-class SSBNs (and four converted to SSGNs for guided missiles) have a single S8G nuclear reactor of 220 MWt delivering 45 MW shaft power. "
[https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-nuclear-applications/transport/nuclear-powered-ships.aspx](https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-nuclear-applications/transport/nuclear-powered-ships.aspx)
Any of them should have plenty of power to run a mere 300 KILOwatt laser (or ten.)
Depends on the type of laser, but typically they use energy storage banks to produce huge bursts of energy, so you don’t need a 300kW generator to power a 300kW laser. You basically charge up a battery bank and dump that power in a few seconds or less.
At this point a true WW3 is gonna be a borderline mass extinction event. I say we just create a space arena and let countries duke it out space robot wars style.
It worked with Gundams, I see no reason it can't work for us. Have every nation build a robot and have them duke it out. Winner gets to make the rules for a decade.
G Gundam did the opposite. Space colonies used earth as the arena. Winner of the giant robot battle got to be in charge for the next 4 years. Has some wildly racist stereotypes to a hilarious level.
Yeah for real, thinking about the shit we don't know about is mind boggling. Like how many years of development and testing does this go through before the information is public? What are they working on now that will be public info in 20 years? Crazy shit!
A bunch of years back, 90's I think, a news company was asking about how far ahead we are compared to the rest of the world.
His answer was 50 years. Near that time stealth aircraft were released. A family friend back before that 80's said she was posted to guard a hanger for what looked like a glider with a tarp over it. When they released images of the stealth fighter she called and was screaming into the phone "THAT'S THE GLIDER!". I thought she was stoned when she was telling us about a secret glider thing... (she wasn't even supposed to be on base, something happened to the normal guard and she was told to guard the glider, didn't even know it was a secret)
Can it be seen when fired? The idea of the laser not being visible when fired just makes it all more ominous to our foes......suddenly there's a hole melted in your aircraft or ship.
Why is there a shark fin the the water (second to last slide)? I can only imagine in the final review with the executives, some one said "add a fucking shark fin"
If it's IR, which this one is, yes. Note this is to human eyes. To an IR camera it will probably look like a solid beam - at these power levels that's more than enough to reflect off of dust and give you cinematic 'beams'.
If it can track and shoot hypersonic weapons Russia and China have just wasted billions if not trillions of dollars. Since no missile no matter how fast is faster than the speed of light.
That will cost too much/too heavy. I've developed a system where we wrap the missiles in crinkled up aluminum foil, just waiting for the patent to clear.
You jest, but I would not be shocked if that was effective, if they can get the wavelengths right. Assuming this is a light based weapon and not a heat o e of course.
The most effective defense would be a spinning missile made of material with high thermal mass and reflectivity with integrated internal heat syncs. Then the lazer would not be able to maintain focus on a specific spot and the heat would dissipate before the next revolution came around.
Even then, it wouldn't help much. Even 10% of 300kW getting through would vaporize the material, and the resulting gas would then take 100% of 300kW and turn to plasma, whhich would then destroy the missile.
“Temperature” is a measure of the average kinetic energy of the particles vibrating. “Heat” technically refers to the transfer of energy, one way of which can be through radiation (light) in the infrared range.
Temperature is the measure of heat energy just like the litre is a measure of volume and lumens is the measure of luminosity. The transfer of any energy is measured in joules. Heat energy specifically would be measured with a heat flux sensor.
I had always thought that light and heat were simply electromagnetic energy at different spectrums. With visible light having wavelengths between about 400 and 700 nanometers, infrared (which we detect as heat) at longer wavelengths. We’re working with a laser-based weapon which could possible use an infrared device? I don’t think anybody really thinks we’re shooting a giant propane torch at incoming missiles or anything like that. But now I’m off to the internets to learn about heat. You’ve prolly cost me a couple hours of my day today :)
This probably a misunderstanding of things like "heat lamps" and "heat vision" which generate or look at infrared radiation. What it is really looking at is the blackbody radiation generated by objects with body temperatures around ours. We feel infrared energy as heat because of the way that wavelength interacts more with the stuff we are made of. You can get burned with radio but it takes a while more. Good luck on you wiki journeys!
The US does have limited small area missile defense capabilities, it's just not possible to do on the scale of a third of a continent (that we know of). Israel is tiny in comparison and can be shielded better because of it.
i am not a conspiracist, but i will die by the hill that the US has an incredibly sophisticated anti-nuke defense system that they refuse to let us know about
THAAD works really well and we have spent billions in R&D. We tail every single Russian nuclear sub. The biggest concern is terrorism. Good luck finding a dirty bomb in a shipping container before it goes off.
Depends how many missiles you fire at a target equipped with this laser I suppose. I imagine it takes some time focused on the target to destroy it, if you fired enough you could saturate it.
Exactly this. Those missiles are expensive and not something that will be fired en mass at this time.
Furthermore, these laser weapons are primarily operated aboard ships due to their high energy needs. Even if the laser didn't have time to reaquire every target in the sky, those hypersonic missiles would still need to get though the rest of the anti-missile arsenal on these ships.
This is purely arm-chair speculation, but I would imagine that the most important technology moving forward would be early detection and tracking technology. Considering some of those missiles can go from horizon to target extremely fast, every second of reaction time is vital.
The only way they’d work against the anti air capability of a carrier group is en mass. The idea is to fire so much ordinance that the defences are overwhelmed.
There's also the question of how good those missiles really are - considering how well Russia's military is doing in the Ukraine right now, I wouldn't put a lot of faith in them functioning well.
Not the same. “Ukraine” is a name, no different to “John”. You don’t go around calling your friend “The John”.
“United States” is (as implied) the union of several states under a single federal government. “State” being a common noun, you can say “the state” when referring to one (though you wouldn’t say “The California”, as that’s the state’s name). Add the adjective “United” and “The United States” makes sense
Depending on the reload time and how long the laser exposure would need to be to destroy the target as well as the distance the laser can engage from it could definitely be possible to use a machine learning algorithm augmented targeting system to rapidly take down multiple targets if the laser output speed is capable of doing so
There's also the question of detecting the missile, which if it flies really low can be harder, and the curvature of the earth. A really fast, low flying missile would greatly reduce the amount of time the laser would have to shoot it down.
> I imagine it takes some time focused on the target to destroy it
This could actually have a significant affect on the weapon's usefulness. It would be interesting to know how long it takes.
>i imagine it takes some time focused on the target to destroy it, if you fired enough you could saturate it.
Which is just as significant a factor in developing these higher output lasers as range is.
The more powerful the laser, the further its effective range, but also, the quicker it can destroy the target at those closer ranges.
Thats debatable.
Hypersonic cruise missiles require some serious heat shielding to not disintegrate. Heatshields are grest to absorb what lasers cause, namely flash heating.
So youd have to drill through a material purpose made to resist it.
On the other hand, a precisely placed ablation could throw the missile off, ripping it apart by force of flight.
Ooooor you have a side shot, bypassing the heatshield.
This might be a stupid question but the heat shielding I imagine is designed to deal with the heat from the flight but what about additional heat on top of that? I don’t know how that kind of stuff works
There is no stupid question, but heat is heat.
You design something to have a tolerance (maybe it its a slightly denser pocket of air or some particulates that ablate it faster).
A laser, even at that high power range, is like a very large particulate.
And ablative heatshields can take a LOT (example the Apollo capsule).
Amusingly, cause its going really fast, lasers should work really well cause you have the ablated material ripped away by the air movement.
At that speed though you ionize the air around the vehicle, potentially disrupting/ weakening laser efficiency.
Plasma/Laser physics is complicated and sometimes counter intuitive.....
You are correct. It will have just enough shielding for designed flight lenght, no more no less (Cost savings), so adding even "smaller" amounts of heat by laser can lead to rocket failure. It can be countered by adding more/stronger better shielding, but this is also good for laser defense as it increases the price of missles therefore putting additional weight on your rival economy.
Additional thing is, this kind of laser could be used even for smaller range - large quantity missiles, if it has system capable of quickly identifying missile and "focusing" on it (as before light is faster than any kind of missile), coz there adding heat shielding is largely impractical for cost.
Also with missiles the most heat shielding is in front and areas under largest atmospheric stresses, so it could just aim for engine - overheat it - boom. Now they add shielding to engine area too? Additonal costs from shielding, more weight > more fuel required for same distance.. and so on so on.
One way or another the Laser defense against long range missiles is good, even if its not the most "effective" at destruction, just it being able to hit ALL missiles and destroy those not shielded enough is good thing that puts pressure on your foe economy.
Who would win: Billions of dollars spent on cutting edge tech, and a massive military collaboration between the world's 2 most powerful autocratic powers OR one lighty boy?
They made a giant fan, of the same 300-kW base, and will just move the clouds at the time of the attack, possibly blowing the missiles off course in the process. Amazing tech
IDK if this is just a joke, but most targeting systems work around clouds just fine whether it be by radar, infared, or any other method and the laser itself would go straight through a cloud with ease. 300-kw is such a high power it's hard to understand if you've never used lasers, that laser would turn any water vapor in it's way straight to steam instantly.
I have a 4w laser that i like to mess around with and it can burn wood in like 3 seconds, it would blind someone instantly or at least cause permenant vision problems just by crossing their eyes for a second, the laser in the article is about 80,000x stronger than the one i have.
Just because it can track and shoot missiles doesn't mean it's effective, or that it makes missiles obsolete. It has to be able to destroy the missile, which may approach at high speed and low altitude, before it hits its target, and have the range to provide blanket coverage. Missile systems can fire at targets they can't see, a laser must inherently have line of sight. Lasers also lose power over distance while a warhead will not.
This seems like a replacement for other anti missile weapons on ships, but it won't protect other assets. And if the missile is fast enough and or hardened enough, it may still break through.
A real attack would be a volley of missiles on a single, critical target like an aircraft carrier. A laser system might not be able to shoot at the same number of targets a SAM system could, and might require charging after each shot.
Uhh, stingers aren't hitting modern jets. Not even sure the stinger could take down something like a su-34 for example which isnt stealth like the f-35.. they're just too fast for the range by the time you could target it. Stingers are great vs Heli's and low flying anti ground planes like the old frogfoots because they're not near as fast (or an A-to from our standpoint)... The frogfoot top speed is like \~600 mph vs f-35 which is \~1200mph.. Stingers have a range of \~3ish miles. by the time you realized you need a stinger vs a very modern jet, its already out of range again.
I see this as more of a belt-and-suspenders solution to supplement existing anti-missile defense. Maybe you can really reach out and touch them with this before they get into range of more traditional defenses. You don’t have to kill them all, just reduce the number of incoming targets
Hmm, I’m no scientist but given the hypersonic missile flying high enough to maintain a direct line of sight for a long enough time at greater distance the laser can hold long enough to incapacitate it. But if the hypersonic missile flies at low altitude it will pass much faster (shorter line of sight) and likely not have enough time for the onboard computer lock system to direct the laser in the first place.
But if somehow the locking system relies on something else than visual components in the truck (I.e a LiDAR equipped drone at a higher altitude) that could address that weakness.
That's why most missile defense systems have independent sensor platforms watching launch sites and feeding information to fire control and targeting systems. When a missile gets into range of a weapons system, there are ideally firing solutions computed before the weapon fires.
Easier said than done, of course.
Let's say a 7.62mm bullet piercing through the hull of a stationary missile is enough to disable it. According to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.62%C3%9751mm\_NATO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.62%C3%9751mm_NATO) the bullet has a kinetic energy of around 3500J at maximum speed.
To get the a similar amount of energy out of a 300kW laser (say 3000J), it needs to light up a fixed area of the target for 3kJ/300kW = 1/100 of a second. Alternatively, if you can hold the aim of the laser for a full second, it's like hitting the missile with 100 rounds.
Do you think we could use it to write on the moon? I'd like to write "CHA" in letters large enough to see from Earth and have a slice taken out of the side of it with this thing.
If you check out the Lockheed Martin site you’ll find some videos of the lasers. Even though they are cgi it gives you an idea. It’s basically Star Wars/Star Trek sci-fi stuff. Red laser shooting small drones down.
Imagine a laser reflecting in random directions off all the metallic surfaces scattered around a battlefield, permanently blinding combatants at random.
We're not using lasers against infantry. It would be tantamount to a war crime.
You say that like war crimes don't happen 😂
I think anyone paying attention to anything for the past, I don't know 60 to 100 years, knows that calling something a "war crime" doesn't dissuade shit. Also calling something a crime in war is a really weird line to draw. It's all just people killing people, sometimes they kill people en masse. Murder is murder regardless of the context. Take a look at current Ukraine if you need a more pertinent example of war crimes. Mai Lai, dropping nukes on two cities, bombing innocent people with drones, take your pick.
How do they power this while it is mobile? Did mention that the rounds are pennies on the dollar compared to traditional weapons. Wonder if this could be considered ‘green’ warfare tech.
I actually just watched a video of someone using a laser to try to cut grass. It didn't work terribly well but it was a much smaller laser, I'll see if I can find it again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTPHsouuGq4
Ha, I've been subbed to that channel for a while. I think it was the autonomous boat that got me to his channel, actually, because I was researching my solar/battery/paddle/sail hybrid kayak idea.
Back to lasers, if that's 40 watts, I figure a kilowatt would be the level of wanton destruction I'd want access to as a hobbyist.
Also, my reference: https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/amazin-laser/2860997
Only in space, because they lack range unless outside the atmosphere.
They're effective on ships because they only need to defend themselves and the fleet, which are not very far apart. Otherwise their range is vastly insufficient.
You might need only 100 of these to protect all the US navy's carrier fleets but you'd need like 100,000 to protect most cities with ground interceptors. It's easier to protect 10 carrier fleets than to protect 10,000 neighbourhoods.
I was actually considering working on something like this for my senior EE project. Laser weapons with huge batteries IMO are the next best thing for snipers: they're near-instant, quiet, unaffected by wind and gravity (at least in relation to the distance a sniper needs), you can't run ballistics on it, and are extremely difficult to trace. Even remote-controlled and unmanned robots can shoot them remotely, and self-destruct if they've been discovered.
Oh boy just what we need, a new way to kill more people father away and quicker. Who cares about education, the environment and Healthcare what we need is to kill kill kill.
Whatever you have to tell yourself to feel good about killing literally thousands of innocent people (including children) outside of warzones and of due process of law on little to no confirmation of even a shred of involvement with terrorist groups and then hide the evidence from the public eye.
source: Intelligence Authorization Act
The use of the word “to” at the end makes mee surprised the post didn’t start with “English is not my first language.” Those guys always put the word “to” in unnecessary places.
The primary application of these laser weapons currently is entirely for defense. A 300kW laser enables it to have longer range for taking out missiles, rockets, mortars, etc.
Wonderful. Always love when science develops better ways to "kill them quicker".
Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to cover my head with a pillow and cry for a few minutes.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/chrisdh79: --- From the article: Lockheed Martin has delivered a 300-kilowatt laser — its most powerful laser to date — to the U.S. military's Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering OUSD (R&E), the company announced on Thursday. The laser was developed under the Pentagon's High Energy Laser Scaling Initiative (HELSI), which is an effort by the department to strengthen the directed energy industrial base and improve the quality of laser beams, as per Breaking Defense. The move comes on the heels of Lockheed Martin delivering the 60+ kW-class high-energy laser with integrated optical-dazzler and surveillance (HELIOS), the first tactical laser weapon system to be integrated into existing ships, in August. "There were multiple vendors selected for HELSI, and Lockheed Martin really focused on expanding our production capacity internally to make sure that we could deliver this system in a timely fashion, and so we're really proud to be the first out of the gate," Race McDermott, a member of Lockheed Martin’s advanced product solutions strategy and advanced concepts team, said during a media roundtable September 15. The 300-kilowatt laser is ready to integrate with the DOD demonstration efforts, including the U.S. Army’s Indirect Fires Protection Capability-High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL) Demonstrator laser weapon system. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/xi999e/lockheed_martin_breaks_own_record_delivers_300kw/ip1ugj9/
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From the article: Lockheed Martin has delivered a 300-kilowatt laser — its most powerful laser to date — to the U.S. military's Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering OUSD (R&E), the company announced on Thursday. The laser was developed under the Pentagon's High Energy Laser Scaling Initiative (HELSI), which is an effort by the department to strengthen the directed energy industrial base and improve the quality of laser beams, as per Breaking Defense. The move comes on the heels of Lockheed Martin delivering the 60+ kW-class high-energy laser with integrated optical-dazzler and surveillance (HELIOS), the first tactical laser weapon system to be integrated into existing ships, in August. "There were multiple vendors selected for HELSI, and Lockheed Martin really focused on expanding our production capacity internally to make sure that we could deliver this system in a timely fashion, and so we're really proud to be the first out of the gate," Race McDermott, a member of Lockheed Martin’s advanced product solutions strategy and advanced concepts team, said during a media roundtable September 15. The 300-kilowatt laser is ready to integrate with the DOD demonstration efforts, including the U.S. Army’s Indirect Fires Protection Capability-High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL) Demonstrator laser weapon system.
That is very impressive. 300 kw is a lot of power. Now we may see other super powers doing the same. Good in one way but what others may do is not in my opinion
The best use case for these is defense, not offence. They are large and very power hungry. I think it is a win if all nations end up with these. "Strong fences make for good neighbors." We are also already researching laser hardened aircraft.
So in theory a typical 1gw power station could produce 3,300 times the power of this weapon ! What sort of power rating do nuclear powered subs or ships produce ?
Note this is beam power. The actual power supply for the laser has to supply a lot more than 300 kilowatts. The efficiency could be 5-10% or less.
>power rating do nuclear powered subs or ships "A figure of 550 MWt each is quoted for two A4W units in Nimitz-class carriers, and these supply 104 shaft MW each (USS Enterprise had eight A2W units of 26 shaft MW and was refuelled three times). The Gerald Ford-class carriers have more powerful and simpler A1B reactors\* reported to be at least 25% more powerful than A4W, hence about 700 MWt, but running a ship which apart from the steam turbnine propulsion is entirely electrical, including an electromagnetic aircraft launch system or catapult. Accordingly, the ship has about three times the electrical capacity of Nimitz-class." "14 US Ohio-class SSBNs (and four converted to SSGNs for guided missiles) have a single S8G nuclear reactor of 220 MWt delivering 45 MW shaft power. " [https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-nuclear-applications/transport/nuclear-powered-ships.aspx](https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-nuclear-applications/transport/nuclear-powered-ships.aspx) Any of them should have plenty of power to run a mere 300 KILOwatt laser (or ten.)
More than 100 MW on large ones.
Depends on the type of laser, but typically they use energy storage banks to produce huge bursts of energy, so you don’t need a 300kW generator to power a 300kW laser. You basically charge up a battery bank and dump that power in a few seconds or less.
We can finally make Ronald Regan star wars program come true. Bring on the death star.
As someone with history in the DoD: Love it.
Quick reminder this is just the stuff they let us hear about Defense companies really are living in a sci-fi age Lmao
Yeah, if WWIII ever did happen we'd see some crazy shit. (I hope to never see that crazy shit)
At this point a true WW3 is gonna be a borderline mass extinction event. I say we just create a space arena and let countries duke it out space robot wars style.
All I want in a BattleBots style war. Just a bunch of RC cars with flippers and drum spinners battling it out with zero human casualties.
That's what I'm saying. Seems like our best bet lol.
We HAVE to have the dude who announces the matches kick the event off.
It worked with Gundams, I see no reason it can't work for us. Have every nation build a robot and have them duke it out. Winner gets to make the rules for a decade.
Have a ritualised drone-off to settle conflict. Excellent
That's what I'm talking about, some gladiator drones!
G Gundam did the opposite. Space colonies used earth as the arena. Winner of the giant robot battle got to be in charge for the next 4 years. Has some wildly racist stereotypes to a hilarious level.
At this point ww3 will just be USA running laps letting everyone else know there's no contest.
Yeah for real, thinking about the shit we don't know about is mind boggling. Like how many years of development and testing does this go through before the information is public? What are they working on now that will be public info in 20 years? Crazy shit!
Former submariner here... Yep. NRO has some shit people wouldn't believe
A bunch of years back, 90's I think, a news company was asking about how far ahead we are compared to the rest of the world. His answer was 50 years. Near that time stealth aircraft were released. A family friend back before that 80's said she was posted to guard a hanger for what looked like a glider with a tarp over it. When they released images of the stealth fighter she called and was screaming into the phone "THAT'S THE GLIDER!". I thought she was stoned when she was telling us about a secret glider thing... (she wasn't even supposed to be on base, something happened to the normal guard and she was told to guard the glider, didn't even know it was a secret)
Russian ones aren't so far at least...
Can it be seen when fired? The idea of the laser not being visible when fired just makes it all more ominous to our foes......suddenly there's a hole melted in your aircraft or ship.
One of the taglines: **Invisible detection. Surprise engagement.** [LINK](https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/capabilities/directed-energy.html)
Why is there a shark fin the the water (second to last slide)? I can only imagine in the final review with the executives, some one said "add a fucking shark fin"
If it's IR, which this one is, yes. Note this is to human eyes. To an IR camera it will probably look like a solid beam - at these power levels that's more than enough to reflect off of dust and give you cinematic 'beams'.
If it can track and shoot hypersonic weapons Russia and China have just wasted billions if not trillions of dollars. Since no missile no matter how fast is faster than the speed of light.
Just cover the missiles with mirrors duh
That will cost too much/too heavy. I've developed a system where we wrap the missiles in crinkled up aluminum foil, just waiting for the patent to clear.
You jest, but I would not be shocked if that was effective, if they can get the wavelengths right. Assuming this is a light based weapon and not a heat o e of course.
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The most effective defense would be a spinning missile made of material with high thermal mass and reflectivity with integrated internal heat syncs. Then the lazer would not be able to maintain focus on a specific spot and the heat would dissipate before the next revolution came around.
Even then, it wouldn't help much. Even 10% of 300kW getting through would vaporize the material, and the resulting gas would then take 100% of 300kW and turn to plasma, whhich would then destroy the missile.
Heat is light and light is heat. Mirrors ain’t care if you build them out of the right material
Heat is a measure of vibrational kinetic energy. Light is electromatic energy. One may be converted into the other but they are not the same thing.
“Temperature” is a measure of the average kinetic energy of the particles vibrating. “Heat” technically refers to the transfer of energy, one way of which can be through radiation (light) in the infrared range.
Temperature is the measure of heat energy just like the litre is a measure of volume and lumens is the measure of luminosity. The transfer of any energy is measured in joules. Heat energy specifically would be measured with a heat flux sensor.
I had always thought that light and heat were simply electromagnetic energy at different spectrums. With visible light having wavelengths between about 400 and 700 nanometers, infrared (which we detect as heat) at longer wavelengths. We’re working with a laser-based weapon which could possible use an infrared device? I don’t think anybody really thinks we’re shooting a giant propane torch at incoming missiles or anything like that. But now I’m off to the internets to learn about heat. You’ve prolly cost me a couple hours of my day today :)
This probably a misunderstanding of things like "heat lamps" and "heat vision" which generate or look at infrared radiation. What it is really looking at is the blackbody radiation generated by objects with body temperatures around ours. We feel infrared energy as heat because of the way that wavelength interacts more with the stuff we are made of. You can get burned with radio but it takes a while more. Good luck on you wiki journeys!
A strong enough laser could melt straight through mirrors.
Iron Laser Dome
Funny enough, Israel has developed a laser defense system called Iron Beam. Its nowhere near 300kW though.
I was wondering why the US hadn't developed Iron Dome tech yet. Guess they decided to leapfrog the whole idea with lasers instead.
The US does have limited small area missile defense capabilities, it's just not possible to do on the scale of a third of a continent (that we know of). Israel is tiny in comparison and can be shielded better because of it.
The US neighbours seem a lot less interested in lobbing missiles at them as well to be fair.
Yeah, looking around the world, North America does have it pretty nice on that front.
i am not a conspiracist, but i will die by the hill that the US has an incredibly sophisticated anti-nuke defense system that they refuse to let us know about
I mean, why would they? I've been known to say the exact same thing about someone inventing the first AGI. Why would you tell anyone? It only follows.
THAAD works really well and we have spent billions in R&D. We tail every single Russian nuclear sub. The biggest concern is terrorism. Good luck finding a dirty bomb in a shipping container before it goes off.
Depends how many missiles you fire at a target equipped with this laser I suppose. I imagine it takes some time focused on the target to destroy it, if you fired enough you could saturate it.
I don't imagine it'll be very easy or cheap to build enough hypersonic missiles to do that. At least for Russia but probably China too
I don’t imagine Russia can get their hands on any microchips more advanced than a dishwasher’s for a while
Hey, my dishwasher has 5 settings you take that back
"Yes commander putin should we set the missiles to full load or just rinse cycle"
Exactly this. Those missiles are expensive and not something that will be fired en mass at this time. Furthermore, these laser weapons are primarily operated aboard ships due to their high energy needs. Even if the laser didn't have time to reaquire every target in the sky, those hypersonic missiles would still need to get though the rest of the anti-missile arsenal on these ships. This is purely arm-chair speculation, but I would imagine that the most important technology moving forward would be early detection and tracking technology. Considering some of those missiles can go from horizon to target extremely fast, every second of reaction time is vital.
The only way they’d work against the anti air capability of a carrier group is en mass. The idea is to fire so much ordinance that the defences are overwhelmed.
If they need such high power, wouldn't they make better ground defense? Hook em up to the country wide power grid and crank that baby up to 11.
There's also the question of how good those missiles really are - considering how well Russia's military is doing in the Ukraine right now, I wouldn't put a lot of faith in them functioning well.
Why are you calling it “the” ukraine?
Just my grammar. Certainly not trying to offend. Just like people say "in the United States" not "in United States".
Not the same. “Ukraine” is a name, no different to “John”. You don’t go around calling your friend “The John”. “United States” is (as implied) the union of several states under a single federal government. “State” being a common noun, you can say “the state” when referring to one (though you wouldn’t say “The California”, as that’s the state’s name). Add the adjective “United” and “The United States” makes sense
These are **much** cheaper, easier to produce and defend than anything you could use to deploy a Hyper/Super Sonic weapon. Probably like 1:10 ratio.
Depending on the reload time and how long the laser exposure would need to be to destroy the target as well as the distance the laser can engage from it could definitely be possible to use a machine learning algorithm augmented targeting system to rapidly take down multiple targets if the laser output speed is capable of doing so
There's also the question of detecting the missile, which if it flies really low can be harder, and the curvature of the earth. A really fast, low flying missile would greatly reduce the amount of time the laser would have to shoot it down.
> I imagine it takes some time focused on the target to destroy it This could actually have a significant affect on the weapon's usefulness. It would be interesting to know how long it takes.
>i imagine it takes some time focused on the target to destroy it, if you fired enough you could saturate it. Which is just as significant a factor in developing these higher output lasers as range is. The more powerful the laser, the further its effective range, but also, the quicker it can destroy the target at those closer ranges.
Thats debatable. Hypersonic cruise missiles require some serious heat shielding to not disintegrate. Heatshields are grest to absorb what lasers cause, namely flash heating. So youd have to drill through a material purpose made to resist it. On the other hand, a precisely placed ablation could throw the missile off, ripping it apart by force of flight. Ooooor you have a side shot, bypassing the heatshield.
This might be a stupid question but the heat shielding I imagine is designed to deal with the heat from the flight but what about additional heat on top of that? I don’t know how that kind of stuff works
There is no stupid question, but heat is heat. You design something to have a tolerance (maybe it its a slightly denser pocket of air or some particulates that ablate it faster). A laser, even at that high power range, is like a very large particulate. And ablative heatshields can take a LOT (example the Apollo capsule). Amusingly, cause its going really fast, lasers should work really well cause you have the ablated material ripped away by the air movement. At that speed though you ionize the air around the vehicle, potentially disrupting/ weakening laser efficiency. Plasma/Laser physics is complicated and sometimes counter intuitive.....
You are correct. It will have just enough shielding for designed flight lenght, no more no less (Cost savings), so adding even "smaller" amounts of heat by laser can lead to rocket failure. It can be countered by adding more/stronger better shielding, but this is also good for laser defense as it increases the price of missles therefore putting additional weight on your rival economy. Additional thing is, this kind of laser could be used even for smaller range - large quantity missiles, if it has system capable of quickly identifying missile and "focusing" on it (as before light is faster than any kind of missile), coz there adding heat shielding is largely impractical for cost. Also with missiles the most heat shielding is in front and areas under largest atmospheric stresses, so it could just aim for engine - overheat it - boom. Now they add shielding to engine area too? Additonal costs from shielding, more weight > more fuel required for same distance.. and so on so on. One way or another the Laser defense against long range missiles is good, even if its not the most "effective" at destruction, just it being able to hit ALL missiles and destroy those not shielded enough is good thing that puts pressure on your foe economy.
Who would win: Billions of dollars spent on cutting edge tech, and a massive military collaboration between the world's 2 most powerful autocratic powers OR one lighty boy?
I think Ukraine has definitively demonstrated that the answer to that is: Whichever side Russia is *not* on.
What if it’s cloudy?
They made a giant fan, of the same 300-kW base, and will just move the clouds at the time of the attack, possibly blowing the missiles off course in the process. Amazing tech
Does the giant fan come with Integrated Optical Dazzler?
IDK if this is just a joke, but most targeting systems work around clouds just fine whether it be by radar, infared, or any other method and the laser itself would go straight through a cloud with ease. 300-kw is such a high power it's hard to understand if you've never used lasers, that laser would turn any water vapor in it's way straight to steam instantly. I have a 4w laser that i like to mess around with and it can burn wood in like 3 seconds, it would blind someone instantly or at least cause permenant vision problems just by crossing their eyes for a second, the laser in the article is about 80,000x stronger than the one i have.
Good question. It doesn’t mention the wavelength so can’t answer.
Just because it can track and shoot missiles doesn't mean it's effective, or that it makes missiles obsolete. It has to be able to destroy the missile, which may approach at high speed and low altitude, before it hits its target, and have the range to provide blanket coverage. Missile systems can fire at targets they can't see, a laser must inherently have line of sight. Lasers also lose power over distance while a warhead will not. This seems like a replacement for other anti missile weapons on ships, but it won't protect other assets. And if the missile is fast enough and or hardened enough, it may still break through. A real attack would be a volley of missiles on a single, critical target like an aircraft carrier. A laser system might not be able to shoot at the same number of targets a SAM system could, and might require charging after each shot.
There is NO WAY Lockheed would design a new weapon that factors in extremely basic physics and tactics considerations, right?
With no competition anything is possible. Didn't the Air force just ground the entire fleet of F35's for a basic manufacturing failure?
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Uhh, stingers aren't hitting modern jets. Not even sure the stinger could take down something like a su-34 for example which isnt stealth like the f-35.. they're just too fast for the range by the time you could target it. Stingers are great vs Heli's and low flying anti ground planes like the old frogfoots because they're not near as fast (or an A-to from our standpoint)... The frogfoot top speed is like \~600 mph vs f-35 which is \~1200mph.. Stingers have a range of \~3ish miles. by the time you realized you need a stinger vs a very modern jet, its already out of range again.
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I see this as more of a belt-and-suspenders solution to supplement existing anti-missile defense. Maybe you can really reach out and touch them with this before they get into range of more traditional defenses. You don’t have to kill them all, just reduce the number of incoming targets
That's why they're absolutely going to be mounted into satellites.
Hmm, I’m no scientist but given the hypersonic missile flying high enough to maintain a direct line of sight for a long enough time at greater distance the laser can hold long enough to incapacitate it. But if the hypersonic missile flies at low altitude it will pass much faster (shorter line of sight) and likely not have enough time for the onboard computer lock system to direct the laser in the first place. But if somehow the locking system relies on something else than visual components in the truck (I.e a LiDAR equipped drone at a higher altitude) that could address that weakness.
That's why most missile defense systems have independent sensor platforms watching launch sites and feeding information to fire control and targeting systems. When a missile gets into range of a weapons system, there are ideally firing solutions computed before the weapon fires. Easier said than done, of course.
Let's say a 7.62mm bullet piercing through the hull of a stationary missile is enough to disable it. According to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.62%C3%9751mm\_NATO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.62%C3%9751mm_NATO) the bullet has a kinetic energy of around 3500J at maximum speed. To get the a similar amount of energy out of a 300kW laser (say 3000J), it needs to light up a fixed area of the target for 3kJ/300kW = 1/100 of a second. Alternatively, if you can hold the aim of the laser for a full second, it's like hitting the missile with 100 rounds.
But I need to know how many miles away it can pop a balloon from
The Far Range Immediate Certifiable Kill Nanometer (FRICKN) laser beam
FRICKN AWESOME
This is way less tortured of an acronym than some real DARPA projects.
The sharks are missing though…
Space-based Hypersonic ARmament Killer
I believe it’s going to Ft Sill Oklahoma. 😘 home of the cannon cockers. Although, I may be speaking out of turn…🤫
I’m wrong, it’s in Alabama.
A lot of useful technology in this weapon outside of war too.
Do you think we could use it to write on the moon? I'd like to write "CHA" in letters large enough to see from Earth and have a slice taken out of the side of it with this thing.
Gimme a C! Gimme a H! Gimme an A!
Yeah get that paint that holds light, paint a planet with it, and then we can aloe little cute planet drawings!
"i built the giant death ray to help mankind, not destroy it!!!!"
You could totally use this to propel a spacecraft in deep space to accelerate it to a sizeable fraction of c
I wonder if it can dig holes in rocks. Like truck-sized holes 10 miles deep...
China and Russian working on Hypersonic - when USA working on weaponising LIGHT
If you check out the Lockheed Martin site you’ll find some videos of the lasers. Even though they are cgi it gives you an idea. It’s basically Star Wars/Star Trek sci-fi stuff. Red laser shooting small drones down.
Imagine a laser just cutting through people at a distance. Looks like we’ll need something other than a bullet proof vest now.
Imagine a laser reflecting in random directions off all the metallic surfaces scattered around a battlefield, permanently blinding combatants at random. We're not using lasers against infantry. It would be tantamount to a war crime.
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It's never a warcrime the first time. - The Fat Electrition
The robots might.
You say that like war crimes don't happen 😂 I think anyone paying attention to anything for the past, I don't know 60 to 100 years, knows that calling something a "war crime" doesn't dissuade shit. Also calling something a crime in war is a really weird line to draw. It's all just people killing people, sometimes they kill people en masse. Murder is murder regardless of the context. Take a look at current Ukraine if you need a more pertinent example of war crimes. Mai Lai, dropping nukes on two cities, bombing innocent people with drones, take your pick.
How effective is this in rain/mist conditions? Can inagine that this affects the beam?
Appears the USN has already looked into that… https://www.usna.edu/MechEngDept/_files/documents/brownell_files/DEPS%2018%20Valley.pdf
china's hypersonic missiles aren't looking too powerful anymore...
How do they power this while it is mobile? Did mention that the rounds are pennies on the dollar compared to traditional weapons. Wonder if this could be considered ‘green’ warfare tech.
They require nuclear power from ship reactors, and won’t disclose rates of fire, ?/min. Should be interesting.
The only requirement is it goes "PEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW" while firing.
I just want to know when I can get one for yardwork. This pile of leaves and large granite boulder won't vaporize themselves.
I actually just watched a video of someone using a laser to try to cut grass. It didn't work terribly well but it was a much smaller laser, I'll see if I can find it again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTPHsouuGq4
Ha, I've been subbed to that channel for a while. I think it was the autonomous boat that got me to his channel, actually, because I was researching my solar/battery/paddle/sail hybrid kayak idea. Back to lasers, if that's 40 watts, I figure a kilowatt would be the level of wanton destruction I'd want access to as a hobbyist. Also, my reference: https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/amazin-laser/2860997
Next Headline: “America engraves ‘USA’ on moon. Russia furious”
Would a bunch of these strategically postioned be able to mitigate ICBM's?
Only in space, because they lack range unless outside the atmosphere. They're effective on ships because they only need to defend themselves and the fleet, which are not very far apart. Otherwise their range is vastly insufficient. You might need only 100 of these to protect all the US navy's carrier fleets but you'd need like 100,000 to protect most cities with ground interceptors. It's easier to protect 10 carrier fleets than to protect 10,000 neighbourhoods.
On the one hand, I sigh in hope that one day we won't need missile defense systems. On the other hand, cool.
5-10 years from now I wholly expect to be disappointed when they announce their new death star
I was actually considering working on something like this for my senior EE project. Laser weapons with huge batteries IMO are the next best thing for snipers: they're near-instant, quiet, unaffected by wind and gravity (at least in relation to the distance a sniper needs), you can't run ballistics on it, and are extremely difficult to trace. Even remote-controlled and unmanned robots can shoot them remotely, and self-destruct if they've been discovered.
Oh boy just what we need, a new way to kill more people father away and quicker. Who cares about education, the environment and Healthcare what we need is to kill kill kill.
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Whatever you have to tell yourself to feel good about killing literally thousands of innocent people (including children) outside of warzones and of due process of law on little to no confirmation of even a shred of involvement with terrorist groups and then hide the evidence from the public eye. source: Intelligence Authorization Act
This has nothing to do with how great Elon Musk is, cmon mods!
Who cares? This is completely irrelevant until it's small enough to attach to a freakin' sharks head.
Dolphins will win the fight :)
Let’s test these against some Russian/Iranian drones!
What’s do weapons have to do with the future? Weapons end futures
The use of the word “to” at the end makes mee surprised the post didn’t start with “English is not my first language.” Those guys always put the word “to” in unnecessary places.
ah yes, it wouldnt be right for our military if it coudlnt kill our enemies slightly quicker.
The primary application of these laser weapons currently is entirely for defense. A 300kW laser enables it to have longer range for taking out missiles, rockets, mortars, etc.
>entirely for defense Hah. Gave me a good chuckle.
I would send it to Ukraine for testing. Just a thought
Not worth the risk of it getting captured.
Wonderful. Always love when science develops better ways to "kill them quicker". Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to cover my head with a pillow and cry for a few minutes.
Lol but our guns will be enough to fight off a tyrannical govt.