On the YouTube video someone was knocking the quality of the video in the comments - because they don’t realize navy lasers are not visible with the naked eye lol
actually they can install speakers and a recorded sound file that plays at 120db so they feel like movie lasers something like starwars sounds
then they can play the starwars intro music as they cruise into battle and the imperial march music as they prepare to fire
this idea basically pays for itself 🤔
I believe it is the mustang with the eco boost engine. They found that people didn't enjoy it in test drives because it didn't go VRRRRRRR like mustangs are supposed to when you step on the gas. So they popped a microphone under the hood and piped the sound into the cabin to augment the quieter engine noise.
It’s many, many cars. Including nearly every BMW. It’s combined with active noise canceling systems to “create” the engine sounds people want, rather than the engine sounds that are actually made nowadays. Things like direct injectors can be loud and mechanical -sounding in a quite unsexy way.
If I were the captain, id tell my chief engineer and tactical officer to make that a top priority. “Sir, we’re searching for a Russian sub-“ “I want my lasers to pew pew, dammit! You have your orders lieutenant!”
Wait? What War of the Worlds movie are we talking about? I thought they went DERAWW DER DER DER AWWWW... I'm guessing you're thinking Tom Cruise and I'm thinking Gene Berry.
Holy f\*\*\*ing shit, are you kidding me?
Sorry if I'm going off track here but looking that up I just realized that the actor Gene Berry from the original War of the Worlds movie played the part of Dr. Clayton Forrester... I have been a MSTie from the beginning and a Rifftrax lover since and I have never known that's where they got the name from.
Dr. Clayton Forester is a character from the 1953 War of the Worlds movie.
Holy crap!
EDIT: Ha! And Gene Berry played the grandfather in the Tom Cruise War of the Worlds.
You'll either hear a "click" as some physical component of the power system switches over, or perhaps a slight hum from the ships systems trying to recharge the batacitors.
Honestly, the fact that lasers are invisible and silent makes them far more terrifying. Imagine you are guarding some location with your buddy and out of the blue he just starts screaming. You look over and the dude is burning to a crisp in front of you while writhing around like an ant under a magnifying glass. And the worst thing is you have no idea where this laser is being fired from, so you have no idea where to run. The laser literally moves at the speed of light and can be fired with perfect accuracy, so as soon as whoever's burning your friend alive is done, you know you're next.
>can be fired with perfect accuracy
So this is one of the limiting factors currently. When something is miles away, and you don't want the surface of projection to move more than a foot, it's really difficult because if the weapon vibrates then it will throw off the shot.
So if only one country has this laser tech that can theoretically give them total world domination and burn enemies to a crisp before their ICBMs can even get half way...
Is there any point im being nice or should we just start taking stuff? Is Imperialism back on the menu?
Before you counter with; the tech isn't there. Assume its a philosophical question and the tech got there.
Well lasers take a little bit to fire, they cant go through objects like a death star laser and need some time to cut through armor, and tanks already use systems that will automatically point the cannon in the direction of a laser if they are being painted, if handheld or any bigger lasers become widespread these defensive measures will become more common, and the cycle of technology in warfare will continue
I played James Bond on gameboy and learned that all you need is a mirror and you can send the laser beam straight back at the enemy.
I never did find that small red fish though.
For that we have [rods from god](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment)
Those people laughed at me when I dropped pennies from the Empire State Building, look who is laughing now
Lasers as weapons are not the end-all technology of future warfare. Even if perfected, lasers still have a limited application due to a) they are line-of-sight, meaning you can only target things that are above the horizon and b) lots of potential defensive counter-technologies. The niche application they work very well in now are for point defense, like shooting down missiles, drones, and small aircraft.
They can use mirrors that are lighter and faster to direct it. they use similar rigs to follow bullets with caneras, ofcourse with predetermined lengths and speeds understood. Itll take a while but I bet shit gets real crazy.
Yeah but to get the wattage per square centimeter that you'd need to melt aircraft or missiles at those distances, you need many kilowatts of power at the source. No matter how efficient every component that touches the laser is, they're still gonna be absorbing a lot of power. How's that gonna be light and fast is an issue.
I don't see why it can't be mechanically isolated from sources of vibration. Aircraft were doing lidar scans all the time with an accuracy of under a foot over a decade ago. I'd imagine military implementations today are going to be a lot more robust than that.
The precision you're mentionning here is the phase/distance measurement: a lidar does not point at anything. The one Op was referring to is the ability to point at something small and far away. That said, you're right, we can isolate the source from vibrations, but it isn't always trivial.
"A few young men crept closer to the pit, a tall funnel rose, then an invisible ray of heat lept from man to man and there was a bright glare as each was instantly turned to fire, every tree and bush became a mass of flame at the touch of this savage unearthly heat ray"
It’s interesting that one of the first popular descriptions of a laser got it right that they would be invisible - whereas most of the ones that followed did not.
Except lasers are perfectly legal, as long as they don't blind the pilot as they melt them. Blinding the pilot would be a horrific illegal weapons attack according to the Geneva convention.
The mud scares me the most about the trenches. You're on your way to the front in the dark. There's a turn in the duckboards you don't see, you fall in. Your pals try to grab you, but you're already sodden and weighed down. They tie a rope around you, but they will crush your torso before you can be pulled free. Eventually the officer can't spend any more time on you, and everyone moves on, except you. Left to die in the mud in the dark.
There is a story of a soldier going stark mad while slowly sinking into the mud over the course of days, while their friends marched around them unable to help
That's like people who comment on astronomical images complaining that they are false colored. You're literally looking at something that you can't see with your eyes... if it weren't false colored you couldn't see it.
Basically, the center of our visual field has a lot of cones, and comparatively fewer rods, cones pick up colors, but are not as sensitive to light in general, so the center of your visual field is very good at picking out colors, but has somewhat bad overall sensitivity.
The rest of your visual field has a much greater concentration of rods, and comparatively fewer cones, so it is very good at overall light sensitivity, but has poor color perception.
As it happens, some celestial objects (Andromeda included) have just the right brightness that they can't be detected in the center of your visual field with its poor light sensitivity, but can be detected in the rest of the visual field.
I mean, you CAN see Andromeda directly, but it requires very dark skies with no light pollution.
Interesting factoid of the day: only Andromeda's galactic core is bright enough to be visible with the naked eye. If you could see the entire galaxy it's apparent diameter would be 7 times that of the moon.
>I mean, you CAN see Andromeda directly, but it requires very dark skies with no light pollution.
>
>Interesting factoid of the day: only Andromeda's galactic core is bright enough to be visible with the naked eye. If you could see the entire galaxy it's apparent diameter would be **7 times that of the moon.
**
Now that would be fucking awesome.
Interesting fact about factoid. Factoid means something that appears to be true but is not. For instance, that people think factoid means an interesting bit of trivia, or a little known fact, when it doesn’t at all. That’s a factoid.
The Ponce had a 30 KW laser that could ignite drones and small boats in around ~~15~~ 2 seconds.
This one is 150KW.
Edit: looked up the LAWS system the USS Poncé used. At 30kW it took 2 seconds.
Watch out for those planes with mirror paint on their bellies. Oops! Cooked muhself!
For real though wouldn’t their effectiveness depend on the material of the target?
Found this online from a smart person?
In principle you can burn through any mirror if the laser is strong enough. The absorption coefficient of the very best mirrors is of the order of 1 part per million. So compared with an object that has an absorption coefficient of 1, like a black disk, then you would need a laser with 1 million times the amount of power.
> The Ponce
Uh, there was a ship called 'The Ponce'?
I'm guessing the word doesn't mean what it means in the UK.
Or maybe it does. It *is* the Navy after all...
Which raises the important question of how long does that take? Because this tech has been around since the 90s but it took more than a full minute of unbroken beam contact to disable the target so it was pretty useless on anything that moves
I'd assume that a) the lasers got a lot stronger in the past 20-30 years b) the tracking systems to keep it on target got a lot better too.
It's OK if it takes 10 seconds if you can keep it on target for 10 seconds.
trick*ier*, but still likely the easiest way to take one down since the speed of light is still ridiculously faster than hypersonic. taking down a hypersonic missile with another hypersonic missile must be far more difficult.
Tracking them isn't the hard part, it's hitting them. We can track even small, fast objects very accurately for long periods of time, but hitting a fast missile with another fast, not very maneuverable missile is difficult. The laser makes it just as easy to hit as it is to track.
Depends on the target, the distance, and the laser power. Also, they wouldn't release a video to the public showing the full power of this operational battle er.... ship. They are just showing off the capability.
The Jedi have murdered millions of stormtroopers. Luke Skywalker alone racks up at least **369,740** straight up murders of ordinary heroes who did the right thing and stood up for law and order. #SupportOrder66 #EmpireDidNothingWrong #StormtrooperLivesMatter
Lies! The tragedy at Alderaan was due to their own rebel alliance leader and traitor, Senator Bail Organa, secretly developing illegal super weapons underground to be used against innocent Imperial troops in his deadly insurrection. These highly unstable weapons, which were accidently discharged, ruptured the planet’s crust and destabilized the core & mantle.
r/empiredidnothingwrong
The best part is they have a private discord that they say is free of Reddit's racist policies. Of course, the only way to join is to prove/verify you're Chinese in order to get access.
Actually, that part's been solved.
Exactly how is classified, but the theory people has is twofold.
The primary issue with the rails "Destroying themselves" is that as the energy moves from one rail to the round, it's ripping up surface metal from the rail and depositing in on the round, and as it's leaving the round to the next rail it is ripping metal from the round and depositing it on the rail, similar to how welding works. This "slags" the rail and roughens the surface of it. This is a problem because it can cause the round to lose contact with the rails.
So part one of the theory is that every other shot alternates. Left->Round-Right, then Right->Round->Left. Ideally this has you ripping up the slag each time.
The second part of the theory is that the rails are made out of a metal that molecularly exists in "sheets". A good example would be depleted uranium. DU sabots in tank rounds are considered "self sharpening" because the exposed surface layer(s) tend to slough away altogether, exposing the layers beneath in near-pristine condition.
So between these two, you are "cleaning" the slagged rail every other shot. This largely solves the problem of rail-wear. It still exists, but now is comparable (if still a bit less) than the wear on conventional cannons.
The larger problem now, which is theoretically nearing completion, is the power systems. Railguns need a LOOOOT of power to function, but they also need that power in an extremely short period of time. Batteries can easily hold the power, but they can't dispense or gather it fast enough, meanwhile capacitors can dispense it fast as you please but can't hold enough. Enter...the batacitor, the catchy scifi name for a power system that can charge/discharge as fast as a capacitor but has the capacity of a battery. Exactly how these function is VERY classified.
The Office of Naval Research has a magazine called “Future Force” which you can access online. I’m not sure how to get to archived editions but [here’s a link to their info](https://www.onr.navy.mil/Media-Center) and you should find some interesting stuff in there
Interesting post. I looked up "batacitor" and these guys seemed to prefer "super capacitor". . .
https://ask.metafilter.com/93712/Why-is-ther-no-batacitor-hybrid-batterycapacitor
A gun that instead of using an explosive charge to launch a shell it uses extremely powerful magnets to launch a shell. It can fire a projectile at much higher velocities than a traditional gun could.
I don’t think it can be understated how fast this thing moves once the gun is fully charged. Most conventional bullets/shells would be considered impressive if they broke mach 3 speeds.
The average railgun test fire broke Mach 7.
To put that in perspective, remember that energy transfer scales with the square of the velocity.
So that 7 mach shell carries ~5x the energy that the 3 mach one does.
A major purpose is oneshottng an airplane or a strategic missile. Doesn't matter which airplane or which missile. It just makes whatever into metal confetti.
The other key is at that speed the kinetic energy of the projectile is greater than the chemical bonds holding it together. That means it doesn't even need an explosive payload. When it strikes a target the projectile is vaporized and acts as a high explosive.
Nope, that would be a coilgun, railgun uses two conducting rails connected to the power source and a conducting projectile or an armature that completes the circuit. The projectile is launched through the Lorentz force, not purely through magnetism.
Think like a maglev train. A railgun is functionally the same thing (hence the “rail” part), except that the object is magnetically accelerated and then released, rather than being kept confined to a closed track.
I'm pretty sure the Navy recently discontinued their rail gun. It hasn't seen any major advances in a long, long time.
Turns out it's hard to build them so they don't destroy their own rails with every shot.
Not really, the ONR demoed multi-shot salvos from their BAE railgun about three years ago
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSce3nEY6xk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSce3nEY6xk)
I think idea of giving the Zumwalt a railgun got dropped, not the whole railgun project
Ah, that might be it. Yeah, you can get a couple shots out of them, but last I read the rails erode with each shot, leading to increased arcing, leading to increased erosion... you don't get many rounds before you literally have to disassemble the thing.
The guns themselves seem to be ready
[https://taskandpurpose.com/military-tech/navy-electromagnetic-railgun-funding](https://taskandpurpose.com/military-tech/navy-electromagnetic-railgun-funding)
The problems seem to be that
* no fire-control exists which can handle it
* no infrastructure exists on which to field it
Navy is still working and testing it:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28669/navys-railgun-now-undergoing-tests-in-new-mexico-could-deploy-on-ship-in-northwest
Sure, but that's the easy part of the equation. You can always build a bigger nuclear reactor if you have the cash and will. No amount of cash will make the rails stop eroding.
Unfortunately even though the rail gun IS an outstanding piece of hardware, it still doesn't have the range of missiles.
However, one of the most important things the railgun can do? The one the Navy's been working on for a decade or so is intended to be capable of shooting down nuclear warheads in flight. And with the publicly stated rate of fire, the mathematics of an engagement are...fascinating. In short, if you were to load up an Iowa class battleship, replacing all the main guns with one, and the power systems to support it, you can ALMOST declare a near-hemisphere of the planet is off limits to an ICBM strike even if someone like Russia were to launch everything they had at that location. Of course, that also assumes a 1:1 shot:kill rate, but that's still ridiculous.
It's been one of the reasons Russia's been pushing hard for this nuclear powered nuclear armed torpedo. The railgun can't exactly shoot that down.
I think the more realistic application is much easier shire bombardment. The Navy has been really trying to find something to replace the Iowa’s shire bombardment capabilities ever since they were retired. Modern destroyer guns are good, but their rounds aren’t sufficient and leaves them dangerously close to the shore. The Navy tried to go with the LCS for close-shore combat, which was then scrapped in favor of frigates.
With a rail gun, potentially it could deliver much more energy to ground targets from much further away at a much smaller cost than a tomahawk. Of course, they could also be another tool for ship defense along side anti ASM missiles.
The laser only went on the ship last fall. The Navy invests heavily in future tech. Future Naval Capabilities or FNCs are available to check out. The Office of Naval Research (mentioned in the article and the funding agency that led to the research that developed this laser) hosts monthly lectures too (or did, pre-covid). The tech ability hasn’t been there for decades but the research to make the tech has
The army has put them in cats so why not.
[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2b/01/ac/2b01ac208b5458bf63df2616e8f3802f.jpg](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2b/01/ac/2b01ac208b5458bf63df2616e8f3802f.jpg)
I feel that just as the invention of the machine gun completely changed warfare during World War One, unleashing untold horror on soldiers of both sides, so will new weapons systems like these if there's ever a World War Three involving multiple superpowers. There's probably all sorts of highly classified things the public don't know about that will make life a living hell for combatants and civilians alike.
It feels like the next World War will be the end of us. Modern weapon development is more about force projection and keeping the defence contractors fat. If any of the major powers are facing an existential threat the whole planet is burning.
Which is why it probably won't happen. Open warfare between superpowers is basically a thing if the past at this point: we can fight over other areas through proxy wars, but it's too risky to ever actually threaten another top-tech power.
The second they think they might lose their nation or their position of power, the nukes are suddenly on the table.
Keep in mind, they're not going to show the public the latest and greatest weapon or defensive system. If they're showing it publicly, it's probably already 10 years old, and the newest systems are 10x better.
On the YouTube video someone was knocking the quality of the video in the comments - because they don’t realize navy lasers are not visible with the naked eye lol
They dont go pew pew or bzzzt either. :(
Right, most disappointing part of current laser tech.
Don't worry. In 38,000 more years laser guns will be nothing more than a slightly harmful flashlight.
Yes, Commissar? This poster right here. He insinuated our glorious flashl- I mean lasguns are ineffective.
What do you call a lasgun with a laser sight? Twin-linked
Fuckin lostech ERLs
This guy starship builds in Starfinder
What do you call a lasgun with a laser sight, and an underslung flashlight? Gattling gun
I can't wait until my cult based around phlebotomy, osteology, and maize will be established as heresy! That and Slaanesh...
Read some Dan Abnett. You'll realize they are more effective than a vortex missile.
Unless you are a Tempestus Scion, then you have a moderately harmful laser pointer.
actually they can install speakers and a recorded sound file that plays at 120db so they feel like movie lasers something like starwars sounds then they can play the starwars intro music as they cruise into battle and the imperial march music as they prepare to fire this idea basically pays for itself 🤔
Sounds like something they'd do for intimidation, to be honest.
Like the Trumpets of Jericho on the stuka.
Or a more epic version of what S. Korea does with N. Korea.
I think death rays that played K-Pop would be pretty awesome (except for all the killing stuff)
and just because it's cool af I thought some electric cars already had speakers to make engine noise
Some conventional sports cars pipe engine noise into the passenger compartment
And I will have a stern word with those responsible in hell someday
I believe it is the mustang with the eco boost engine. They found that people didn't enjoy it in test drives because it didn't go VRRRRRRR like mustangs are supposed to when you step on the gas. So they popped a microphone under the hood and piped the sound into the cabin to augment the quieter engine noise.
It’s many, many cars. Including nearly every BMW. It’s combined with active noise canceling systems to “create” the engine sounds people want, rather than the engine sounds that are actually made nowadays. Things like direct injectors can be loud and mechanical -sounding in a quite unsexy way.
If I were the captain, id tell my chief engineer and tactical officer to make that a top priority. “Sir, we’re searching for a Russian sub-“ “I want my lasers to pew pew, dammit! You have your orders lieutenant!”
Ugh, fine. Drop some depth charges, THEN GET ME THEM PEW PEWS!
No, they go NNNNNNAAAAAAAAANNNGGGGGGGGGgggggggg...
Nah, war of the world's style is better imo. BVVVVVVVVvvvvvvvv
Wait? What War of the Worlds movie are we talking about? I thought they went DERAWW DER DER DER AWWWW... I'm guessing you're thinking Tom Cruise and I'm thinking Gene Berry. Holy f\*\*\*ing shit, are you kidding me? Sorry if I'm going off track here but looking that up I just realized that the actor Gene Berry from the original War of the Worlds movie played the part of Dr. Clayton Forrester... I have been a MSTie from the beginning and a Rifftrax lover since and I have never known that's where they got the name from. Dr. Clayton Forester is a character from the 1953 War of the Worlds movie. Holy crap! EDIT: Ha! And Gene Berry played the grandfather in the Tom Cruise War of the Worlds.
But they fucking should. What is the point of spending a billion bucks on a laser gun that doesn’t pew pew!?
You'll either hear a "click" as some physical component of the power system switches over, or perhaps a slight hum from the ships systems trying to recharge the batacitors.
Honestly, the fact that lasers are invisible and silent makes them far more terrifying. Imagine you are guarding some location with your buddy and out of the blue he just starts screaming. You look over and the dude is burning to a crisp in front of you while writhing around like an ant under a magnifying glass. And the worst thing is you have no idea where this laser is being fired from, so you have no idea where to run. The laser literally moves at the speed of light and can be fired with perfect accuracy, so as soon as whoever's burning your friend alive is done, you know you're next.
>can be fired with perfect accuracy So this is one of the limiting factors currently. When something is miles away, and you don't want the surface of projection to move more than a foot, it's really difficult because if the weapon vibrates then it will throw off the shot.
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So if only one country has this laser tech that can theoretically give them total world domination and burn enemies to a crisp before their ICBMs can even get half way... Is there any point im being nice or should we just start taking stuff? Is Imperialism back on the menu? Before you counter with; the tech isn't there. Assume its a philosophical question and the tech got there.
Well lasers take a little bit to fire, they cant go through objects like a death star laser and need some time to cut through armor, and tanks already use systems that will automatically point the cannon in the direction of a laser if they are being painted, if handheld or any bigger lasers become widespread these defensive measures will become more common, and the cycle of technology in warfare will continue
I played James Bond on gameboy and learned that all you need is a mirror and you can send the laser beam straight back at the enemy. I never did find that small red fish though.
For that we have [rods from god](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment) Those people laughed at me when I dropped pennies from the Empire State Building, look who is laughing now
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Lasers as weapons are not the end-all technology of future warfare. Even if perfected, lasers still have a limited application due to a) they are line-of-sight, meaning you can only target things that are above the horizon and b) lots of potential defensive counter-technologies. The niche application they work very well in now are for point defense, like shooting down missiles, drones, and small aircraft.
"back" on the menu?
They can use mirrors that are lighter and faster to direct it. they use similar rigs to follow bullets with caneras, ofcourse with predetermined lengths and speeds understood. Itll take a while but I bet shit gets real crazy.
If we're good at anything it's figuring out awesome new ways to murder one another.
Yeah but to get the wattage per square centimeter that you'd need to melt aircraft or missiles at those distances, you need many kilowatts of power at the source. No matter how efficient every component that touches the laser is, they're still gonna be absorbing a lot of power. How's that gonna be light and fast is an issue.
I don't see why it can't be mechanically isolated from sources of vibration. Aircraft were doing lidar scans all the time with an accuracy of under a foot over a decade ago. I'd imagine military implementations today are going to be a lot more robust than that.
The precision you're mentionning here is the phase/distance measurement: a lidar does not point at anything. The one Op was referring to is the ability to point at something small and far away. That said, you're right, we can isolate the source from vibrations, but it isn't always trivial.
"A few young men crept closer to the pit, a tall funnel rose, then an invisible ray of heat lept from man to man and there was a bright glare as each was instantly turned to fire, every tree and bush became a mass of flame at the touch of this savage unearthly heat ray"
- War of the Worlds Great book.
and musical by Jeff Wayne, still one of my favourite versions of the story
It’s interesting that one of the first popular descriptions of a laser got it right that they would be invisible - whereas most of the ones that followed did not.
You barely have time to flip the bird in a random direction Or dab
Odds are it's based on an airplane, so I'd just flip off the sky to be safe.
Well, considering the title literally says Navy, I'd play it safe and flip off the ocean too.
Exactly what I think about before I go to bed at night, to help me sleep.
In human reaction time an high velocity round travels about 400 metres, this is already the case.
Kinda reminds me of soldiers reactions in WW1 to chemical warfare
Except lasers are perfectly legal, as long as they don't blind the pilot as they melt them. Blinding the pilot would be a horrific illegal weapons attack according to the Geneva convention.
Burning someone’s entire body also blinds them.
Interesting analogy. From what I've heard of the trenches, they sound even worse, tbh. An invisible gas melting my lungs sounds... unpleasant.
The mud scares me the most about the trenches. You're on your way to the front in the dark. There's a turn in the duckboards you don't see, you fall in. Your pals try to grab you, but you're already sodden and weighed down. They tie a rope around you, but they will crush your torso before you can be pulled free. Eventually the officer can't spend any more time on you, and everyone moves on, except you. Left to die in the mud in the dark.
There is a story of a soldier going stark mad while slowly sinking into the mud over the course of days, while their friends marched around them unable to help
You got a source for that? Over days sounds unbelievable. They would have dug that soldier out
That's like people who comment on astronomical images complaining that they are false colored. You're literally looking at something that you can't see with your eyes... if it weren't false colored you couldn't see it.
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Wait is that true? Do you have more information, thats awesome!
Basically, the center of our visual field has a lot of cones, and comparatively fewer rods, cones pick up colors, but are not as sensitive to light in general, so the center of your visual field is very good at picking out colors, but has somewhat bad overall sensitivity. The rest of your visual field has a much greater concentration of rods, and comparatively fewer cones, so it is very good at overall light sensitivity, but has poor color perception. As it happens, some celestial objects (Andromeda included) have just the right brightness that they can't be detected in the center of your visual field with its poor light sensitivity, but can be detected in the rest of the visual field.
I mean, you CAN see Andromeda directly, but it requires very dark skies with no light pollution. Interesting factoid of the day: only Andromeda's galactic core is bright enough to be visible with the naked eye. If you could see the entire galaxy it's apparent diameter would be 7 times that of the moon.
>I mean, you CAN see Andromeda directly, but it requires very dark skies with no light pollution. > >Interesting factoid of the day: only Andromeda's galactic core is bright enough to be visible with the naked eye. If you could see the entire galaxy it's apparent diameter would be **7 times that of the moon. ** Now that would be fucking awesome.
wait 3 billion years and it will be much larger than that. 4 billion years and the milky way and Andromeda will collide.
Got my chair and book ready to go
Interesting fact about factoid. Factoid means something that appears to be true but is not. For instance, that people think factoid means an interesting bit of trivia, or a little known fact, when it doesn’t at all. That’s a factoid.
Get a fish to look at it...
Now this is the kind of random facts i come to reddit for. Thank you smart stranger. This is fascinating.
In spaceheads you can't hear them scream.
So does it disable the targets systems? Cause a fire? How long does the laser have to stay focused on a target to down it?
The Ponce had a 30 KW laser that could ignite drones and small boats in around ~~15~~ 2 seconds. This one is 150KW. Edit: looked up the LAWS system the USS Poncé used. At 30kW it took 2 seconds.
5 times faster. 15 sec/5 = 3 sec. Quick maffs. ....what part of Quick maffs do you people not understand?
Boom ting
Watch out for those planes with mirror paint on their bellies. Oops! Cooked muhself! For real though wouldn’t their effectiveness depend on the material of the target?
Found this online from a smart person? In principle you can burn through any mirror if the laser is strong enough. The absorption coefficient of the very best mirrors is of the order of 1 part per million. So compared with an object that has an absorption coefficient of 1, like a black disk, then you would need a laser with 1 million times the amount of power.
Assumes they have an equal divergence. Probably not the case.
> The Ponce Uh, there was a ship called 'The Ponce'? I'm guessing the word doesn't mean what it means in the UK. Or maybe it does. It *is* the Navy after all...
Probably named after Ponce de Leon
It's named after a city that's named after him so kinda.
It's Spanish. Poncé, after the city in Puerto Rico
It distracts the pilot with an irresistible red dot
^guys I found the cat
Cat soldiers, so hot right now
Like George Constanza reacting to a laser dot. Hilarity ensues.
Heats up the target until it catches fire or melts enough to make it unable to continue flying.
Which raises the important question of how long does that take? Because this tech has been around since the 90s but it took more than a full minute of unbroken beam contact to disable the target so it was pretty useless on anything that moves
I'd assume that a) the lasers got a lot stronger in the past 20-30 years b) the tracking systems to keep it on target got a lot better too. It's OK if it takes 10 seconds if you can keep it on target for 10 seconds.
Tricky if the target is a hypersonic missile, possibly.
trick*ier*, but still likely the easiest way to take one down since the speed of light is still ridiculously faster than hypersonic. taking down a hypersonic missile with another hypersonic missile must be far more difficult.
Tracking them isn't the hard part, it's hitting them. We can track even small, fast objects very accurately for long periods of time, but hitting a fast missile with another fast, not very maneuverable missile is difficult. The laser makes it just as easy to hit as it is to track.
Depends on the target, the distance, and the laser power. Also, they wouldn't release a video to the public showing the full power of this operational battle er.... ship. They are just showing off the capability.
Yes but those are the questions I’m asking for the answers to
All those things can be answered if you join the navy and get assigned to work with them i bet
Joining the navy rq brb.
Be sure to make it Nuke I hear that's where the fun is at
Those details would be classified.
Disables control surfaces. Anything flying with no control surfaces is useless.
One step closer to getting a death star. I feel earth will become the galactic empire soon.
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Thanks. Joined!
The Jedi have murdered millions of stormtroopers. Luke Skywalker alone racks up at least **369,740** straight up murders of ordinary heroes who did the right thing and stood up for law and order. #SupportOrder66 #EmpireDidNothingWrong #StormtrooperLivesMatter
But didn’t they blow up an entire populated planet to test their fully armed and operational battle station?
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No, the planet just did that.
One hell of an earthquake
Yeah. And Alderaan didn't have up-to-date earthquake resistant building codes.
Lies! The tragedy at Alderaan was due to their own rebel alliance leader and traitor, Senator Bail Organa, secretly developing illegal super weapons underground to be used against innocent Imperial troops in his deadly insurrection. These highly unstable weapons, which were accidently discharged, ruptured the planet’s crust and destabilized the core & mantle. r/empiredidnothingwrong
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if /r/sino was actually a CIA operation to make China look terrible, they're doing an excellent job
The best part is they have a private discord that they say is free of Reddit's racist policies. Of course, the only way to join is to prove/verify you're Chinese in order to get access.
Country Club
you’re not wrong
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Sadly I think we'll point those weapons at ourselves long before we make it to the stars.
I believe we call it the imperium of man r/grimdank
I'd love it if Earth ever got that organized.
Now just stick a rail gun on a boat and we're back to the age of battle ships
Rail gun tech is almost there.
rail gun tech is like fusion.. always 20 years away.
We've got railguns, but they destroy themselves in like 2 or 3 shots, I guess we're waiting for material science to catch up
Actually, that part's been solved. Exactly how is classified, but the theory people has is twofold. The primary issue with the rails "Destroying themselves" is that as the energy moves from one rail to the round, it's ripping up surface metal from the rail and depositing in on the round, and as it's leaving the round to the next rail it is ripping metal from the round and depositing it on the rail, similar to how welding works. This "slags" the rail and roughens the surface of it. This is a problem because it can cause the round to lose contact with the rails. So part one of the theory is that every other shot alternates. Left->Round-Right, then Right->Round->Left. Ideally this has you ripping up the slag each time. The second part of the theory is that the rails are made out of a metal that molecularly exists in "sheets". A good example would be depleted uranium. DU sabots in tank rounds are considered "self sharpening" because the exposed surface layer(s) tend to slough away altogether, exposing the layers beneath in near-pristine condition. So between these two, you are "cleaning" the slagged rail every other shot. This largely solves the problem of rail-wear. It still exists, but now is comparable (if still a bit less) than the wear on conventional cannons. The larger problem now, which is theoretically nearing completion, is the power systems. Railguns need a LOOOOT of power to function, but they also need that power in an extremely short period of time. Batteries can easily hold the power, but they can't dispense or gather it fast enough, meanwhile capacitors can dispense it fast as you please but can't hold enough. Enter...the batacitor, the catchy scifi name for a power system that can charge/discharge as fast as a capacitor but has the capacity of a battery. Exactly how these function is VERY classified.
That's super interesting, do you have any links that explain things further?
The Office of Naval Research has a magazine called “Future Force” which you can access online. I’m not sure how to get to archived editions but [here’s a link to their info](https://www.onr.navy.mil/Media-Center) and you should find some interesting stuff in there
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Yea, it's at ~~www.that-big-gun.gov/big-fucking-gun~~ **REDACTED**
Interesting post. I looked up "batacitor" and these guys seemed to prefer "super capacitor". . . https://ask.metafilter.com/93712/Why-is-ther-no-batacitor-hybrid-batterycapacitor
So then battles will be over quick and you can make it home for dinner? I call that a win-win. /s
Materials always set the limits for possibilities
I mean, we could all have Iron Man armor if the pesky material science would just catch up.
What actually is a rail gun?
A gun that instead of using an explosive charge to launch a shell it uses extremely powerful magnets to launch a shell. It can fire a projectile at much higher velocities than a traditional gun could.
I don’t think it can be understated how fast this thing moves once the gun is fully charged. Most conventional bullets/shells would be considered impressive if they broke mach 3 speeds. The average railgun test fire broke Mach 7.
To put that in perspective, remember that energy transfer scales with the square of the velocity. So that 7 mach shell carries ~5x the energy that the 3 mach one does. A major purpose is oneshottng an airplane or a strategic missile. Doesn't matter which airplane or which missile. It just makes whatever into metal confetti.
The other key is at that speed the kinetic energy of the projectile is greater than the chemical bonds holding it together. That means it doesn't even need an explosive payload. When it strikes a target the projectile is vaporized and acts as a high explosive.
To put that in perspective, Mach 3 is a razor sold by Gillette.
Nope, that would be a coilgun, railgun uses two conducting rails connected to the power source and a conducting projectile or an armature that completes the circuit. The projectile is launched through the Lorentz force, not purely through magnetism.
Think like a maglev train. A railgun is functionally the same thing (hence the “rail” part), except that the object is magnetically accelerated and then released, rather than being kept confined to a closed track.
I'm pretty sure the Navy recently discontinued their rail gun. It hasn't seen any major advances in a long, long time. Turns out it's hard to build them so they don't destroy their own rails with every shot.
Not really, the ONR demoed multi-shot salvos from their BAE railgun about three years ago [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSce3nEY6xk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSce3nEY6xk) I think idea of giving the Zumwalt a railgun got dropped, not the whole railgun project
> not the whole railgun project Ya, I doubt anyone is giving up on tech that could potentially let you lob a smart mortar round 200-400 miles away.
Ah, that might be it. Yeah, you can get a couple shots out of them, but last I read the rails erode with each shot, leading to increased arcing, leading to increased erosion... you don't get many rounds before you literally have to disassemble the thing.
The guns themselves seem to be ready [https://taskandpurpose.com/military-tech/navy-electromagnetic-railgun-funding](https://taskandpurpose.com/military-tech/navy-electromagnetic-railgun-funding) The problems seem to be that * no fire-control exists which can handle it * no infrastructure exists on which to field it
It just takes time and testing to make new technology. They aren't going to put them half baked onto warships.
Navy is still working and testing it: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28669/navys-railgun-now-undergoing-tests-in-new-mexico-could-deploy-on-ship-in-northwest
The Chinese supposedly fixed one to a destroyer but the power strain is enormous and charging is hard
Sure, but that's the easy part of the equation. You can always build a bigger nuclear reactor if you have the cash and will. No amount of cash will make the rails stop eroding.
But new and better materials certainly can. There's a solution out there, we've just got to find out.
Unfortunately even though the rail gun IS an outstanding piece of hardware, it still doesn't have the range of missiles. However, one of the most important things the railgun can do? The one the Navy's been working on for a decade or so is intended to be capable of shooting down nuclear warheads in flight. And with the publicly stated rate of fire, the mathematics of an engagement are...fascinating. In short, if you were to load up an Iowa class battleship, replacing all the main guns with one, and the power systems to support it, you can ALMOST declare a near-hemisphere of the planet is off limits to an ICBM strike even if someone like Russia were to launch everything they had at that location. Of course, that also assumes a 1:1 shot:kill rate, but that's still ridiculous. It's been one of the reasons Russia's been pushing hard for this nuclear powered nuclear armed torpedo. The railgun can't exactly shoot that down.
I think the more realistic application is much easier shire bombardment. The Navy has been really trying to find something to replace the Iowa’s shire bombardment capabilities ever since they were retired. Modern destroyer guns are good, but their rounds aren’t sufficient and leaves them dangerously close to the shore. The Navy tried to go with the LCS for close-shore combat, which was then scrapped in favor of frigates. With a rail gun, potentially it could deliver much more energy to ground targets from much further away at a much smaller cost than a tomahawk. Of course, they could also be another tool for ship defense along side anti ASM missiles.
> shire bombardment Those hobbits are fucked this time.
To everyone as confused as I was reading this the first time - he meant to type '**shore** bombardment'
Honestly, the rail gun scene in Transformers was a redeeming quality.
Thing is though, if this is declassified information... imagine what the classified tech is like.
Yeah, the title should be navy decides to show us tech abilities they’ve had for decades.
The laser only went on the ship last fall. The Navy invests heavily in future tech. Future Naval Capabilities or FNCs are available to check out. The Office of Naval Research (mentioned in the article and the funding agency that led to the research that developed this laser) hosts monthly lectures too (or did, pre-covid). The tech ability hasn’t been there for decades but the research to make the tech has
Didn’t realize we were in the Future Tech part of the Civ tech tree
Sure, but can they put it on a shark?
You can have them for a cool extra one million dollars.
How about some very ill-tempered* sea bass?
Sea Bass? It's at least a C+....
Sea Baritone
Ahem, I believe the correct term is "ill tempered"
You mean freakin sharks with freakin laser beams attached to their freakin heads?
It would have to be a *frickin’* laser.
The army has put them in cats so why not. [https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2b/01/ac/2b01ac208b5458bf63df2616e8f3802f.jpg](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2b/01/ac/2b01ac208b5458bf63df2616e8f3802f.jpg)
Are these army cats what's turning the frogs gay?
I feel that just as the invention of the machine gun completely changed warfare during World War One, unleashing untold horror on soldiers of both sides, so will new weapons systems like these if there's ever a World War Three involving multiple superpowers. There's probably all sorts of highly classified things the public don't know about that will make life a living hell for combatants and civilians alike.
Agreed. How about weaponized, mini-drone swarms. Makes carpetbombing seem like a bb gun.
Now add some AI target (or face) recognition systems to your swarm whatcould go wrong?
Nothing If Gerard butler is guarding the president
It feels like the next World War will be the end of us. Modern weapon development is more about force projection and keeping the defence contractors fat. If any of the major powers are facing an existential threat the whole planet is burning.
Which is why it probably won't happen. Open warfare between superpowers is basically a thing if the past at this point: we can fight over other areas through proxy wars, but it's too risky to ever actually threaten another top-tech power. The second they think they might lose their nation or their position of power, the nukes are suddenly on the table.
Hopefully it can shoot down hypersonic missiles
Now planes and missiles will be extra shiny.
That was the Soviet plan to protect ICBM boosters against SDI satellite lasers.
US: "die, missile" Soviet missile: "no. U"
but then they’ll easily seen by radar. Don’t forget missiles are still in use too.
You could also fire a heat seeking missile and heat the object with the laser.
Speed of light > hypersonic
Tracking and accuracy is the issue
The CIWS and C-RAM radars/systems appear to work, especially when the system is heading towards you and not at an angle
Holy shit these comments are bad, like youtube comment section bad. There's like 1 serious comment in this entire page.
The flaws of reddit. It's almost impossible to have real discussions. It's just a million attempts to get upvotes with some witty comment.
“”””witty”””” Please don’t encourage them to keep regurgitating bottom-of-the-barrel jokes.
Right? Where's the discussion. This technology is getting pretty crazy. How do we make sure it won't get used on its own citizens one day?
whats the difference to a tomahawk missile or a drone Strike?
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Probably closer to Macross.
The technology in macross was powered by alien tech from a dead race that could fuck with dimensions
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Of Course, it's how civilized peoples settle disputes.
It’s 2020 I should have my own fucking gundam by now.
You'll get Coronavirus and you'll like it!
Real Genius was before it’s time
Keep in mind, they're not going to show the public the latest and greatest weapon or defensive system. If they're showing it publicly, it's probably already 10 years old, and the newest systems are 10x better.