Many Lasers Become One In Lockheed Martin's 30 kW Laser Weapon 202
Zothecula writes "In another step forward for laser weapons that brings to mind the Death Star's superlaser, Lockheed Martin has demonstrated a 30-kilowatt fiber laser produced by combining many lasers into a single beam of light. According to the company, this is the highest power laser yet that was still able to maintain beam quality and electrical efficiency, paving the way for a laser weapon system suitable, if not for a Death Star, for a wide range of air, land, and sea military platforms."
Please place all shark jokes in this thread. (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets keep them in one place, nice and tidy.
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Just one mirror ball and one laser becomes many.
Re:Please place all shark jokes in this thread. (Score:5, Funny)
Death Blossom!
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You are not the only ones who have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-dan Armada!
Sharks with frickin lasers (Score:5, Funny)
I know where I would attach that - to a shark's head! Imagine that - sharks with frickin lasers strapped to their heads, and hookers too! In fact forget the sharks.
Re:Please place all shark jokes in this thread. (Score:4, Insightful)
Combing many lasers into one?
This isn't sharks, this is a DEATH STAR.
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'Death Shark?'
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'Death Shark?'
I'm thinking that somewhere in this thread we will stumble across the plot for Sharknado II.
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What plot?
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'Death Shark?'
With deep apologies to the author of a great autobiographical account of autism:
" The Reason I Jump the [death] Shark"
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Didnt they do something like that toward the end of Buckaroo Bansai?
I wouldnt suggest repeating it unless you want to open a portal to some garbage universe
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Didnt they do something like that toward the end of Buckaroo Bansai?
Was that before they crashed their spacecraft through a cinder block wall lit up by a bunch of laser pointers?
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Re: Please place all shark jokes in this thread. (Score:2)
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Two sharks, one to carry a laser, one to carry a mirror ball.
A third may be needed to change the music.
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Two sharks, one to carry a laser, one to carry a mirror ball.
and One Shark To Rule Them All.
Hmmm... I think I'll open up a theme park called "AquaMordor."
Re:Please place all shark jokes in this thread. (Score:5, Funny)
With so many lasers combined, it will attract all the cats in the world!
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Is this the right thread for Beowulf clusters? (Score:2)
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Could you even imagine a Beowulf cluster of those?
I don't know. Let's ask Junis.
Better Austin Powers reference (Score:2)
Gentlemen, phase three. We place a giant "laser" on the moon. Let me demonstrate. ... The laser is powerful enough to destroy every city on the planet at will. We'll turn the moon into what I like to call a "Death Star". ... Since my "Death Star" laser was invented by the noted Cambridge physicist, Dr. Parsons. I thought we'd name it in his honor - the Alan Parsons Project.
From many...? (Score:2)
e pluribus... burnem?
Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk (Score:3)
Can we get this on that fighter? Seems only fitting...
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every one knows that powerfull lasers' place is on board a B-1
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The F117 was not acually a fighter. It was designed to drop precision bombs. I don't think it has a (air) tracking radar.
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The 1990s called, they want their cool plane back.
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I know, but it is one of the nicest looking fighter. Besides, it was retired only 6 years ago, I'm pretty sure getting them back in service wouldn't be that hard since some of them were spotted flying near Groom lake in 2013.
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I know, but it is one of the nicest looking fighter.
Despite the name it wasn't a fighter. It was a bomber. And personally I think it isn't a great looking plane. Interesting but not pretty. My personal favorite was the YF-23 [wikipedia.org] which I think is just a badass looking plane.
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Actually... it was a F-series fighter-bomber
The F designation does not make it a fighter. The air force has inconsistently used the F- designation on several aircraft that were actually attack aircraft including the F-111 and the F-105. The F-117 was strictly a ground attack aircraft and as far as we know was never used for any other role.
Excuse me... Excuse me?!!! (Score:1)
Nobody has figured out how to stop laser beams that have missed their target, have they? Nope, didn't think so. Examine a missed 30kw laser beam and try to let us know if any dispersion effects will happen before a whole lot of collateral damage is done. Here's an easier challenge: show us a real, living unicorn.
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When has that been a problem with weapons, really? It's not like we have any way to stop any of those billions of bullets shot every year..
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Here's an example of what can go wrong with beam weaponry: a fighter plane with a big-ass laser has an enemy fighter in its sights, but at the moment of truth the beam not only blasts the prey but also continues firing long enough for the coherent beam of destructive light energy to go onwards to strike a school in the metropolis below, causing a fire. Think of the children!!!
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Re:Newtonian physics and ballistics don't apply! (Score:5, Insightful)
So your example of a nice, predictable weapon is a stream of bullets subject to gravity and wind, or a self-guided package of explosives, while your idea of unpredictability is a collimated beam of photons.
Sweet deus.
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You're either trolling or an absolute idiot. Lasers are an order of magnitude more accurate than any projectile weapon. I really do hope you're just blissfully ignorant and not a troll.
Re:Newtonian physics and ballistics don't apply! (Score:5, Informative)
The physics of electromagnetism and photonics will somehow stop an errant beam from destroying anything else as it travels onwards? Nope, of course not.
Okay so you clearly have no idea how lasers work, or the physics of electromagnetism.
For one thing, they defocus over long distances. At sufficiently high energies they lose energy because they turn the air to plasma and bleed off intensity as heat. It's been a struggle to make ranged laser weapons work, because you can't exceed a couple of kw/cm2 before the air turns to plasma and your beam blooms out of existence.
And for the example given, lasers are much less likely to cause collateral damage - they can "unfired" instantly, and they will travel at a tangent to the Earth meaning that once headed any amount above the horizon they will never fall below it. Bullets, missiles, bombs - well those always come down and they are lethal when they do.
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With a beam that powerful, it won't take a direct hit to the cornea to cause eye damage. Catching a glint off of the windshield of the target (car, plane, tank, building) might be enough.
Forget walking around with mirrors, battlefield dress of the future might include welding goggles or a helmet mounted HUD to protect a soldiers eyes behind a video feed.
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As opposed to having your eyesight damaged by fragments of the thing that was just hit by a bomb... This is a weapon we're talking about, damaging people isn't an unfortunate side effect, it's the desired effect.
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What stops an errant stream of bullets or an incorrectly guided air-to-air missile from doing the same thing? Magic?
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If you think that the beam of light is a problem, think of the many tons of burning fuel, explosives and scrap metal that are gonna fall out of the sky after the prey got blasted! Think of the children!
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If a fighter plane is blown up over Kentucky, a family in Oregon or South Carolina need not worry about the debris falling on them. An errant 30kw beam of coherent light would be dangerous even in far away places.
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I'm not sure if you're serious or not, but the curvature of the earth would definitely prevent a laser beam from an aircraft in Kentucky from hitting a building in South Carolina, to say nothing of Oregon.
Re:Excuse me... Excuse me?!!! (Score:5, Funny)
shh the Earth is flat. Kentucky schools told him so.
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Well... it depends on how high up over Kentucky that [s]air[/s]craft happens to be.
In an unrelated note, is there any way to do strikethrough text on slashdot?
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No, it wouldn't. A laser beam *defocuses* over long distances and becomes harmless. In an atmosphere it'll also suffer severe energy loss to the atoms it travels through.
Re:Excuse me... Excuse me?!!! (Score:4, Informative)
Laser weapons as they are being developed just don't work that way. The pulse is actually quite short when applied, and the target goes boom. You've watched way too many science fiction movies.
They are also far more accurate than kinetic energy delivery weapons (big bullets).
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Bullets fall, lasers don't
If you shoot a gun, even a high powered rifle, it isn't going to blind someone 20 miles away like a laser would
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There are obviously many uses for this
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The most popular application for laser defense currently is to have the laser mounted in an aircraft of some sort, which means that it will be fired horizontal, or even slightly downward.
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Bullets fall, lasers don't
Einstein is rolling in his grave right now....
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Ok, lasers do technically still follow the laws of gravity, but because light has such little mass compared to it's velocity the gravitational effect doesn't really apply in the kind of scale we are dealing with (20 miles or less)
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Lasers might be safer than bullets, since bullets always land somewhere, while lasers disperse in space if you take care in what direction you fire them in.
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ah another one.
The world is round. unless the beam hit the planet it is being pointed out into space.
think about it.
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Lasers, as most weapons, are directional. War, as most confrontations, is positional.
Thus, collateral damage does not damage the shooter.
Collateral damage to "not the shooter" hasn't stopped a weapon from being constructed ever in the history of mankind.
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You can aim laser quite well - you don't event need that much of lead on moving target... Regarding misses - it is not like it will go around earth looking for first person to kill. Good chances is that everything around the target you are aiming at is hostile anyway. In most cases they will be aimed either down (from airplanes) or up (as anti-rocket/mortar weapon), so there will be either ground or empty sky near the target. And diffraction/scattering will make sure that laser is harmless for sattelites if
Re:Excuse me... Excuse me?!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Too many unknowns to get exact numbers, but assuming visible light and 10cm aperture, we are probably talking about few mm per each km of distance. Geostationary satellites are completely out of range, but lets take ISS as example - 400km. This means that 30kW would be spread over circle with 2m or so. ISS has a speed of 7-8km/s (as all low orbit satellites, otherwise they would fall down). This means that each part of station would be in the beam 'focus' for 0.005 seconds. Given radius of the beam and speed, there would be no localized damage - just total energy transferred to station. Assuming it goes in most unfavorable way, it can probably get around 100m of length through the beam, giving a total of 0.013s exposure. So, in most unfortunate situation, we are talking about 390 joules of energy being transferred to the ENTIRE station. For comparison, light shining on _earth_ hits with 1000 joules per second for each square meter (a probably a lot more in space). So, we are talking about effect being few hundred times smaller than sun radiation station received each second.
Please note that we are talking about _collateral_ damage due to missed shots, not active tracking of satellites. But even with perfect tracking and a lot more powerful lasers, it would be very hard to do lasting damage. Current anti-satellite laser developments are about _blinding_ satellites, not blowing them up.
If you think that collateral, non-tracked shot from realistic laser with 30kW of power can do any damage to any satellite, please provide your calculations. Otherwise, too much watching StarWars, not enough science.
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Depends what you are trying to damage. A CCD doesn't need nearly as much energy to destroy as sheet metal.
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A few mm per km of distance, this is theoretical colimation limits you are talking about? Do 30kW lasers even approach that level of coherence in practical implementations?
I was doing good to keep a spot size under 2m at a distance of roughly 300m when trying to collimate a foot long HeNe tube laser with a pair of lenses.
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it get's even harder as the power goes up if your medium is atmospheric. There are multiple effects when pushing a shit ton of energy through air that disrupt the coherence of the bream.
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Cutting things up isn't useful. In space you need to impart delta-V - lasers have been proposed as a way to trigger outgasing on orbital debris from the ground. Add enough upwards delta-V away from the earth and you could shift the orbit enough for a deep-dive into the atmosphere (space, the only place where thrusting away from the ground sends you straight into it).
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Could be, actually. Cut them up and you're looking at a higher cross-section to mass ratio, which hastens the process of very, very slowly falling down from wispy atmospheric drag. But you couldn't do it from the ground - too far, too much air in the way. Perhaps a 'junk hunter' sat could work.
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Yes, but they mention 'cripple' rather than destory. It might be same variation on the 'blinding spy satellites'. Only data I can find about anti-satellite lasers which reached production stage are about ones used for blinding optics (for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]).
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Mirrors? Really? You must be joking. This kind of power would destroy even a perfect mirror. There would be no reflection.
It is not obvious. First - _perfect_ mirror is perfect, so it would reflect it. Question is, could
1) Best mirror we have currently
2) Normal 'shop' mirror
reflect it without melting?
Really good mirrors (one used to focus lasers in physics) absorb maybe 0.2% of energy. Assuming 1cm radius of laser, we would have 60W of power focused on roughly 1cm of metal. There is no magic in laser - it would just need to melt metal behind the mirror. Even assuming no termal conductivity and no special cooling of that 'almos
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Water.
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What would be great is if there were, say, 30 lasers mounted in a circle 1-2 meters in diameter. That way, in order to hit their target, they will focus on it, with all the lasers pointing inwards. The point the meet in the air being their intended target. Constructive interference, focused bean and all that jazz makes them effective. If they miss, then they are just 30 smaller beams scattering off being 'mostly harmless'.
It's like, if you 'miss' with a magnifying glass, you don't burn the ants so much.
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Fortunately, with lasers that aim up, you don't really have to worry about them falling back down. Maybe the Martians will have something to worry about, but that's not our problem.
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That doesn't respond to the issue of what happens to the killer beam(s) after the target is either missed or destroyed.
Re: Excuse me... Excuse me?!!! (Score:5, Informative)
They dissipate due to defocusing and interaction with the atmosphere. It's not a problem.
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It goes into the ground when fired from above, into space when fired from below,
Will someone think of ET?
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A pulsed laser has an enormous POWER output (far far higher than 30kW), but it really doesn't have much in the way of energy output.
Fixed that for me.
Unfitting. No use case. ROI = 0. (Score:2, Insightful)
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Because Freedom, that's why! Commie.
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This [space.com] is why you're seeing this laser today. This is your "use case."
Only an extremely powerful and fast laser can defend against a hypersonic missile. This laser is a defensive weapon, created to counter the Chinese hypersonic threat, although no one is saying it specifically.
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Beam or pulse? (Score:2)
Let me know when they get to the 30 MW mining laser. Then I can go harvesting some asteroids.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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It will be BYOSE, bring your own sound effects
Multiple bandwidths (Score:2)
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If you can control the optical phases (tricky but doable) you can combine same-frequency lasers into a single beam. If you direc two phase-matched lasers at a 50% beam splitter, all of the combined power will go in one direction because the beams will interfere and cancel in the other. What makes this tricky is that you need all of your mechanical tolerances to be a wavelength. Usually this is done with some sort of active feedback.
Combining different wavelengths (which Lockheed did) is easier, and prob
Don't cross the beams (Score:2)
I can't believe nobody has said it yet.... (Score:4, Funny)
Dubious (Score:2)
I'm highly dubious as to the real world applications of this system. Every other laser "weapon" has turned out to be highly ineffective, prone to failure & unable to meet any of its design goals. Just look at the ABL (Airborne Laser), they burnt over $5 Billion and were well on their way to burning more until some in the military hierarchy noticed that you would need dozens of them positioned inside even a small enemies airspace to be effective.
Re:Dubious (Score:4, Informative)
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Outlet? (Score:2)
What happens when they take the wall wart away? How are they going to power this stuff in the field? And will that power system be hardened enough for combat while still being transportable?
More importantly... (Score:2)
Can it pop a giant bowl of popcorn in a house from a plane?
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I saw that movie! One of Val Kilmer's better ones I thought.
But of course! (Score:2)
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Nobody will ever suspect a drag racing millionaire playboy
Is that you Justin Beiber?