Sharks with frickin lasers now possible
According to this article the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is on the verge of developing some kick ass solid state lasers. Within ten years at the outside, U.S. armed forces will begin to be equipped with laser weaponry.
The first and most obvious use for these weapons would be point defense against missiles and artillery rounds - given that lasers are nearly instantly retargetable, a ground based, radar guided laser system could knock out incoming artillery barrages, missile strikes and enemy aircraft. The advantage over conventional systems is that the ammunition is merely electricity rather than say, a $3mil patriot missile. It will become far more difficult to saturate a laser defense system, because as long as their is adequate electrical power, it could shoot at anything in the air, shifting targets every second, and not worrying about wasting expensive ammo on decoys.
The Air Force has been working on a large chemical laser system - mounted in a modified Boeing 747 - designed for missile defense. This system would shoot down missiles during the boost phase, when missiles are slowest and most vulnerable. But the equipment required weighs many tons, and requires toxic and explosive chemicals to fire.
The new lasers being developed are solid state, and require only a plug into an electrical system. They could be powered by generators, and mounted on Humvees or in jet aircraft. The DoD says it needs at least 100kW for a useful battle laser - and the researcher in the story, Yamamoto, says he'll have 25 by Christmas and double that early next year.
Interestingly, the problems with heat have led the developers at Yamamoto's lab to adopt a gatling-type principle - when a stack of laser crystals gets to hot, it can be rotated out and replaced by another so that it can cool. Gatling lasers. Sweet. And the lasers are pumped by diodes - LEDs, which are much more efficient than flashlamps:
In theory, that means a liter of everyday Army diesel fuel costing as little as $1 will generate enough rapid-fire laser pulses to destroy a standard airborne missile. The job now falls to Patriot missiles costing $3 million apiece.
The only real defense against laser weaponry is dust, which degrade the beam - limiting range. But just because lasers don't shoot through smoke, doesn't mean bullets won't.
Considering that we are effectively the only nation in the world investing in new military technology, we should have a years, even decades long monopoly on battlefield lasers once we put them in the field. Imagine, functional invulnerability to artillery barrages - historically the most lethal of all weapons systems - causing half of all casualties in American wars of the last century. Jet fighters that can't be shot down with missiles. AC130 gunships with lasers that can fire at a hundred targets a second.
Sheesh.
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§ 5 Comments
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How are they going to get
How are they going to get around the nearly-infinite-range thing?
Remember the Tick?
Let me expand on that comment
Let me expand on that comment. It was late by my standards and I was working on other actual journalistic-type writing stuff.
This is so freaking cool.
But. Lasers travel in a straight line, limited only by the curvature of space, until they hit something. Laser weapons are cool and all, but I'm not so sure that airplanes with frickin' laser beams attached are the greatest idea ever... imagine a plane sending off a barrage of laser pulses to combat anti-air missiles, and cutting a swath through a city a hundred miles away.
Now, I understand that this is an argument on the order of "won't somebody please think of the children!" but it's one of only two serious drawbacks I can see to a weapons system of this type.
The other is more serious indeed. Once these are deployed in the battlefield, how long until the technology is stolen/bought/duplicated by people that our Army would rather not have it?
Moreover, how long until some crazy megalomaniac gets ahold of this technology and scrawls his name on the moon? The Moon, Buckethead. The moon.
We don't have to worry too
We don't have to worry too much about the children, Johno, because the atmosphere will attenuate the beams. These are not deathstar planet destroying lasers - they won't have that great a range. I wouldn't think that lasers that miss their targets (which is less likely than for conventional weapons) would be any more dangerous than missiles or bullets that go wild.
With computer/radar targeting, a laser is going to be wicked accurate - given that the laser beam is going at, well, the speed of light. Targets will not have much time to dodge. Virtually none, in fact.
Naturally, no one can classify the laws of nature. And once we demonstrate that something is possible, that's half the battle for another team trying to develop a similar weapon. Nevertheless, we'll likely have a period of several years to maybe even a decade before some current strategic partner decides they need some fricken lasers, too. In the meantime, we will have gained experience in their operational use, developed doctrine, and begun to think of how we would fight someone who also has them. Also, after fielding the first generation of laser weaponry, we will naturally begin working on the second, and on countermeasures.
As long as there is a learning curve pointing up with military weaponry, all we have to do is continue to spend the same amount of money we are now, and we will maintain a comfortable lead in military technology. We have anywhere from a ten to thirty year lead on any potential great power competitor. Any nation that wanted to develop their forces to our level would have to be rather obvious in spending to close the gap.
No weapon system is perfect, but this would give us some serious advantages on the battlefield for a good long time. The difference between a laser equipped force and one without could be similar to a match up between those with machine gun and those without.
But what about the moon,
But what about the moon, Buckethead? Who's going to think of the moon?
Well, we'll just have to
Well, we'll just have to devise a giant shield for the moon, to protect it from megalomaniacal villains. Either that, or create a crack team of graphic artists who can quickly turn the deranged lunar laser scribblings into works of art for the benefit of all mankind.