Finally: Battlefield laser cannon set to drop circa 2020
posted at 11:36 am on August 6, 2007 by Allahpundit
I’m lifting the video from Noah Shachtman so I’ll make you click for details. Trust me, it’s worth it. What you’re looking at here is an “FEL laser” (like I say, follow the link) firing at 10,000 watts into a plexiglass brick. The one the military’s working on will fire at ten times that charge. Noah imagines it as useful on destroyers for shooting down incoming cruise missiles but I’m guessing the ultimate application is for targeting ICBMs — the Arrow system on steroids, in other words, which makes the fact that Israel isn’t involved in this or even ahead of the game in its development surprising.
The one disappointing part? It’s not green.
Update: In the interests of completeness, let it be noted that the laser cannon is only the second most awesome scientific news of the day.
Blowback
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awesome!
ThackerAgency on August 6, 2007 at 11:44 AM
It sounds like the project from that movie ‘real genius’ (I think that’s the name) where they were trying to make a more powerful laser. They finally did it. Now, when can we see that popcorn bursting out of Allah’s house?
ThackerAgency on August 6, 2007 at 11:48 AM
That would come in real handy on a ship off the coast of Iran being attacked by thousands of speed boats. Iran may need a new plan.
The Navy can have a video game contest to select the operators. (What was that movie?)
TunaTalon on August 6, 2007 at 12:03 PM
I wish I was born a 100 years from now :(
lorien1973 on August 6, 2007 at 12:03 PM
Are you thinking of The Last Starfighter?
James on August 6, 2007 at 12:20 PM
That’s it, thanks. I was stuck on Star Wars like an ear worm.
TunaTalon on August 6, 2007 at 12:23 PM
What the heck is up with this 2020 stuff anyway? It seems like all military development is focused on that date for some reason.
Is that when Nostradomus said some kind of final battle is supposed to take place or something?
logis on August 6, 2007 at 12:23 PM
pew pew!
frreal on August 6, 2007 at 12:30 PM
Big deal. I can do that a few hours after a meal of beans and hot salsa.
csdeven on August 6, 2007 at 12:34 PM
You can’t imagine how relieved I am that by 2020 we’ll all be protected against a plexiglass brick attack. I will sleep well tonight.
/sarc
kjspeedial on August 6, 2007 at 12:35 PM
Inconceivable!
I don’t think you know what this word means.
TheSitRep on August 6, 2007 at 12:35 PM
does this mean we have to begin watching movies without suspended disbelief?
TexasDan on August 6, 2007 at 12:40 PM
This is not a laser canon. A canon is something that shoots a burst of energy, a la Star Wars, preferrably brightly colored with nice pyrotechnical qualities upon impact. Alas, this is just a constant application of heat.
jihadwatcher on August 6, 2007 at 12:49 PM
It’s not a laser because laser is “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.” This doesn’t use light. It looks like it uses a coherent electron beam, which is not heat. It’s an electron beam.
PRCalDude on August 6, 2007 at 1:11 PM
That’s hot.
Pun intended.
Heralder on August 6, 2007 at 1:15 PM
PRCalDude on August 6, 2007 at 1:11 PM
“Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.”
You beat me to it.
Refraction, due to water molecules and other “prisms” in the atmosphere can only be partially overcome by increasing the wattage, and then it’s downhill from there as a viable battlefield weapon.
captivated_dem on August 6, 2007 at 1:36 PM
TRW, with its laser tech R&D located on or next to Camp Pendleton, is the home for most of these devices. They would announce a Marine excercise of firing their big guns, and on the same day, TRW would be testing their laser toys. Sounded like sonic booms, which was the light amplification moving the air so violently. The only way into the TRW was on an easement that passed through Pendelton. Guards would keep “visitors” from entering Govt. land, TRW had the best security guards in the nation. By the sounds and frequency, I would say they are lot further along than they are reporting. It stores “compacted” light, storing the energy and bursts the “laser” in one large blast. If you were nearby, at times it would shake the ground. And that is with the laser canon sitting on a gel suspension concrete floor. The lazer has to be perfectly aligned with its core lenses (which I believe now are chemical liquids) to magnify the power. The power source is the problem, its size needs to be small enough to be mobile.
Orginally they were thinking of mounting them on the C-130′s…and not just for ICBM’s.
7 years ago, they said a working model for the battlefied was just 5 years away.
right2bright on August 6, 2007 at 1:48 PM
It’s not a laser because laser is “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.” This doesn’t use light. It looks like it uses a coherent electron beam, which is not heat. It’s an electron beam.
PRCalDude on August 6, 2007 at 1:11 PM
It is a laser. Instead of using chemical reactants as a catalyst to start the reaction it uses electrons. (And apparently eschews any focusing agent.) For captivated_dem, part of the point of the FEL is that-you know guys, really the article covers this. It even has a PopSci link. And from what I’m reading in the PopSci link, it looks like it’s a solid state laser that uses some crazy ceramics to produce the light.
Anyway, it is a laser yes. And it can be a cannon because there’s no super hard and concrete defintion of what a cannon is, from what I can see. (For example, vulcan is a 20mm cannon, XM-109 is a 20mm rifle)
This laser of course does not produce the energy required on the battlefield. This produces, what? 10 kilowatts. The military needs 100 kilowatts. I imagine that when the laser is 10 times stronger, it wont just slowly bore a hole into the object, it’ll be able to punch one in. When it gets to 10 megawatts, then maybe we’ll see some serious action.
I’d like to see it against metal though … hopefully they’ll come out with more videos when they reach 100 kilowatts.
apollyonbob on August 6, 2007 at 1:48 PM
A cannon does not emit a constant stream of anything. The idea of a gun, or a cannon, is a device that contains a charge, and that charge is released in one shot. This is a device that emits a stream of light until it is turned off. It is closer to a light bulb than a cannon.
jihadwatcher on August 6, 2007 at 2:03 PM
Have to leave enough time for the Democrats to give the tech to the Chinese and Iranians in exchange for political contributions.
CrazyFool on August 6, 2007 at 2:15 PM
That’s it? Slowly melt a hole in a plastic block. I believe I conducted this experiement with the same results when I was ten using a big ass magnifying glass.
Alden Pyle on August 6, 2007 at 2:16 PM
Are you kidding? Who cares! I like it!
Kini on August 6, 2007 at 2:34 PM
Ah… yes and also an end to fluid lubrication or the creation of a new kind of fluid lubrication.
Imagine gears that never touch. Or a lubricant that touches neither surface. Or surfaces that never touch lubricants. Particles from friction would be eliminated, meaning no oil, or oil that doesn’t need changing.
As for the laser, the video lacks “bang”, but imagine the burn through in the video happening in one second instead of ten. It is important to note that the material used would be invulnerable to the molten metal projectile IEDs being used against our armour in Iraq.
Rockets, mortars, tanks, people would be devastated by the laser shown and obliterated by a laser with ten fold the power. In fact one could imagine shooting through concrete walls with the effectiveness of a “rail gun”.
Check out the Heritage Foundation’s archives for lectures on the subject.
Agrippa2k on August 6, 2007 at 2:35 PM
apollyonbob on August 6, 2007 at 1:48 PM
I stand corrected. Working off of obsolete information and expressing an opinion. I need to watch that.
captivated_dem on August 6, 2007 at 2:37 PM
As for the color… One implementation could be a “pulse” laser.
The pulse would reduce power requirements, allow power source pre-charging, improve tracking, and would result in a pleasing visible light spectrum color like green, yellow, red, or blue, depending on the frequency of the pulse.
In implementation as a battlefield weapon, this may be necessary for the “tracer” effect.
Agrippa2k on August 6, 2007 at 2:40 PM
Yeah, but can they make it small enough to mount on a shark?
mesablue on August 6, 2007 at 3:07 PM
A death ray, awesome! Mount this puppy in a 707 and loiter above a battlefield like the B52′s do nowadays. When Mohammad pokes his head out, put a hole in it.
Mojave Mark on August 6, 2007 at 10:26 PM
Actually, I think they have mounted at least one laser in an AC-130 gunship… the future is here, now.
Zorro on August 6, 2007 at 10:36 PM
Neat-o!
I want one for the car.
deepdiver on August 6, 2007 at 10:37 PM
Someone mentioned Real Genius, but they left out a vital movie quote:
“It’s like lasing a stick of dynamite.”
That movie is so quotable.
Merovign on August 7, 2007 at 12:00 AM
“You keep saying that word, but I don’t think that it means what you seem to think that it means.”
- Inigo Montoya
It’s a laser, and it is using light. Most probably the wavelength used for the plexiglas demonstration is in the far infrared region, somewhere between 100-250 micrometers. Although not visible to humans, for all scientific purposes it is light. This device is not applying an “electron beam”, it is applying a photon beam, just at a wavelength we can’t see.
AP, if it were green, it wouldn’t cut the plexiglas well at all, since the green wavelengths in the visible light spectrum are at around 500 nanometers, and the plexiglas would be very transparent to that wavelength, hence no heat or cutting action.
Also, it may seem like it is operating continuously, but lasers of that power, regardless of the energy pumping mechanism, are virtually all pulsed. The duty cycle may well be 50nSec pulses at a PRF of 2.5KHz, and as far as any of us could tell on the video, it would appear to show continuous activity, but it is actually lasing less than 1% of the time. (Understand these are sample values, I’ve no idea of any of the parameters, just the concepts)
You won’t be pulsing a laser fast enough for the pulse rate to generate a color, as that would require a pulse rate in the high TeraHertz range. The natural oscillation frequency of the photons released by the lasing medium determines the wavelength of the coherent light beam, and therefore the color, if any. In this case, with no fixed lasing medium, the beam may be tuned along a broad range of wavelengths, as the article says.
Freelancer on August 7, 2007 at 2:41 AM
Oh, about that, you don’t need to generate a colored laser beam, if you are lasing in the infrared range you just need a good IR sensor, and you can see exactly where and how big the target spot is, even up to 40 miles away.
Freelancer on August 7, 2007 at 2:48 AM
Wow. That’s pretty sweet, though I’d love to see it when it is unveiled in 2020.
I like my jihadi xtra crispy.
congsan on August 7, 2007 at 11:01 AM