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| Middle East | |
| Israel, U.S. Developing Laser Cannon | |
| 2003-10-30 | |
| A joint U.S.-Israeli laser cannon can knock down rockets in flight, but it will not be ready for battlefield use until at least 2007, an official with the company developing the weapon said Wednesday. "And you Paleos thought that our evil Death Ray™ was just propaganda! Bwa-ha-ha!" The system, called Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL), uses an advanced radar to spot and track incoming rockets and then fires a laser beam to destroy them. Israel is interested in the THEL, called the Lots of batting practice for the THEL. Bob Bishop, media relations manager for Northrop-Grumman Corp., which is developing the system, said it has passed tests at the White Sands, N.M. facility since 2000. "It has shot down a number of Katyusha rockets and artillery shells, too," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. The test at White Sands marked the first time that a rocket has been destroyed in flight by a laser beam. Wonder what the range is? However, the test version of the system is stationary, and it could not be deployed in the battlefield until it is made mobile. That could happen in 2007, he said, if all the contracts are signed and production continues. The project appears in the U.S. defense budget for fiscal 2004 with a $56 million allocation, he said. It was passed by Congress and signed by President Bush on Sept. 30. Israel will also contribute funding, but Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Israeli parliament’s foreign affairs and security committee, did not know how much. Congress also approved a further $89 million for a second joint U.S.-Israeli project, the Arrow anti-ballistic missile system, which has already entered production, Steinitz said. The system is operational and was deployed during the recent U.S.-led war in Iraq to guard Israel against the possibility of an Iraqi missile attack. The Syrian, Egyptian and Jordanian military commanders just can’t be happy — no matter what aid they get from elsewhere, they fall further behind every day.
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| Posted by:Steve White |
| #21 Hey. It was my understanding that there would be NO MATH... LOL Just remember it all boils down to Clb/Skll |
| Posted by: Shipman 2003-10-30 9:23:40 PM |
| #20 Hey. It was my understanding that there would be NO MATH... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2003-10-30 5:42:04 PM |
| #19 Another thing to remember is that having a shiny skin only works at certain wavelengths. All you need is a laser with 2 or 3 careful selected wavelengths in rotation or combined. At least in one of those wavelength shiny isn't so shiny anymore |
| Posted by: Chemist 2003-10-30 4:02:37 PM |
| #18 Laurence has it essentially correct, (the definition of the energy release of a photon thru momentum is correct) but what happens when a laser strikes a target, even if its a mirror is that energy is released over time in a certain surface area. So for tactical warfare laser weapons need a high impulse rate (watts/joules per time unit) and a low surface area coverage (say square centimeters or even millimeters measurements). The energy release over time is critical however, for instance a 100 megawatt laser that only releases 100 kilojoules per second may not do much to a missile other than illuminate it a bit, whereas a 25 kilowatt laser that can deliver 2 MEGAjoules per second could smack that missile so hard it'd feel like it got hit by a mountain. One last thing to remember is that lasers also HEAT a target up...even if its mirrored, again this depends on the impulse rate. |
| Posted by: Val 2003-10-30 2:46:17 PM |
| #17 I ran some of the early airborne laser antimissile tests back in the late 70's. The destruction mechanism, at least then, was heat transfer. The devise literally burned through the missile. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2003-10-30 12:58:39 PM |
| #16 Hmmmm, I remember reading somewhere that there is still research going on for a repeat fire X-ray laser. This would greatly reduce the degredation caused by weather or smoke. Would make a nasty anti-personel weapon. |
| Posted by: toad 2003-10-30 11:50:28 AM |
| #15 TESLA!!! ______________________borgboy |
| Posted by: borgboy 2003-10-30 11:27:13 AM |
| #14 Now all we need is the star destroyer to go under it. Kimmy? I'm looking at your house, Kimmy! |
| Posted by: BH 2003-10-30 10:56:21 AM |
| #13 Spot See, this is why I was hoping somebody that knew more would chime in. *g* With a bit of Google, I found out that the rest mass of a photon is zero, and I got the following here: Though the mass of a photon is zero, it nevertheless carries energy and momentum. The two are related through p = E/c where c is the speed of light and p is the momentum and E the energy of the photon. When a photon strikes a surface, it may be absorbed or reflected. In either case, momentum is transferred from the photon to the object whose surface is struck. In this way, a force (time rate of change of momentum) is exerted on the struck object, giving rise to the notion of 'radiation pressure.' If the photon is absorbed, the struck object acquires the momentum of the photon. If the photon is reflected, so that the photon rebounds with the same magnitude of momentum, but oppositely directed, conservation of momentum demands that the momentum transferred to the struck object is twice the (magnitude of the) momentum of the incoming photon. Generally, if a beam of photons strikes a surface, some photons will be reflected and some will be absorbed. Therefore, the radiation pressure exerted by a beam of light incident upon a surface falls somewhere in the range between the minimum theoretical value when all incident photons are absorbed and the maximum theoretical value when all incident photons are reflected. I hope there's not a test later... |
| Posted by: Laurence of the Rats 2003-10-30 10:34:32 AM |
| #12 Laurence- How could the beam have kinetic energy if the photon has no mass? (if the photon has masws, well, there goes special relativity, etc) |
| Posted by: Spot 2003-10-30 10:24:57 AM |
| #11 Shiny skin doesn't stay shiny when there's rocket exhaust in the neighborhood. Sabots, or stages? And re. the reflective skin - surely a mirrored surface will at least delay the effects of the laser - even if just by a fraction of a second (unless it's the KE that determined the effect). If missiles are incoming in salvoes, couldn't this enable more to slip through a laser defence, as it takes longer switching from target to target? Just curious. |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2003-10-30 10:20:37 AM |
| #10 From what I understand lasers will be pretty common in the US arsenal in 10-20yrs. Fighter planes, tanks, warships. New designs will account for the increased need for electrical energy to power some kind of solid state laser. The ABL is already using a huge chemical laser but this would be impractical for anything smaller than a 747. The major draw back of a laser weapon is it can only be used in clear weather. Anything that could fracture the beam before it hits its target would be an effective counter measure, smoke, mist, cloud cover etc. |
| Posted by: domingo 2003-10-30 10:10:41 AM |
| #9 OK ya drooling rantburgers... Here's a link to some video of tests of NG's MTHEL(Mobile Theater High Energy Laser) System http://www.st.northropgrumman.com/mediacenter/page.cfm?PageID=5044&SiteSectionID=0 |
| Posted by: mjh 2003-10-30 10:01:16 AM |
| #8 Shiny skin doesn't stay shiny when there's rocket exhaust in the neighborhood. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2003-10-30 9:50:55 AM |
| #7 Any chance that a simple reflective (or other) coating applied to the missile could deflect enough of the beam's energy to render it harmless? Part of the process (and high cost) of developing battlefield weapons is to ensure that simple workarounds don't defeat the weapon in question. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2003-10-30 9:50:33 AM |
| #6 Bulldog Shiny skin won't do it. The laser's damage comes in part from the physical impact of the light photons arriving in a group, so there is KE involved in the equation. Perhaps somebody that knows more about this could speak up, 'cuz I'm not explaining it well. I'm going off an article I remember reading in the late 80s that was debunking a lot of the claims on how the USSR could negate SDI, and the shiny skin defense was one of the things it discredited. I am not sure where the article first appeared, but I encountered it in a collection of sci-fi stories (There Will Be War I think was the series name) put together by Dr Jerry Pournelle. He used to tag political essays between the stories (one those books is also where I first encountered David Horowitz who wrote an article on Vietnam). |
| Posted by: Laurence of the Rats 2003-10-30 9:37:30 AM |
| #5 Something that can track and destroy rockets and artillery shells should be able to handle a much slower target of flesh and bone, I would think. Tomorrow's headline: "Yassir Spontaneously Combusts While Crossing Street" |
| Posted by: Dar 2003-10-30 9:20:01 AM |
| #4 Published range of current THEL is 5 KM. They are working on increasing the power for the mobile version. |
| Posted by: Steve 2003-10-30 8:29:05 AM |
| #3 Any chance that a simple reflective (or other) coating applied to the missile could deflect enough of the beam's energy to render it harmless? |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2003-10-30 8:27:38 AM |
| #2 WAAAY cool! I can imagine that within 50 years we will have a packaged tracer/laser that can protect large airports economically. I'd like to dream that it could detect and fry shoulder launched rockets within 10 miles of the airport. We need it a lot sooner! |
| Posted by: Craig 2003-10-30 8:21:03 AM |
| #1 S'okay, take heart mujahids, Allah will provide... something... Bwahahahahahahaha!™ Bwahahahahahahaha!™ is a Registered Trademark of one of the Conspiracy of Steve guys. No, I dunno which one. |
| Posted by: .com 2003-10-30 4:22:15 AM |