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Airborne laser enlists for missile defense
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Rasel
Wicked Lasers God
Joined: 05 Jan 2007
Posts: 1175
Location: Oregon, United States
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Schrecken Licht
Wicked Lasers Master
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 717
Location: Maryland USA
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 Posted: 7/22/07, 10:40 PM Post subject: |
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| Rasel wrote: |
| Anyone ever wonder what it could do a person? Ow... |
Just imagine an ant and a kid with a magnifying glass.....if they could point that thing at the ground I could just see some terrorist in the Iraq desert running like hell as the beam caught up to him.....  
If you get hit by a laser of that power you no one would have to decide whether to bury or cremate you - there would be little more than ashes left anyway! A nasty thought.....when I worked at the laser shop some people there had been burned by unfocused 5Kw CO2 beams, and basically what it does is vaporize flesh away layer by layer.....so maybe you'd be looking at an instantly lethal laser peel!!!
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Lasers are like potato chips - you can't have just one!
Nexus 95mw, Confirmed 173 mw Pulsar, , 131mw argon-ion laser, Core laser, and Signature Fusion 125mw, 100mw blue - average output 131mw - lab laser, and a 20 WATT (yeah you read that right!) CO2 laser!:
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Schrecken Licht
Wicked Lasers Master
Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 717
Location: Maryland USA
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| Posted: 7/22/07, 10:50 PM Post subject: |
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| Overmind wrote: |
| Schrecken Licht wrote: |
mirrors and reflective surfaces will buy time for the target; but since no mirror (well, certain telescope mirrors come close, but those are finely polished and such a surface would be cost-prohibitive on, say, a missile) ever has a perfectly reflective surface (microscopically you would see huge defects in the surface of the glass or metal), there's really nothing on earth made of matter that can fully 100% reflect a megawatt class laser beam, especially IR beams.
The laser beam will exploit all those defects and that will cause heat; which in time will break down the surface and then the laser can eat right thru it.
I'm sure the US military has tested these countermeasures and have come up with ways to get around them - at least I hope so as that's my tax dollars at work! |
That's exactly it.
The reflection ratio doesn't has to be 100%.
90% is enough to reduce the efectiveness to a very low one.
Reaining possible heat is not the issue, since the missiles are designed to resist heat anyway.
Anyway...this for now will be as futile as the counter-anti-missile (lame thing of a tatical missile that was shooing a smaller missile to counter the anti-tactical missile on it's tail).
The current technology just won't permit enough damage at a decent power consumption rate.
So the tax $ are kind of wasted. |
Personally I'd rather take my chances with unperfected defense such as the laser than do nothing and simply hope that certain rogue nations won't launch an attack, as some politicians are want to do. But anyone who has a better idea for stopping a ballistic missile would be of great interest to the US and other world powers - so if you've got something more effective and sure-fire than the ABL I'm sure the DOD would love to hear about it.
_________________
Lasers are like potato chips - you can't have just one!
Nexus 95mw, Confirmed 173 mw Pulsar, , 131mw argon-ion laser, Core laser, and Signature Fusion 125mw, 100mw blue - average output 131mw - lab laser, and a 20 WATT (yeah you read that right!) CO2 laser!:
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Overmind
Elite Laser
Joined: 24 Jun 2007
Posts: 140
Location: Classified
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| Posted: 8/02/07, 8:28 AM Post subject: |
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There is no such thing as stopping ICBMs. No the good ones anyway.
The defensive system is good for single targets and that's it. A massive attack would work anyway.
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| so if you've got something more effective and sure-fire than the ABL I'm sure the DOD would love to hear about it. |
Actually there are a few options. DoD already tested quite a few of them.
Their mistake though, it was that instead of focusing the funding on just one or two projects, they split the $ amoung a large number of projects and that's why there was no great advancement in this.
As for the defensive systems, like the ones now US wants to deploy on the new countries that recently joined NATO, those are already futile since the Russians already created a missle that would penetrate those systems.
But getting to the point: a country that has hundreds or thousands of nuclear missiles is not a danger; a country that has only one, is.
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I am the Universe. Resistance is Futile. The Truth is classified. |
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mr_bear
Modified 10mW Greenie
Joined: 19 Feb 2007
Posts: 11
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| Posted: 8/06/07, 8:46 AM Post subject: |
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| Schrecken Licht wrote: |
mirrors and reflective surfaces will buy time for the target; but since no mirror (well, certain telescope mirrors come close, but those are finely polished and such a surface would be cost-prohibitive on, say, a missile) ever has a perfectly reflective surface (microscopically you would see huge defects in the surface of the glass or metal), there's really nothing on earth made of matter that can fully 100% reflect a megawatt class laser beam, especially IR beams.
The laser beam will exploit all those defects and that will cause heat; which in time will break down the surface and then the laser can eat right thru it.
I'm sure the US military has tested these countermeasures and have come up with ways to get around them - at least I hope so as that's my tax dollars at work! |
I doubt this would work for ICBMs, because they'd be large enough that you could put some heavy-duty ceramic shielding on them that would be an effective counter to a laser. Remember that it doesn't have to be laser-proof, it just has to be resistant for a few minutes (or less). And what if the missile has spin? Then there wouldn't be any single point for the laser to target...
And why CAN'T you have a paint or material that isn't IR-reflective? |
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katsyonak
Modified 10mW Greenie
Joined: 09 May 2007
Posts: 12
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| Posted: 8/06/07, 9:34 AM Post subject: |
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| ICBMs can also have multiple war heads, so you'll have to get it in a very high altitude, which requires an even more powerfull laser. |
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