US Air Force Wants a Laser for the Spectre by 2020

a reply to: stormbringer1701

Actually, the HELLADS scales to at least 300 kw. The ABL was a megawatt class laser.

However, HELLADS is far, far smaller than the COIL. Or THEL et al.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I hadn't heard they'd put it back.

I can and will be wrong.

cough*compact*cough*fusion*cough
cough*lockheed*cough*martin*cough

btw.... why don't they use that laser gun?

not enough range?

a reply to: grey580

Wow. I can speak to that.

1. the LM fusion is not an inertial fusion design. its a MHD based one.

2. It would be a good idea to swap out the lasers on the National Ignition Facility with the HELLADS lasers, but you're talking 192 lasers. That ain't cheap. It'd be better for the next NIF to have Free electron lasers that produce x ray beams and with a step aways from just a science experiment.

a reply to: anzha

AFSOC commander wanted the firepower back. They lost too much by removing it for the chain guns.

In 2020 I can see a lot of Middle Eastern Vehicles with mirrors on the roof.Just musing..

originally posted by: anzha
Anyone who wants to place a chemical weapon on the battlefield needs their head examined. Florine is bad joojoo. REALLY bad.

THEL didn't use elemental fluorine, it used carbon tetrafluoride. You didn't get loose fluorine in the exhaust, either. Although the exhaust likely wasn't good for you either. Nasty smelling.

a reply to: Blackfinger

Doesn't work. Reason being real life reflective surfaces need to be kept very clean and must have the reflectivity for the wavelength of the laser in question. Real life tests show they don't work very well. The spinning mirrored surface didn't work.

originally posted by: anzha
a reply to: Blackfinger

Doesn't work. Reason being real life reflective surfaces need to be kept very clean and must have the reflectivity for the wavelength of the laser in question. Real life tests show they don't work very well. The spinning mirrored surface didn't work.

See i told you a spinning targeting mirror woudnt work Jerry.

originally posted by: anzha
a reply to: stormbringer1701

Actually, the HELLADS scales to at least 300 kw. The ABL was a megawatt class laser.

However, HELLADS is far, far smaller than the COIL. Or THEL et al.

the point is there are new techs that are shrinking the footprint. for example doing away with huge cooling subsystems. also slab or fiber lasers are nearly infinitely additive. there is stuff even better than that now though. quantum dot lasers,...there is even a white light and tunable laser. it lasers across the frequency spectrum and can lase in all frequencies at the same time in the same beam. X ray lasers on a chip even small gamma ray lasers pumped without nuclear or any bombs.

hellads is cool. thats also the tech that they want to use to send a mini-probe to alpha centauri at .25C. the original idea for hellads as a laser whose optics were made of the lasing medium so that the lasing optics would be flushed with each shot and thus not require cooling. looking at what it ended up looking like i am not sure if that made it into the final design.

And here I am thinking it would be cool to pop balloons with a laser.

One of the coolest things I bought last year was a green laser pointer. The description said "200 mW 532nm Green Laser Pointer". I have no idea what any of that means. I can't pop balloons, but I can point at stars and see the beam in broad daylight.

What ever happenned to the FEL laser? That bad boy could be scaled up to melt cities.

originally posted by: yuppa
What ever happenned to the FEL laser? That bad boy could be scaled up to melt cities.

it went like this. Navy was working with a fellow on a 10kw prototype. fellow had a falling out with navy. Navy could not find a replacement. the guy either resumed cooperation or they eventually after a long delay found others capable of it. they made a ten KW and now they have a 30 KW system (also i think the original FELdude may have died. i am not sure about that but i think i recall something like that.)

in fact there has been recent articles on the 30KW FEL.


The navy had plans to go on and develop a 100KW FEL but seems to have reprioritized to slab and fiber lasers.

originally posted by: MystikMushroom
And here I am thinking it would be cool to pop balloons with a laser.

One of the coolest things I bought last year was a green laser pointer. The description said "200 mW 532nm Green Laser Pointer". I have no idea what any of that means. I can't pop balloons, but I can point at stars and see the beam in broad daylight.

that is a 200 milliwatt laser. green ones are visible without smoke, dust or fog and seem to cohere for longer than other visible wavelengths. FAA and ignorant lawmakers are trying to get green lasers outlawed because a few idiots are trying to blind aircraft pilots with them.

there are allegedly laser pointers that can pop balloons. i have seen them advertised as having that ability.

A cousin of mine has one that will light match heads and pop balloons. It's pretty neat.

a reply to: stormbringer1701

7.3 watt handheld laser.





and a 10w laser

a reply to: stormbringer1701

I hadn't heard the personality drama, but JNL was doing some great work and the navy has been planning on moving a prototype onto a ship around 2018 (translate probably 2020/21). However, it needs a LOT of power: the ability to tune the beam means lower power efficiency. OTOH, dude, picking your frequency. This means probably placing the prototype on a Zumwalt. Things are not going smoothly with the Zumzums.

The spinning mirror test was done at White Sands Missile Range (HELSTF) using MIRACL. It didn't help. The laser sliced right through. That people keep bringing up the spinning mirror BS just means they haven't done their research and don't know what they are talking about.

originally posted by: anzha
a reply to: stormbringer1701

I hadn't heard the personality drama, but JNL was doing some great work and the navy has been planning on moving a prototype onto a ship around 2018 (translate probably 2020/21). However, it needs a LOT of power: the ability to tune the beam means lower power efficiency. OTOH, dude, picking your frequency. This means probably placing the prototype on a Zumwalt. Things are not going smoothly with the Zumzums.

The spinning mirror test was done at White Sands Missile Range (HELSTF) using MIRACL. It didn't help. The laser sliced right through. That people keep bringing up the spinning mirror BS just means they haven't done their research and don't know what they are talking about.

there are a lot of people that intrinsically hate missile defense. illogical but true. they actually hate the idea that we might destroy what is left of MAD. and they hate the guy who first proposed it and the people who subsequently champion it. Rah. Team.

originally posted by: anzha
a reply to: grey580

Wow. I can speak to that.

1. the LM fusion is not an inertial fusion design. its a MHD based one.

2. It would be a good idea to swap out the lasers on the National Ignition Facility with the HELLADS lasers, but you're talking 192 lasers. That ain't cheap. It'd be better for the next NIF to have Free electron lasers that produce x ray beams and with a step aways from just a science experiment.

The NIF is designed for generating data for nuclear weapons work, not power production or research.

I don't condone that focus.

originally posted by: stormbringer1701
there are a lot of people that intrinsically hate missile defense. illogical but true. they actually hate the idea that we might destroy what is left of MAD. and they hate the guy who first proposed it and the people who subsequently champion it. Rah. Team.

There's a good reason---the capability of missile defense is much lower than the advocates think it is---and the danger of believing you have a capable missile defense when you don't is very high.

(ICBM is extraordinarily difficult to defend against, and very easy to make even harder to defend against).