Germany is making progress to 100-kilowatt military lasers. There were successful tests shooting down drones and mortar rounds.
The next step will be to integrate a 20-kilowatt laser on an armored vehicle.
Germany is about two years behind the US military laser program.
US Army Has Been Tested 2 and 5 Kilowatt Lasers and is Working on 50-kilowatt and 100-kilowatt
The US has been shooting down drones and mortars for a few years with 2 and 5-kilowatt lasers on large military trucks and Stryker armored vehicles. The US Army wants to start fielding a 50-kilowatt laser on an armored vehicle around 2021-2023.
The US Army is developing a 100 kW laser mounted on a larger but less mobile vehicle, the Oshkosh FMTV truck. The heavier laser weapon would be part of the second line of defense.
In the 2025-2030 timeframe, there will be 300-kilowatt and megawatt lasers for missile defense.
SOURCES- Rheinmetall, Breaking Defense
Written By Brian Wang
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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In spite of the adverse climate, the place if full of watermelons. Putin is rubbing his hands, they are buying more and more of his gas, and once they are really hooked on it, he can throttle the tap to make them more amenable to his wishes.
Good luck penetrating the ceramic layers of Chobam armour.
Just a missile coated like Starship would be very difficult to penetrate in useful time.
Tanks and apcs will never be destroyed by laser. Their armor is simply too thick.
Sure, but I am not trying to weld 1/8th plate very fast
These things aren’t developed for battlefield maintenance units.
Is there any information about penetration into armour ? and is there any kind of armour being developed to negate lasers?
Perfect counterweapon? Fog of War.
Why should smoke screens give away a position? They are routinely
used to hide it. Besides, if you can hit with a laser, you know their position.
Looks like 1 MW is pretty enough. At least tests of chemical flying laser of that class confirmed that but program was cancelled due to high costs.
You don’t need to turn entire laser but just small focusing device, i.e small mirror with few lens. For low-power lasers that mirror can be replaced with entirely electronical device like optical electrically controlled crystal.
Russian campaigns?!!!!
Reminds me of the Soviet SS20’s and the “peace movement”
attempt to stop USA bringing in cruise missiles. Sometimes
I think it might be good if some of these nations got a taste
of living under Soviet or Russian dominance. These activists
think America is bad, they ought to try living under a Russian
dictatorship.
Be neat if they steer laser beams electronically like they
can with radar. I wonder what power you would need to
destroy a continental ballistic missile? I would imagine you
would need a secondary laser to cut a hole through the
atmosphere to achieve this.
Whatever.
Sorry. But those crimes were committed on behalf of ALL Germans, then and yet to be born.
Sucks, but is true.
No, I am just stating a fact that people refuse to believe because of emotionalism.
Your WW2 crybabying wasn’t genocide. You use an apple to compare to an orange.
But I AM ACCUSED OF SUCH…every day. By the Libtards! Haven’t you been paying attention?
It’s good to admit your a loon. Good job!
I am a conservative, but not a Republican or Libertarian. The current Republican Party (Democratic Party too) are not true to their words and the sooner we have more parties as political choices the better off we’ll be. In the meantime I’ll keep having to vote for the best of two bad choices.
Q: How do you get the modern Republican Party to act like fiscal conservatives?
A: Vote a Democrat into office.
The Germans who committed those crimes are dead. The Germans who enabled them are dead. If you insist on trying to make the children and grandchildren of dead people pay for crimes they never committed, you may have earned your user name. You think Germans are the only people who committed genocide? Study your history more, I’m sure both of our ancestors have a few bones in their closet too. I lost family members in WW2, fighting in the Pacific and in Europe, but I don’t blame the people alive today for that.
I was an exchange student to West Berlin. Visited East Berlin a few times while I was there, too. I too liked the German people (back then…in 1980s WEST Germany).
But whether I liked them or you like them does not make up for what they did. Nothing will ever do that. Not unless the Germans single-handedly save the world or something (intercept a ELE asteroid on approach, for example).
Who said I was making a joke?
Uh, no. No culture gets to ‘move on’ from wiping out 12 million people (6 million jews and 6 million slaves/gypsies,etc).
Never. That stain will be on the German people FOREVER. F-O-R-E-V-E-R.
Doesn’t matter what the German people ‘do’ — it will all be meaningless to the death that they caused.
How so? Because we no longer will prop European defense up?
Actions speak louder than words my friend. Doesn’t seem that your conservative counterparts in Washington define small government the same way you do, unless it means gutting regulations, or pushing forth bills big business interests pay them to push forward.
This does go both ways. Politicians on all sides seem to get caught up in this sort of behavior. This tells me are system is beyond broken.
Wow! Making jokes about the Holocaust now. What a loser you have to be in real life.
For that to even remotely work, the mirrors would need to be extremely perfect with no dust or debris near them. The receiving party would be better off with some sort of dispersed gas to “Dilute” the beam, but that would give away their position for traditional ordinance to be thrown their way.
Go Germany! They make some of the best weapons out there, among other things. They just seem to poo excellence. If they beat us to a 100kw then we should buy it, like we do a lot of their other weapons systems.
I spent a few years in Germany while I was in the army. What always struck me was how good of people they are, just as nice and solid as you will meet anywhere in the world. I learned that, if the Nazi’s can happen there they can happen anywhere including here. It’s another reason as a conservative I believe in small government, to keep that level of power out of the hands of political animals.
a faster feed rate.
Lol, if you want to go into combat in a vehicle that reflects like a mirror you have a much bigger set than I do!
Your username definitely checks out. You are aware (maybe not), that Germany has moved on signifcantly since 1945 and that the US is probably a lot closer to be the initiator of the next holocaust than Germany.
1/8th only takes about 3 kW, I wonder what 20 – 100 – 300 kW could do?
The beam may be weightless but the turret has to turn like every other weapon turret: slowly.
High energy neutron weapons were designed for use in Germany back in the 1960s. And deployed.
They were eventually abandoned (so they tell us) through a combination of effective Russian political campaigns, technical developments that made Russian tanks much less vulnerable, and the end of the cold war all together.
Wait until the first 10 or 100MW space laser is fielded. With cheap access to space likely in next decade it is almost inevitable. Upside is it may make it cheaper and faster to zoom around the solar system, but when an orbital laser can start 100000 fires a day in your country and slag most of your essential infrastructure all for dollars a shot, there is a bit of a military imbalance brewing.
high energy nutrons would be better… heavier than light… more kinetic energy… just nobody knows how to make a beam strong enough of nutrons… could use electrons except they are too bendy… due to negative charge
Yeah, like coating your tanks and apcs with little reflective micro beads or mirrors.
I expect combat lasers to be a much bigger disappointment out of the promises of scifi than jet packs. It’s much easier to defend against lasers traveling @ ~c than a chunk of depleted uranium traveling at ~1k m/s
wow they can weld 1/8th inch steel plate with it.