​

All Militaries Are Developing Combat Lasers So They Will Give Short Military Advantages

by

Fourth generation fighters (F-16, F-18) and fifth-generation fighters (F-35, F-22) can be seen by shorter range radar. They only have a 20-30 percent chance of evading new short range missiles. New 50 kilowatt and 150-kilowatt combat lasers that will be added to fighters in the next few years will provide extra defenses to hinder missiles.

Combat Lasers could increase the survivability of both stealth and non-stealth fighters and force more missiles to be used to overcome defenses.

The US Air Force LANCE laser program will use fiber-optic cables to merge beams to reach tens of kilowatts of power. Its modular design allows scaling of power by adding modules. It is 40 percent efficient in converting energy to laser power.

All major nations are working on combat lasers. The US, Russia, UK, China, Japan etc…

Industrial lasers are common so there will only be a brief advantage for the first nations to make lasers compact and tough enough to be used in combat.

41 thoughts on “All Militaries Are Developing Combat Lasers So They Will Give Short Military Advantages”

  1. 1- So what? Does not alter the fact that they are all vulnerable.
    2- The number could easily be doubled, using COTS.
    3- Core < 2″ diameter using reflectors. Shaped charge further reduces pit diameter. It can be done.

    They would not be as powerful as the bleeding edge spysats currently in orbit, but would be small enough to fit the SpaceX bus architecture, and more responsive/decentralized than anything being filtered through Langley.

  2. A ground war in mainland China is a losing proposition. I see these warheads as potentially filling an important defensive role. They can be used in point defense against weapons which we are currently vulnerable to, such as hypersonic missiles and swarms of cheap SSMs. Zumwalt would have been the perfect platform for this, but guided high-velocity projectiles have been developed for existing guns with less range. What I am saying is that we can use cannon to knock down missiles at a range of 10 to 100 miles with existing guns. The plan during the Cold War involved using large warheads to protect missile farms and cities. Nike and Sprint. I see this as a much more mobile upgrade that can be used to defend our assets and allies until we have better systems in place. These warheads can bring us to parity with Russia (hundreds fielded), and allow us to protect ourselves, rather than depending on an empty threat of annihilation.
    I suppose they could be used as an offensive ground weapon, but that is a bleak picture. Defenders will respond in kind.

  3. Joe Rogan: that’s cool man, have you ever tried DMT?
    AI Bot Yeffen: bro hold my singularity

  4. Best way to spot bullshit is with the use of the word “ephemeral” in a scientific context.

  5. 450 ICBMs with 8 warheads per, that’s aside from the sub fleet. That’s a couple thousand warheads. That’s not ‘an acceptable loss’. That’s peppering every identifiable military asset and major industrial target 6 times.

    Artillery is of no use in a war with China. The whole reason they’re called tactical is that they’re not able to be used from outside of theater. We don’t even have access to an allied land border with China where valuable targets are in range of ground artillery, such that you would get anything out of nuclear armed artillery. There’s pretty much no scenario of a war with China that involves US artillery and boots on the ground in China trying to conduct some kind of ground campaign. A war with China is an air and sea war.

  6. I am quite sure you don’t know what the # of eyes in LEO is, because it’s classified, and because it would be spread across dozens of launches across the last 25 years, and because it would have been developed by 1-3 different primes.

    Secret launches are surprisingly visible. If Starlink were intended to have a classified primary payload, it would have a DoD or NRO tail number. They could have had a classified secondary payload, but the development cycle was way too fast and efficient for that. Government requirement offices are not anywhere near that agile.

    These W76-2’s are for Tridents. The W76 is too big for artillery.

  7. The number of eyes in LEO is a small and easily targeted number of birds. Tech Tycoon wishes real estate and bandwidth for thousands of these satellites, in orbits much lower than what is typically used in a very pricey satellite which is expected to last one or two decades. Tech Tycoon offers to install 100 eyes on the thousands of birds scheduled to be deployed, and that the network also has DoD priority channels. Would that not incentivize Washington to grant their requests?

    No- officially we are not fielding nuclear artillery. That does not prevent us from developing it. I don’t know what the specs for the new W76-2 warheads are, but by all the reports I have read, they fit the bill. That does not mean that they will be deployed (aside from the Trident justification), but it puts it squarely in the realm of plausibility.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/28/us-nuclear-weapons-first-low-yield-warheads-roll-off-the-production-line

  8. Musk? What? No. Early detection birds at LEO pre-dates Space X’s success of the last <3y delivering classified payloads to orbit. None of that is Space X related but their ability to do heavy lift will no doubt be utilized in the future for it. A lot of what’s up there probably went up on Delta IV’s. And there are some hosted payloads that went up on other birds that publicly have a commercial payload…

    I do not believe we are still fielding any tactical artillery deliverable warheads. Some might be recoverable in the national stockpile but (and this is not meant to carry bias), our tactical deployment of nukes did not survive the Carter/Clinton/Obama administrations. All of that has been out of commission for a long time.

    There are no “new” warheads of any kind. We haven’t manufactured a new nuclear warhead since 1989. All you can do is refurbish and perhaps re-shape some old warhead pits at the national labs, you can’t design new warhead types without testing. Part of the Trump administration’s interest in fielding smaller nukes is to cannibalize old warheads in the national stockpile for placement on intermediate and medium range ballistic missiles (this was why we wanted to pull out of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty).

  11. I fear that China may view our counter-strike as an acceptable loss. I hope we already have eyes in LEO for rapid response. I hope that Musk is in fact, providing this service right now. Cameras don’t need to be full blown spy tools to see missile sigs streaking through the pixels. That and 5kt guided artillery will prevent total devastation at the cost of a little fallout. With HVP rounds good for 20 to 100 miles, why would Sprint type missiles ever need to be used? I hope we have plenty of the new W76-2 warheads on the shelf and fitted to all sorts of artillery.
    This is what I hope we have already done.

    I don’t know why my phone decided to put this response in the main thread.

  12. I fear that China may view our counter-strike as an acceptable loss. I hope we already have eyes in LEO for rapid response. I hope that Musk is in fact, providing this service right now. Cameras don’t need to be full blown spy tools to see missile sigs streaking through the pixels. That and 5kt guided artillery will prevent total devastation at the cost of a little fallout. With HVP rounds good for 20 to 100 miles, why would Sprint type missiles ever need to be used? I hope we have plenty of the new W76-2 warheads on the shelf and fitted to all sorts of artillery.
    This is what I hope we have already done.

  13. Bad news…our (any) ABM systems have always been overwhelm-able, but our retaliatory capability has not…that’s the point of MAD. No matter how many nukes you throw, the opposition will be able to throw enough back to end you as well.
    The current US ABM systems are only designed for low-number ICBMs, from so-called “rogue” nations. Despite Russian and Chinese protestations, US ABM systems cannot stop an all-out nuclear launch from either nation. US ABM systems are able to neutralize threats from nations that China and Russia can (possibly) manipulate or use to their advantage, so they protest accordingly.

  17. Your battleship still needs missiles, (whether rocket, jet, cannon or railgun is a different question).

    The laser can only hit stuff that is line-of-site, and even WW2 ships were looking at over the horizon ranges on the big guns.

    A good old fashioned Iowa class could throw over 1000 kg of largely hardened steel shell for 40 km. And some sabot shells for twice that. That’s probably the sort of thing that is most resistant to laser fire.

  20. DIRCM are in service and other lasers meant to affect sensors in general are an easy prediction for the late 2020’s.

    Lasers are still unlikely to become primary weapons for a long, long time.
    Death rays of various kinds have been anticipated and been kinda around the corner for well over a century.

  21. It’s occurred to me, that practical lasers might bring back the “battleship”(sea, or air), or even the fortress military paradigms. At the point where the greater Wattage over a sustained period, armor, and waste heat rejection available to huge platforms outweighs the greater mobility small platforms have, the big stuff will come back.
    A huge mirror finished blimp, with buoyancy compartments designed to hold extremely high temperature gasses is an interesting concept. Such as vehicle equipped with low mass optimized MSRs, supercritical CO2 Brayton enginines helium, or hydrogen coolant for heat rejection, air, or nitrogen compartments heated to hundreds of degrees C to vary.
    The ability to reject heat, just through the craft’s skin would be huge, especially when underway. The skin of the craft might change shape to increase heat transfer, airfoils containing circulating helium would provide lift, and heatsink.
    From high altitude, large numbers of point defense lasers would keep small threats away, strafe the surface, or combine for larger threats at shorter ranges. The future equivalent of the Naval Gun would engage large threats at great ranges, and no doubt “mirror craft”, some in orbit, would be used to engage threats over the horizon.
    High altitude would be a mixed blessing from a heat rejection point of view. Colder air, higher speeds with less drag, and clearer air for the optics to work in could offset the greater density of the lower atmosphere.

  22. Much as they told me in Squadron Officer School, doesn’t matter how good your military is if someone else’s is better, there is no such thing as second place in a modern air war.

    This just extends that. Second place in lasers won’t count for much once one side can destroy anything that peeps over the horizon (and even has clever ways of getting around that horizon).

  23. Unless you can use beam folding, you still have tiny thrust, even by ion engine standards.

    Speaking of that, I haven’t seen much about the work of Dr BAE on photon recycling by active cavity. I consider that work some of the most likely to offer major new capabilities for orbital flight.

  25. He’s making money posting these stories is my guess. I saw someone post one of these same stories on linkedin. It appears to be guerrilla promotion to me.

  26. “Big airships can be shoot down with lasers itself.”

    Its possible to fly in over the clouds. So land laser have to burn thru clouds…

  27. “Big airships can be shoot down with lasers itself.”

    Yeah It would be fun. Perhaps you could use chaff dispenser with strips of some reflective foil to deflect and dissipate

    “Or with missiles specifically protected against lasers (hypersonic missile will be protected with thick plasma layer).”

    That is less probable. Laser hit targets instantly and is very easy to keep on target. . So you put laser spot on target let say at 50km and staring methodically frying.  Besides you can not hide behind “thick plasma layer” you need some kind of radar or heat seeker to hit a moving target And radar and heat seeker would be easy to fry.
    I

  28. Are you saying that any nation that develops laser weapons will only have a short advantage because the US is ahead in this area and China is behind?

  32. Big airships can be shoot down with lasers itself. Or with missiles specifically protected against lasers (hypersonic missile will be protected with thick plasma layer).

  34. Yeah. 100 kw laser will burn heat seeker sensor on missile practically instantly. However it would be difficult to put on small fighter power and cooling system.

    Perhaps there is a new era of some kind steam- punk airships. Big ugly, slow, high attitude with laser cannons sticking from every orifice. They would not need stealth to survive.

    Perhaps nuclear powered, so they loiter for months, because there is no need to restock ammunition.

  35. Actually, as it stands we are at an ideal position to implement Reagan’s Star Wars concept, given no adversary that can oppose our military at the time. If you think about it it is actually detrimental to pursue the Strategic Defence Initiate at time of a cold war. With the rise of hypersonic missiles and such it just makes the idea all the more rational.

  36. Why does there have to be dimensions; the term expresses a mathematical certainty or otherwise, absolute. The word meanings actually apply to quantum thermodynamic.^s with no ephemeral evidence or consequence. How is disputation certain infinitely and certain eternally, when all we’re using are words made of syllables made of strokes/tine-marks of which the ABCs have different connection points of their straight and curved tines…this is not unusual; it is observation of current reality, circa 2019. Why should simplicity and complexity be co-existent- simultaneously consistent and complete…or incomplete, sceary…how.many.spheres.are.there.in.that.aircraft…what.if.lasers.had.capability.to.turn.
    the.physical.body.into.arclight? Where would that be? (it’s either ephemeral or supernal) or non-arclight)._. Inconsistency? Miracles all over the earth?8pm

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjFyKUDmUhU

    https://www.pbs.org/video/a-breakthrough-in-higher-dimensional-spheres-bxkdf5/

  37. We are already at a nuclear disadvantage. It invites an attack. If an adversary believes that they can neutralize our (very few) ASBMs and overwhelm our ABM defenses with only a moderate loss, it becomes tempting for a nation that longs to throw down a hated foe and become the new leader of the world.
    We need verifiable parity.

  38. Pretty sure that mutual development of military lasers is pretty widely known. The trick is to develop an edge and keep the secret long enough to take advantage. Same as stealth, railguns or any other technology.

  39. It is a big step up from industrial lasers to military use of lasers and US has a huge multi-year advantage over others.

  41. Yes, but when will we have Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars concept? Who needs the MAD doctrine anymore?

Comments are closed.