New Video: Laser Gunship Blowtorches Truck

[The Straight Story]

New Video: Laser Gunship Blowtorches Truck (Updated)

Back in August, Boeing announced that its Advanced Tactical Laser — a cargo aircraft retrofitted with a chemical laser — had successfully “defeated” a target vehicle parked on the ground. The test was a step toward the fielding of a laser gunship that, in theory, could blast targets with little or no collateral damage.

The company has now released a few seconds of video from the test, although footage is not yet available of the laser actually disabling the vehicle:

“I think you’ve made your point, Goldfinger, thank you for the demonstration.”

Pyrotechnics aside, there are a lot of reasons why this is significant. As our own David Hambling has explained previously, this has potential to bring a whole new level of precision to special-operations gunships, which traditionally rely on Gatling guns and howitzers to deal out pain. That’s not the route you want to go if you want to avoid collateral damage.

In fact, developers claim the laser gunship would have sniperlike precision. When they requested the Advanced Tactical Laser to be deployed to Iraq a couple of years back, the Marine Corps envisioned using it as a way to target individual insurgents — to devastating psychological effect. Such weapons, when used against people, “can be compared to long-range blowtorches or precision flamethrowers, with corresponding psychological advantages for CF,” the request stated.

But don’t expect a frightening “spontaneous combustion” weapon to be fielded soon. The Advanced Tactical Laser is still a demonstration program; the company has proven that it can package a chemical-powered laser inside a C-130, but as Noah has been writing for years, it’s hard to see the practical application of flying around with lots of toxic chemicals.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/10/video-laser-gunship-blowtorches-truck/

[ddeclue]

1. Till terrorist guys on ground perfect cheap mirror to redirect laser back to plane.

:rofl:

[Craftsman]

5. It take a special type of mirror to even come close to redirecting that level of power

Then Megajoules that thing puts out is epic.

[The Straight Story]

6. It takes 1.21 GIGAWATTS

:rofl: and kudos to those who got the reference :)

[Craftsman]

9. I don't think this thing has a flux capasitor

[Soylent Brice]

11. GREAT SCOTT!!

[ddeclue]

7. I'm aware - I'm an engineer. This really isn't new stuff folks.

They had one mounted on a 747 back in the 1980's (fluorine based laser) for knocking down incoming missiles as part of the original Star Wars (SDI).

Who says it has to be perfect by the way? If they were to redirect even a tiny portion of that energy on the cockpit of the plane, it would blind the pilots. This sounds like a great idea but there is always "Spy vs. Spy" going on - for every measure there's a counter measure.

I suspect surrounding something you want to protect with sandbags, water and layers of aluminum foil would probably serve to harden it tremendously to a chemical laser weapon like this.

[Craftsman]

10. Have enought throughput on it it will burn through the mirros

The heat load will waste them.

[ddeclue]

12. OK think about this:

You have a 5 MW laser.

Let's suppose I have a 90% efficient mirror that I can use to redirect that energy back to your aircraft.

Behind my mirror I have lined my high value ground asset with sand bags and water barrels to aborb the heat load.

You get to deliver 500kW of energy (the 10% that isn't reflected) into my mirror as a heat load, I get to redirect 4.5 MW (90%) of the original 5MW back at the aircraft.

I'm delivering more energy on target than you are.

I doubt you will be able to destroy my ground target before I use your own energy to destroy the airborne laser platform since I get to direct 9x as much on an essentially unprotected airborne target.

You will NOT be able to protect an airborne laser platform nearly so well as I can a ground target because of weight issues (they already have to use 747's to fly the laser system around due to size and weight issues.)

:rofl:

Trust me - I HAVE thought this through. If you shoot at me then you are really shooting at YOU.

:P

[Craftsman]

15. One major issue, basic geometry

How are you going to perfectly redirect the laser on to a moving target miles away with out some serious hardware and soft ware before the heat destroys the mirror? x, y, z axis and all that. Also weight wise this was in a C-130, weight is coming down.

[ddeclue]

26. Actually it should be easier to do on the ground than in the air.

and remember the concept of "leading the target" which usually makes these sorts of problems very difficult in traditional ballistic gunnery is all but irrelevant given the fact that the laser is operating at the speed of light.

If the target were 10 miles away it would take on the order of 100 microseconds for the round trip to send the light from the laser to the mirror and back to the airplane.

If the airplane is travelling at 400 miles per hour that's 587 feet per second - the aircraft will move 3/8ths of an inch during the entire round trip.

FYI:A C130 isn't a 747 but it's still pretty damned large.

[eppur_se_muova]

27. Key word: "retroreflector"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroreflector

Won't necessarily save the target, but it will impose a high penalty on the laser platform -- they will have to shield themselves before every shot.

[Selatius]

30. One could use a stationary retroreflector, as the other poster just noted.

An example:



If, for instance, we assume the red line that is coming in at the very bottom of the picture is the beam from the flying C-130, we can see how such a retroreflector would take the beam and send it back at the target.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

2. Same thing happened to Jeremy Clarkson's Lancia in Botswana.

Only with more damage.

[EOTE]

16. Was this on Top Gear?

If so, I missed out on that one. What happened?

[vadawg]

17. rofl i loved that, the way they all looked up to see if it was a laser beam

just the look on jezzers face was priceless... who can forget oliver...

[Craftsman]

3. I guess the Star Wars project has finally rendered a MK1 Death Star

[MilesColtrane]

29. Jerry Jones got there first.

[rrneck]

4. It still depends on

humans to select the target. Since insurgents are basically armed civilians semantics won't make it an effective weapon in today's warfare. But it will cost a shit load of money.

[WeDidIt]

8. LOS is still a going concern with this weapon. n/t

[Dirtyhairy]

13. awesome

[lumberjack_jeff]

14. Meh. Affix them to ill-tempered sea bass and I'll be impressed. n/t

[yorgatron]

18. sound like "Real Genius" to me...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2rtmoSuoL4

[Echo In Light]

19. The burnt out hippie is the actor who plays the redneck uncle in Napoleon Dynamite

[slackmaster]

20. When they outlaw chemical lasers, only outlaws will have chemical hasers.

I'll give up my rail gun when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.

[Statistical]

21. scrap the airborne laser now.

Want to know how much that pickup blasting laser costs?

Try $5 billion dollars. It was originally designed to destroy cold war ICBM fleets in the boost phase (they would be based in europe) a swarm (think dozens or hundreds) of laser powered planes protected by thousands of F-22 would destroy a launching Soviet ICBM first strike during the boost phase.

Even if you support a strong defense things like the airborne laser program are giant sinkholes of money.

The MRAP costs about $135K and provides 5x the ballistic protection as the aging HMMWV against IED, RPG, and other high explosive threats.



$5B is enough to replace every single MHHWV with an MRAP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRAP_%28armored_vehicle%29

Which is going to save more soldiers lives, upgrading 40,000 HMMWV to modern platform or a single "pickup blasting" laser armed cargo plane?

[AngryAmish]

22. And who wants to fly around with 20 tons of very toxic chemicals in the hold?

[Statistical]

23. Not only that the chmeicals used to power the laser cost MORE than the terrorist pickup you blast.

Basically the only thing less cost effective would be a weapon system powered exclusively by burning money.

The ABL fleet made sense when we risked anhiliation by a massive soviet launch. Even if they couldn't stop the launch destroying 70% or even 30% of the fleet would save millions possibly tens of millions of lives.

The cold war is over. Scrap coldwar spending and build more cost effective solutions for fighting low-intensity conflicts.

Of course something like an armored truck (despite saving thousands of lives) isn't as "sexy" or "cool" as a pew-pew laser in the sky.

[AngryAmish]

25. Listen, there a lot of lobbyists' children who will go hungry if we don't buy this thing

[eppur_se_muova]

28. You're so softhearted.

:cry:

[Rex]

24. I love the human race.