C130 Laser Weapon Set to Take Off...

[ddavid 149]

Thought you all (particularly John) might be interested in this snippet:

Taken from my institution's 'In Flight' magazine! I wonder what other surprises are in store....

Cheers - Dai.

[allardjd 1,853]

Dai,

Now that is very cool. First daisy cutters, then AC-130 Spectre gunships, then MOABs, now this. Who says the Herky Bird isn't a warplane?

Looking to the future, however, I do fear for aircraft if laser weapons become common. They could become the ultimate AAA and I think that AC are going to come off second best, that is to say dead last, if high energy laser weapons are able to be deployed for air defense.

John

[mutley 4,498]

Wow that is scary but if they can really be so accurate so as not to have collateral damage then that must be good?

Cheers

[allardjd 1,853]

Great technology, but probably only good against soft targets that can be damaged by rapid localized heating. Actually the targets most vulnerable to that kind of weapon are aircraft, missiles, satellites, etc.

John

[allardjd 1,853]

Air Force Tests Huge Airborne Laser Gun

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,420810,00.html

Two, actually! The bulk of the article is about the 747-400F mounted anti-missile laser,

which has been test fired in a ground test. There's a paragraph at the bottom that

references the subject of this thread, the C-130 ground attack laser.

"Last month, Boeing conducted a ground test of a laser mounted aboard a C-130H aircraft

at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. The Advanced Tactical Laser aircraft is intended for use

against ground targets."

[MartinW 0]

They have developed a truck mounted version as well. The first phase was in 2007. Deployed in a couple of years I seem to remember.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6917041.stm

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technol ... 74651.html

[hurricanemk1c 195]

:wink:

[MartinW 0]

The truck laser is a solid state version, so no chemicals to cart around.

Give it ten years and there will be solid state lasers mounted on fighters. Imagine that, an emitter on the rear of an aircraft. A bogey gets on your six and you fry him... or maybe just dazzle him, or both of course.

There are a number of top secret additions planed for the F22 within the next ten years. The only one thats declassified is the helmet mounted site in two years time. Who knows beyond that, perhaps a laser. [if technology allows us to get the weight down]

[allardjd 1,853]

Apologies for dredging up a near-dead thread, but this new announcement reinforces some of what I've been thinking for some time...

Breakthrough Laser Could Revolutionize Navy's Weaponry

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/01/20/raygun-breakthrough-revolutionize-naval-power/?test=faces

Machine guns in trenches made massed troop formations a bad place to be in the Great War.

Twenty odd years later, in the next major war, tanks made trenches an unhealthy place to hang out.

Not long after that war, aircraft made tanks (and most anywhere else on the ground) a distinctly poor choice of places to fight.

Lasers, the ultimate Triple-A, are going to do the same to aircraft, though many will be unmanned by that time anyway. This is the first distant sound of the death knell of combat aircraft as the dominant weapon system. This new laser is more than a naval weapon - this is the development that will decisively tilt the scale in favor of air defense for the first time since combat aircraft were developed.

Aircraft are as fragile as eggshells and are highly vulnerable to directed energy weapons. Targeting and firing of anti-air lasers will be near-instantaneous and aircraft will not survive the first half of this century as the dominant weapons system they are today. Fleets of bombers or perhaps even of missiles will no longer be an undefensible threat. The SAM of tomorrow will be a thread of electrons or photons travelling at light-speed, not much subject to the foibles of ballistics, atmospherics, jamming or whatever else.

Stealth will be of some help for a while, but has a limited effect on two counts - countermeasures and cost. Eventually stealth technology will be defeated by something else, perhaps satellite-based sensors, however, even if stealth continues to be marginally viable, only a few very wealthy nations can afford true stealth fighters and only a relative few of the wickedly expensive beasts at that. Only the US has stealthy strategic bombers - we have around 20 and they're frightfully expensive at a billion plus per copy and nearly $40 million per plane per year to maintain. It's not inconceivable that they will fall victim to the Tirpitz dilemma - too rare, expensive and irreplacable to risk actually sending them into battle if there's a weapon out there that can plausibly kill them. They may well be relegated to the dated old concept of "...a fleet in being".

Stealthy transports, refuelers, and other support aircraft will not be economically viable and without stealth those types may not be survivable, particularly when the potentially long range of directed energy weapons is considered.

This is a monumental, world-changing development. I've already been thinking that it's quite possible that the last generation of manned combat aircraft are on the drawing board (OK, the CAD screen) or in the air already because of the onset of UAV technology. This rapid development of new kinds of directed energy weapons strengthens that feeling.

This is not the end of combat aviation, no more than massed troops, machine guns and tanks have disappeared. The truth is, they have not disappeared and they continue to be useful but they are no longer THE decisive weapon that they were at one time. So it will be for combat aircraft.

[ddavid 149]

So, it's back to chess, then?!?

Cheers - Dai.

[allardjd 1,853]

So, it's back to chess, then?!?

That might be good, but more likely space-based weapons. Weapons launched from satellites or hyper-sonic ex-atmospheric bombers might be next.

John