Orbital kills
Philip Kaploun
wal...@oneimage.com wrote:
> One does not need a ground-based laser to kill something
> in orbit. Our existing launch vehicles are quite capable
> of lofting an adequate charge of dense 'buckshot' into a
> collision course. A dozen or so 100-gram tungsten or DU
> slugs at a combined velocity of say 45000 KPH (Geosync)
> would raise havoc with an orbital vehicle.
> Walt BJ ftr plt ret
Very funny!
Eric Pinnell
And how do you hit a satellite than can move?
Eric Pinnell
Qui Desiderat Pacem, Preparaet Bellum
(Let Him Who Desire Peace, Prepare For War)
Vegitius - 3rd Century BC
Keith Willshaw
Eric Pinnell wrote in message <37efbcde...@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net>...
>On 26 Sep 1999 12:28:30 -0600, wal...@oneimage.com wrote:
>
> And how do you hit a satellite than can move?
>
How does the satellite know its coming ?
How much fuel does it carry ?
Moving a 10Mw Laser is non-trivial
Keith
Ralph Savelsberg
According to Eric Pinell himself such a thing would be so big and heavy that
it would require at least three shuttle loads.
Anyway 10 megaWatts is actually a bit on the low side. With that power, to get
decent coverage dozens of the things would be needed.
Ralph
Keith Willshaw
Ralph Savelsberg wrote in message <37F074F9...@vortex.phys.tue.nl>...
>
>According to Eric Pinell himself such a thing would be so big and heavy
that
>it would require at least three shuttle loads.
>Anyway 10 megaWatts is actually a bit on the low side. With that power, to
get
>decent coverage dozens of the things would be needed.
>
Yep and one KE killer with a few pounds of mass
could completely wreck it !
Keith
Eric Pinnell
<keith_w...@compuserve.com> wrote:
>How does the satellite know its coming ?
If the projectiles are large enough, then can be detected.
>How much fuel does it carry ?
>
>Moving a 10Mw Laser is non-trivial
>
>Keith
True. However, you only have to change the delta V of a laser by a
meter per second and your unpowered projectiles will miss.
Eric Pinnell
<ra...@vortex.phys.tue.nl> wrote:
>According to Eric Pinell himself such a thing would be so big and heavy that
>it would require at least three shuttle loads.
More like two. Advances in Lithium Polymer batteries means
thebatteries could be carried by one shuttle load, the weapon by the
other.
>Anyway 10 megaWatts is actually a bit on the low side. With that power, to get
>decent coverage dozens of the things would be needed.
>
>Ralph
Do you have any idea how ridiclously powerful a 10 megwatt laser
would be? I've seen 5 KW lasers fired at steel plates, and they burn
through them in a couple of seconds.
A 10 megawatt laser could incinerate an armored tank. Or fry
humans into ash. Really.
Steve Hix
epi...@REMOVETHISibm.net wrote:
> On 26 Sep 1999 12:28:30 -0600, wal...@oneimage.com wrote:
>
> >One does not need a ground-based laser to kill something
> >in orbit. Our existing launch vehicles are quite capable
> >of lofting an adequate charge of dense 'buckshot' into a
> >collision course. A dozen or so 100-gram tungsten or DU
> >slugs at a combined velocity of say 45000 KPH (Geosync)
> >would raise havoc with an orbital vehicle.
> > Walt BJ ftr plt ret
>
> And how do you hit a satellite than can move?
Use some system that doesn't require final targetting long
in advance of the intercept.
The F-15/ASAT system could probably handle most low-orbit
targets as is.
D. Scott Ferrin
I was readin in World Airpower Journal that the ASAT could hit targets
out to 600 miles. Pretty good for a missile that small.
Bev Clark/Steve Gallacci
Eric Pinnell <epi...@REMOVETHISibm.net> wrote:
>On Tue, 28 Sep 1999 09:57:45 +0200, Ralph Savelsberg
><ra...@vortex.phys.tue.nl> wrote:
>
> Do you have any idea how ridiclously powerful a 10 megwatt laser
>would be? I've seen 5 KW lasers fired at steel plates, and they burn
>through them in a couple of seconds.
> A 10 megawatt laser could incinerate an armored tank. Or fry
>humans into ash. Really.
>
makes a lousey weapon.
And an aluninized mylar, down-filled quilt has a good chance of
protecting either a tank or a person from even a 10MW laser.
Energy on target physics makes lasers particularly poor weapons in
pratical field conditions.
But, ultimalty, until there is some really good/realistic high-power laser
demos, we are still just batting around speculation at best, or wishfull
thinking/fantasy scenarios at worst. I'm certainly not going to loose
sleep over it.
Jim Yanik
Right now,I believe the COIL laser being used in the airborne laser is around
1 MW. In a 747,so it can't be that hard to move around.
On the aluminized mylar blankie,right now,the mirror optics have to be
cooled,very,very clean,made of beryllium/copper for thermal conductivity,so
your blankie is not going to stand up to a megawatt beam. and trying to keep
one clean in a combat environment,yeah,right.
I do not believe a space-based laser would be useable against a tank,though.
Jim Yanik,NRA member
Paul F Austin
Ralph Savelsberg wrote in message
>
>> Eric Pinnell wrote
>>
>>
>> Moving a 10Mw Laser is non-trivial
>>
>> Keith
>
that
>it would require at least three shuttle loads.
get
>decent coverage dozens of the things would be needed.
When I worked on Zenith Star (the late '80s Space-based LASER experiment),
the sat was to be launched on two Titan 34Ds and the two halves were to dock
on orbit.
That machine was based on the MIRACL chemical LASER and all consumables were
in the aft section. I don't recall whether there were plans to refuel on
orbit but since I think the fuel was cryogenic, I would expect so.
--
Sincerity is the key in politics.
If you learn to fake that, you've got it made.
Paul F Austin
pau...@digital.net
Paul F Austin
Eric Pinnell wrote
>(Steve Hix) wrote:
>
>>The F-15/ASAT system could probably handle most low-orbit
>>targets as is.
>
>certainly during boost.
>
I worked on the Air Force ASAT. We built the guidance processor for LTV (600
hurtling KIPS worth of CMOS 8 bit processors). Once the kill vehicle
separated from the booster, its signature was very low. The divert motors
(multiple solid rockets that were fired when they pointed in the right
direction) didn't burn for very long.
As for boost, the SBL has only a small number of shots in the locker before
the reactants are depleted. If it can be decoyed by a bright light showing a
low angle rate, then an F-15 with a couple of Zuni pods would disarm your
LASER.
Nothing's simple and Space Based LASERS aren't GodSats.
Eric Pinnell
>The F-15/ASAT system could probably handle most low-orbit
>targets as is.
But it can be detected and fired at. If not during final phaser,
certainly during boost.
Eric Pinnell
Gallacci) wrote:
>bad example. An aceteline torch can cut through steel plate too, but it
>makes a lousey weapon.
Well, let's see how you feel if I hold the torch to your head ;-)
>And an aluninized mylar, down-filled quilt has a good chance of
>protecting either a tank or a person from even a 10MW laser.
Actually, this is strictly not true. Once you get into extremely
high powered lasers, the mirror will still heat up a bit because it
doesn't reflect 100% of the light. And putting a mirror on your tank
causes all sorts of problems, like being easily detected by anyone
with an IR sensor.
>Energy on target physics makes lasers particularly poor weapons in
>pratical field conditions.
The problems have always been getting enough power on target. You
need multi-kilowatt systems even to do something like shoot down a
helicopter. And even then, the systems I've seen use hydorgen
fluoride as a reactant. Not exactly the kind of crap you want your
grunts messing around with.
>
>But, ultimalty, until there is some really good/realistic high-power laser
>demos, we are still just batting around speculation at best, or wishfull
>thinking/fantasy scenarios at worst. I'm certainly not going to loose
>sleep over it.
I don't see battlefield lasers being practical for a while.
However, it is conceivable the US could start deploying >10 MW
orbiting lasers in a decade or so. And that would change everything
at the strategic level.
Eric Pinnell
>Right now,I believe the COIL laser being used in the airborne laser is around
>1 MW. In a 747,so it can't be that hard to move around.
Circa 1.5 MW.
>On the aluminized mylar blankie,right now,the mirror optics have to be
>cooled,very,very clean,made of beryllium/copper for thermal conductivity,so
>your blankie is not going to stand up to a megawatt beam. and trying to keep
>one clean in a combat environment,yeah,right.
>I do not believe a space-based laser would be useable against a tank,though.
>
>Jim Yanik,NRA member
>
Why couldn't you use an orbiting laser on a tank? The tank can't
exactly get out of the way,a nd it's not like you can't track a large
vehicle like that from orbit.
Ralph Savelsberg
> On Tue, 28 Sep 1999 09:57:45 +0200, Ralph Savelsberg
> <ra...@vortex.phys.tue.nl> wrote:
>
> >According to Eric Pinell himself such a thing would be so big and heavy that
> >it would require at least three shuttle loads.
>
> More like two. Advances in Lithium Polymer batteries means
> thebatteries could be carried by one shuttle load, the weapon by the
> other.
>
> >Anyway 10 megaWatts is actually a bit on the low side. With that power, to get
> >decent coverage dozens of the things would be needed.
> >
> >Ralph
>
> Do you have any idea how ridiclously powerful a 10 megwatt laser
> would be? I've seen 5 KW lasers fired at steel plates, and they burn
> through them in a couple of seconds.
> A 10 megawatt laser could incinerate an armored tank. Or fry
> humans into ash. Really.
>
> Eric Pinnell
>
> Qui Desiderat Pacem, Preparaet Bellum
> (Let Him Who Desire Peace, Prepare For War)
>
> Vegitius - 3rd Century BC
Move your high energy laser more than thousand kilometers away, put an 80 km of
atmosphere between the laser and the targetand then see whether it cuts through
armour. Every laserbeam diverges. That means that the power per surface area
decreases by a factor 4 every time you double the distance. The limiting factors
for the divergence are the diameter of the targetting mirror, and the wavelength
of the light. You preferably need a big mirror and a small wavelength. Not
including atmospheric losses this translates to the following:
The energy needed from the laser (the product of the power and the dwell time)
equals pi times the hardness of the target (the amount of energy needed per
surface area to destroy it, typicaly 1 KJ per square centimeter) times the square
of the range times the square of the wavelength devided by the square of the
mirror diameter. (Equations are a bit difficult to translate into plain text I'm
afraid but if you like I could send you a one page word document on this subject
including the equation). Simply insert the other numbers (say 5 m for the
diameter, say 10000 km for the range , 1 micrometer for the wavelength) and
calculate the energy. Result:126 MJ (staggering amount isn't it?). With a 10 MW
energy source and a laser efficiency of say 30% that means almost 40 seconds (!)
of dwell time. To decrease this, less range is preferred. Less range means more
satellites.
Ralph
Bev Clark/Steve Gallacci
Eric Pinnell <epi...@REMOVETHISibm.net> wrote:
>On 28 Sep 1999 21:54:24 GMT, bev...@netcom.com (Bev Clark/Steve
>Gallacci) wrote:
>
>>bad example. An aceteline torch can cut through steel plate too, but it
>>makes a lousey weapon.
>
> Well, let's see how you feel if I hold the torch to your head ;-)
>
>
>>And an aluninized mylar, down-filled quilt has a good chance of
>>protecting either a tank or a person from even a 10MW laser.
>
> Actually, this is strictly not true. Once you get into extremely
>high powered lasers, the mirror will still heat up a bit because it
>doesn't reflect 100% of the light. And putting a mirror on your tank
>causes all sorts of problems, like being easily detected by anyone
>with an IR sensor.
I'm not talking about complete reflection, but a combination of
reflection and ablation.
>
>>Energy on target physics makes lasers particularly poor weapons in
>>pratical field conditions.
>
> The problems have always been getting enough power on target. You
>need multi-kilowatt systems even to do something like shoot down a
>helicopter. And even then, the systems I've seen use hydorgen
>fluoride as a reactant. Not exactly the kind of crap you want your
>grunts messing around with.
>
>>
>>But, ultimalty, until there is some really good/realistic high-power laser
>>demos, we are still just batting around speculation at best, or wishfull
>>thinking/fantasy scenarios at worst. I'm certainly not going to loose
>>sleep over it.
>
> I don't see battlefield lasers being practical for a while.
>However, it is conceivable the US could start deploying >10 MW
>orbiting lasers in a decade or so. And that would change everything
>at the strategic level.
>
My point is less a matter of can they be built at all, but that of a
practical deployable system, and even more important, does the beam
actually do waht it is suppose to do, at real ranges and under real
conditions. My impession is that beam weapons are not going to work as
well as advertised at longer ranges and through atmospheres, and until
honest tests demonstarate it one way or the other, all this is still
specualtive.
D. Scott Ferrin
>My point is less a matter of can they be built at all, but that of a
>practical deployable system, and even more important, does the beam
>actually do waht it is suppose to do, at real ranges and under real
>conditions. My impession is that beam weapons are not going to work as
>well as advertised at longer ranges and through atmospheres, and until
>honest tests demonstarate it one way or the other, all this is still
>specualtive.
I't no different than any other piece of technology. It will get
there eventually and at some point down the road it will work better
than imagined.
Bev Clark/Steve Gallacci
My impression of military technological developement is that systems tend
to get over-sold, then often not live up to their original specs, even
less the hyped version, then if they do eventualy get de-bugged and
operational, tend to go into roles not originally anticipated, often
succeding far better than some purpose-built system.
As for long range directed energy weapons, lasers for the near term, I
susepct that even 500km soft/fragile targets, like missle boosters, are
going to be a real challenge. My more cynical side take on the issue is
that, like the "Star Wars" biz, delivering a working system is secondary
to the real motive, of generating a money-eating, career-making, partisan
cash cow.
Eric Pinnell
Gallacci) wrote:
>I'm not talking about complete reflection, but a combination of
>reflection and ablation.
The problem with albative armor is that it too, is a consumable.
Maybe your ablative armor could laser for a minute, but after that you
tank goes boom. That means the laser could kill 60 tanks an hour. Or
1,440 tanks per day. Every day. Forever. In a week, the largest
army in the world would have no vehicles.
And not that you can also direct the laser against support
elements, like trucks, fuel bowsers, radars, and so on and so forth.
>My point is less a matter of can they be built at all, but that of a
>practical deployable system, and even more important, does the beam
>actually do waht it is suppose to do, at real ranges and under real
>conditions. My impession is that beam weapons are not going to work as
>well as advertised at longer ranges and through atmospheres, and until
>honest tests demonstarate it one way or the other, all this is still
>specualtive.
There is a lot of loss going through the atmosphere, and the only
techniques I know of for dealing with it are adaptive optics and a
brute force "bigger laser" technqiue. I for one predict space based
weaponry will become a reality in 10-20 years.
Eric Pinnell
<ra...@vortex.phys.tue.nl> wrote:
>Move your high energy laser more than thousand kilometers away, put an 80 km of
>atmosphere between the laser and the targetand then see whether it cuts through
>armour. Every laserbeam diverges. That means that the power per surface area
>decreases by a factor 4 every time you double the distance.
Yes, but you can also focus the beam. And lasers don't follow
square law, since their beams are coherent.
> The limiting factors
>for the divergence are the diameter of the targetting mirror, and the wavelength
>of the light. You preferably need a big mirror and a small wavelength.
But if you want to penetrate the atmosphere, you have to use long
wavelength.
> Not
>including atmospheric losses this translates to the following:
>The energy needed from the laser (the product of the power and the dwell time)
>equals pi times the hardness of the target (the amount of energy needed per
>surface area to destroy it, typicaly 1 KJ per square centimeter) times the square
>of the range times the square of the wavelength devided by the square of the
>mirror diameter. (Equations are a bit difficult to translate into plain text I'm
>afraid but if you like I could send you a one page word document on this subject
>including the equation). Simply insert the other numbers (say 5 m for the
>diameter, say 10000 km for the range , 1 micrometer for the wavelength) and
>calculate the energy. Result:126 MJ (staggering amount isn't it?). With a 10 MW
>energy source and a laser efficiency of say 30% that means almost 40 seconds (!)
>of dwell time. To decrease this, less range is preferred. Less range means more
>satellites.
>
>Ralph
There's always tradoffs in designs, and lasers are no exception.
Lower altitude gives you more punch on target, but makes you more
vulnerable to counter attack, and limits your ability to stay on
target because of your low orbit.
Given enough power, a geosyncrhonous orbit laser can toast
pretty much any ground unit.
My guess is that the US will most likely field an array of ground
based weapons, and airborne lasers on 747s. I expect to see the ABL
improved to the point where it can kill ICBMs.
Eric Pinnell
<pau...@digital.net> wrote:
>
>I worked on the Air Force ASAT. We built the guidance processor for LTV (600
>hurtling KIPS worth of CMOS 8 bit processors). Once the kill vehicle
>separated from the booster, its signature was very low. The divert motors
>(multiple solid rockets that were fired when they pointed in the right
>direction) didn't burn for very long.
Low is not zero. The fact that it's passive IR helps. But then
again, a satellite is a much easier target than a MIRV warhead.
>As for boost, the SBL has only a small number of shots in the locker before
>the reactants are depleted. If it can be decoyed by a bright light showing a
>low angle rate, then an F-15 with a couple of Zuni pods would disarm your
>LASER.
There's working being done to convert on of the 747s to firing an
electrically powered laser that would get its powered from an electric
powerplant on board. While not unlimited, this would increase the
number of shots enormously. Especially since the aircraft can be
refuelled.
>Nothing's simple and Space Based LASERS aren't GodSats.
Not yet. But they will be.
wal...@oneimage.com
>Eric Pinnell wrote:>
>> On Tue, 28 Sep 1999 09:57:45 +0200, Ralph Savelsberg
>> <ra...@vortex.phys.tue.nl> wrote:
>>snip:
>The energy needed from the laser (the product of the power and the dwell time)
>equals pi times the hardness of the target (the amount of energy needed per
>surface area to destroy it, typicaly 1 KJ per square centimeter) times the square
>of the range times the square of the wavelength devided by the square of the
>mirror diameter. (Equations are a bit difficult to translate into plain text I'm
>afraid but if you like I could send you a one page word document on this subject
>including the equation). Simply insert the other numbers (say 5 m for the
>diameter, say 10000 km for the range , 1 micrometer for the wavelength) and
>calculate the energy. Result:126 MJ (staggering amount isn't it?). With a 10 MW
>energy source and a laser efficiency of say 30% that means almost 40 seconds (!)
>of dwell time. To decrease this, less range is preferred. Less range means more
>satellites. >Ralph
10000Km makes for an easy example but it's an odd range, neither
geosynch (about 30000Km) nor below the Van Allen belt. 300Km ,ight be
more functional but either needs lots of satellites or mirrors thus
increasing the range or limited operational opportunities even in
polar orbit. Looks like one needs a truly stealthy laser station
to deliver unanticipated strikes. Very complicated.
BTW atest AVLeak has words on airborne laser- demonstrated 'useful
power levels' for 'useful periods of time' with 'useful pointing
accuracy'. Still don't see how USA can afford using these things on
Combat Air Patrol. Let's see, a minimum (and I do mean minimum) of
4 aircraft to maintain 1 on station - gigabucks!
Eric Pinnell
>10000Km makes for an easy example but it's an odd range, neither
>geosynch (about 30000Km) nor below the Van Allen belt. 300Km ,ight be
>more functional but either needs lots of satellites or mirrors thus
>increasing the range or limited operational opportunities even in
>polar orbit. Looks like one needs a truly stealthy laser station
>to deliver unanticipated strikes. Very complicated.
>BTW atest AVLeak has words on airborne laser- demonstrated 'useful
>power levels' for 'useful periods of time' with 'useful pointing
>accuracy'. Still don't see how USA can afford using these things on
>Combat Air Patrol. Let's see, a minimum (and I do mean minimum) of
>4 aircraft to maintain 1 on station - gigabucks!
> Walt BJ ftr plt ret
>
Well, for starters, you do what SAC did with the BUFFs. Have
some flying at all times, with the rest on Alert 5. It's conceivable
that an enemy could get a sub close enough to hit a target before the
aircraft could be airborne, but few enemy nations have such
capability.
And this type of system isn't designed for ICBMs currently. It
might or might not work against them. But if an effective energy
weapons system could be made to work on a 747, it would be cheaper and
more effective than ANY other alternative. Even at half a billion a
pop, you could afford hundreds of them for the cost of deploying even
a modest conventional ABM system.
Paul F Austin
Eric Pinnell wrote
>"Paul F Austin" wrote:
>
>>
>>I worked on the Air Force ASAT. We built the guidance processor for LTV
(600
>>hurtling KIPS worth of CMOS 8 bit processors). Once the kill vehicle
>>separated from the booster, its signature was very low. The divert motors
>>(multiple solid rockets that were fired when they pointed in the right
>>direction) didn't burn for very long.
>
> Low is not zero. The fact that it's passive IR helps. But then
>again, a satellite is a much easier target than a MIRV warhead.
>
Eric, low is below the noise floor. The nadir background has a temperature
of about 300K and is very complex. A relatively cool, small object is real
tough to pull out of that background.
--
"The lack of English proficiency has many consequences including
"occupational segregation" (Chun, 1980). For Asian-Pacific Americans it has
resulted in a narrow focus on college majors such as engineering
and the sciences as opposed to careers in law, journalism, and
social science which require strong communication skills"
Paul F Austin
pau...@digital.net
Paul F Austin
Eric Pinnell wrote in message
>some flying at all times, with the rest on Alert 5. It's conceivable
>that an enemy could get a sub close enough to hit a target before the
>aircraft could be airborne, but few enemy nations have such
>capability.
> And this type of system isn't designed for ICBMs currently. It
>might or might not work against them. But if an effective energy
>weapons system could be made to work on a 747, it would be cheaper and
>more effective than ANY other alternative. Even at half a billion a
>pop, you could afford hundreds of them for the cost of deploying even
>a modest conventional ABM system.
>
Directed energy weapons _won't_ be useful for terminal defense. There's a
reason the ABL is tasked with boost-phase defense: boosters are soft. RVs
are extremely tough objects _designed_ for extreme thermal enviroments. The
thermal environments they're designed for are the fireballs of nuclear
weapons. The thermal fluences the RVs are designed to survive are such that
they are un-lucrative targets for any DEW.
--
Conscience, that quiet voice that says "Someone may be watching"
Paul F Austin
pau...@digital.net
Steve Hix
epi...@REMOVETHISibm.net wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Sep 1999 22:56:20 GMT, jya...@iag.net (Jim Yanik) wrote:
>
>
> >Right now,I believe the COIL laser being used in the airborne laser is
around
> >1 MW. In a 747,so it can't be that hard to move around.
>
> Circa 1.5 MW.
>
>
> >On the aluminized mylar blankie,right now,the mirror optics have to be
> >cooled,very,very clean,made of beryllium/copper for thermal conductivity,so
> >your blankie is not going to stand up to a megawatt beam. and trying to keep
> >one clean in a combat environment,yeah,right.
> >I do not believe a space-based laser would be useable against a tank,though.
> >
> >Jim Yanik,NRA member
> >
>
> Why couldn't you use an orbiting laser on a tank? The tank can't
> exactly get out of the way,a nd it's not like you can't track a large
> vehicle like that from orbit.
Kinetic energy weapons, something like flying crowbars would
be cheaper and easier to use for killing tanks.
Ralph Savelsberg
> On Wed, 29 Sep 1999 11:16:09 +0200, Ralph Savelsberg
> <ra...@vortex.phys.tue.nl> wrote:
>
> >Move your high energy laser more than thousand kilometers away, put an 80 km of
> >atmosphere between the laser and the targetand then see whether it cuts through
> >armour. Every laserbeam diverges. That means that the power per surface area
> >decreases by a factor 4 every time you double the distance.
>
> Yes, but you can also focus the beam. And lasers don't follow
> square law, since their beams are coherent.
Well that is not interely true. No laser beam is completely coherent. It will
diverge. The solid angle will remain relatively small compared to other light
sources, but there is divergence. This means there simply is a limit to how much you
can focus the laser.
>
>
> > The limiting factors
> >for the divergence are the diameter of the targetting mirror, and the wavelength
> >of the light. You preferably need a big mirror and a small wavelength.
>
> But if you want to penetrate the atmosphere, you have to use long
> wavelength.
>
There is a small 'window' in which the absorption of the atmosphere is relatively
small, near 1 micrometer. The HF, DF lasers and the COIL operate at wavelengths near
this window. For smaller wavelengths the absorption increases, but hardly any high
energy laser operates at these smaller wavelengths. (many semiconductor lasers do and
so would a FEL, but I can hardly call these high energy.) A wavelength near this
region seems like a reasonable compromise.
>
> > Not
> >including atmospheric losses this translates to the following:
> >The energy needed from the laser (the product of the power and the dwell time)
> >equals pi times the hardness of the target (the amount of energy needed per
> >surface area to destroy it, typicaly 1 KJ per square centimeter) times the square
> >of the range times the square of the wavelength devided by the square of the
> >mirror diameter. (Equations are a bit difficult to translate into plain text I'm
> >afraid but if you like I could send you a one page word document on this subject
> >including the equation). Simply insert the other numbers (say 5 m for the
> >diameter, say 10000 km for the range , 1 micrometer for the wavelength) and
> >calculate the energy. Result:126 MJ (staggering amount isn't it?). With a 10 MW
> >energy source and a laser efficiency of say 30% that means almost 40 seconds (!)
> >of dwell time. To decrease this, less range is preferred. Less range means more
> >satellites.
> >
> >Ralph
>
> There's always tradoffs in designs, and lasers are no exception.
> Lower altitude gives you more punch on target, but makes you more
> vulnerable to counter attack, and limits your ability to stay on
> target because of your low orbit.
> Given enough power, a geosyncrhonous orbit laser can toast
> pretty much any ground unit.
> My guess is that the US will most likely field an array of ground
> based weapons, and airborne lasers on 747s. I expect to see the ABL
> improved to the point where it can kill ICBMs.
>
Power, that is were the problem is. As for laser weapons programs, I think the ABL
will provide a limited protection against theatre ballistic missiles at best. Apart
from ASAT ground based lasers are practiclly useless, so I don't expect many
developments there. I think that the problems involved and the lack of need for a
space based laser means that it will take a couple of decades at least, before an
operational system can be fielded, though a demonstrator will probably be built and
launched before that (that is if the US can convince Russia that the ABM treaty needs
modification or completely steps out of the ABM treaty.)
Ralph
Ralph Savelsberg
> Ralph Savelsberg <ra...@vortex.phys.tue.nl> wrote:
> >Eric Pinnell wrote:>
> >> On Tue, 28 Sep 1999 09:57:45 +0200, Ralph Savelsberg
> >> <ra...@vortex.phys.tue.nl> wrote:
> >>snip:
> >The energy needed from the laser (the product of the power and the dwell time)
> >equals pi times the hardness of the target (the amount of energy needed per
> >surface area to destroy it, typicaly 1 KJ per square centimeter) times the square
> >of the range times the square of the wavelength devided by the square of the
> >mirror diameter. (Equations are a bit difficult to translate into plain text I'm
> >afraid but if you like I could send you a one page word document on this subject
> >including the equation). Simply insert the other numbers (say 5 m for the
> >diameter, say 10000 km for the range , 1 micrometer for the wavelength) and
> >calculate the energy. Result:126 MJ (staggering amount isn't it?). With a 10 MW
> >energy source and a laser efficiency of say 30% that means almost 40 seconds (!)
> >of dwell time. To decrease this, less range is preferred. Less range means more
> >satellites. >Ralph
>
> 10000Km makes for an easy example but it's an odd range, neither
> geosynch (about 30000Km) nor below the Van Allen belt. 300Km ,ight be
> more functional but either needs lots of satellites or mirrors thus
> increasing the range or limited operational opportunities even in
> polar orbit. Looks like one needs a truly stealthy laser station
> to deliver unanticipated strikes. Very complicated.
> BTW atest AVLeak has words on airborne laser- demonstrated 'useful
> power levels' for 'useful periods of time' with 'useful pointing
> accuracy'. Still don't see how USA can afford using these things on
> Combat Air Patrol. Let's see, a minimum (and I do mean minimum) of
> 4 aircraft to maintain 1 on station - gigabucks!
> Walt BJ ftr plt ret
My calculator doesn't care what numbers I feed it. (Actaully, if you know the numbers
for 10000 km, calculating the numbers for other ranges doesn't require a calculator
for most people . Make it 30000 km and simply multiply the energy by nine to get the
result.) I used 10000 km not for the altitude of the satellites orbit, but as a
measure of the distance between the laser and the target. It is not reasonable to
expect the laser to be directly (I mean vertically) over the launch site . A low
earth orbit would mean a large number of lasers. A high orbit (especially
geosynchronous) means you need a lot of power, so a very big laser.
Anyway, the amount of money needed to make it work is likely to be more staggering
than the amount of energy needed.
Ralph
Ralph Savelsberg
Yip, lasers really do their most destructive work during the boost phase. With
1.5 MW (out of 3 MW planned) for the ABL, you'd need to get pretty close to
the launch site to make it work. The longer boost phase of an ICBM is an
advantage. You have more time to destroy the target, so the dwell time can be
pretty long. For TBMs, the time you have between the moment the missile comes
into view and the end of the boost phase is far less, meaning that the maximum
range is more limited. Some calculations I've done ( based on some info on the
SS-18 and a 3 MW laser) suggest that the minimum distance to the launch site
would have to be around 1000 km. I wouldn't want to be aboard the B-747 that
tries to get this close to Russian or Chinese missile sites.
Ralph
Eric Pinnell
>Kinetic energy weapons, something like flying crowbars would
>be cheaper and easier to use for killing tanks.
But such orbital weapons require being thrown into space. Assume a
project THOR projectile weighs 1000 pounds, it would take a million
bucks to put it into orbit, in order to take out a four million dollar
tank. And this assumes that THOR happens to be in the right place to
attack the tank from low orbit. IOW, it's not that cost effective
compared to a laser, which, if designed properly, would have an
unlimited capacity to destroy things.
Eric Pinnell
<ra...@vortex.phys.tue.nl> wrote:
>Well that is not interely true. No laser beam is completely coherent. It will
>diverge. The solid angle will remain relatively small compared to other light
>sources, but there is divergence. This means there simply is a limit to how much you
>can focus the laser.
True, but you can still get a lot more focussed source than with
regular light. And if a beam gets too wide at a given range, the only
real option is to up the weapon power.
>There is a small 'window' in which the absorption of the atmosphere is relatively
>small, near 1 micrometer. The HF, DF lasers and the COIL operate at wavelengths near
>this window. For smaller wavelengths the absorption increases, but hardly any high
>energy laser operates at these smaller wavelengths. (many semiconductor lasers do and
>so would a FEL, but I can hardly call these high energy.) A wavelength near this
>region seems like a reasonable compromise.
I always thought the other window was in UV, specifically UV-B.
>Power, that is were the problem is. As for laser weapons programs, I think the ABL
>will provide a limited protection against theatre ballistic missiles at best. Apart
>from ASAT ground based lasers are practiclly useless, so I don't expect many
>developments there.
Not if the laser is put on top of mountains that generally are
above the clouds.
> I think that the problems involved and the lack of need for a
>space based laser means that it will take a couple of decades at least, before an
>operational system can be fielded, though a demonstrator will probably be built and
>launched before that (that is if the US can convince Russia that the ABM treaty needs
>modification or completely steps out of the ABM treaty.)
>
>Ralph
Strictly speaking, the ABM treaty with with the Soviet Union, which
no longer exists. Legally, the US can go ahead any time they want.
Politically, they risk alienating the nationalists in Russia.
FWIW, the proposal to develop a chemical based orbiting laser is
on the order of $ 20 billion. That's just R&D alone.
Eric Pinnell
<pau...@digital.net> wrote:
>Directed energy weapons _won't_ be useful for terminal defense. There's a
>reason the ABL is tasked with boost-phase defense: boosters are soft. RVs
>are extremely tough objects _designed_ for extreme thermal enviroments. The
>thermal environments they're designed for are the fireballs of nuclear
>weapons. The thermal fluences the RVs are designed to survive are such that
>they are un-lucrative targets for any DEW.
Not if if you have sufficient power behind the energy weapon.
The RVs are designed to withstand the heat of re-entry, which is why
frying them is tough.
But 10 Megwatts is a hell of a beam. If you focussed it on a
square meter warhead, it would mean an energy density 10,000 times
that of ordinary sunlight. Yow!
Terminal defense could be accomplished by a sandcaster or else an
air breathing scramjet powered SAM.
wal...@oneimage.com
>> exactly get out of the way,a nd it's not like you can't track a large
>> vehicle like that from orbit.
>
>be cheaper and easier to use for killing tanks.
Not like you can't track a "large vehicle" like a tank from orbit?
There's one hell of a lot of difference between finding a tank on
a super hi-resolution photo taken from orbit and finding one in
real time not from a say 150 mile KH11 orbit but from LEO or
synch. At 250 miles up (1320000 feet) a 30 foot tank (Big!) will
subtend 5 seconds of arc. (arctan 30/1320000).
A plain old iron rod say 5" in diameter by 6 feet long weighing oh
about 440 pounds with a GPS midcourse guidance and terminal homing
using mm-wave or IR seeker would spear right through any tank ever
made. And you wouldn't even need a space station - an old Titan III
could loft 10 tons or so of these homing crowbars half-way around
the world in 30 minutes from launch.
Again any orbiting vehicle is terribly vulnerable to a 'shotgun'
attack. A high and narrow elliptical trajectory intercepting the
earth's surface somewhere 'benign' would minimize 'collateral
damage' - what we used to call 'oops -sorry 'bout that!' And here
is where old Minuteman and Polaris missiles could be used.
Bev Clark/Steve Gallacci
>square meter warhead, it would mean an energy density 10,000 times
>that of ordinary sunlight. Yow!
> Terminal defense could be accomplished by a sandcaster or else an
>air breathing scramjet powered SAM.
>
oodles of energy, or even worse, in close in terminal defense, the
reentry plasma sheath is somewhat of a shield in its own right?
"Sandcasters"? Sounds like you've been playing "Traveler" too long.
An airbreathing SAM is too slow for ABM duties, or at least need a longer
development time than already proven technologies.
Overall, you seem enraputered with all the really neat goshwow technology
that is still near the edge of sci-fi wishful thinking. Not a bad thing,
but until there is some clearer demonstrations that they work in the real
world, your strident defense of it all is a bit wearisome.
Personally, I have real doubts about anything like a godsat happening
within my lifetime. (and considering the doubious political potential of
such a system, it would not be an issue I'd like to live to see)
Maury Markowitz
epi...@REMOVETHISibm.net wrote:
>> Why couldn't you use an orbiting laser on a tank? The tank can't
>> exactly get out of the way,a nd it's not like you can't track a large
>> vehicle like that from orbit.
Uhh, you can't easily track a target like that from space, and the tank
and easily get out of the way. The issue is response time, given a beam
footprint of (say) the meter range from (say) and a tank moving at 30km/h
represented by a 5m circle, the tank moves out from under the beam in about
1/2 a second. That means that your whole system - detector, tragetting and
steering - has to respond in less than that time. Not easy to do at all
when you're talking about something the size of a laser, and
(realistically) a ground controller somewhere else in the link.
Moreover the detection issue is very difficult. Detecting meter sized
targets with radar from reasonable ranges is not at all easy. Although you
can do it with SAR that requires longish timelines to integrate, and out
goes you time turnaround again.
Simply put it's not at all easy, and hardly cost effective.
>Kinetic energy weapons, something like flying crowbars would
>be cheaper and easier to use for killing tanks.
Kinetic energy weapons, like the HVR, are FAR cheaper and easier than any
orbit based weapon. In the time it takes to deorbit the "crowbars" the
tanks are long gone, and hitting a force of tanks is going to take a LOT of
crowbars. Moreover they're pretty expensive crowbars that can de-orbit
themselves, survive re-entry, do terminal guidance, and kill a tank.
Larry was just not thinking things through (not all that untypical
though).
Maury
L'acrobat
Eric Pinnell <epi...@ibm.net> wrote in message
news:37f392d1...@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net...
> >be cheaper and easier to use for killing tanks.
>
> project THOR projectile weighs 1000 pounds, it would take a million
> bucks to put it into orbit, in order to take out a four million dollar
> tank. And this assumes that THOR happens to be in the right place to
> attack the tank from low orbit. IOW, it's not that cost effective
> compared to a laser, which, if designed properly, would have an
> unlimited capacity to destroy things.
The unlimited capacity to destroy things is probably why the world won't
tolerate such a system being fielded by the US - I suspect that no country
would trade with the US if they tried to field such a system.
THOR has built in limits and can be deployed in such a way to make it
defensive.
Ralph Savelsberg
> On Thu, 30 Sep 1999 09:23:34 +0200, Ralph Savelsberg
> <ra...@vortex.phys.tue.nl> wrote:
>
> >Well that is not interely true. No laser beam is completely coherent. It will
> >diverge. The solid angle will remain relatively small compared to other light
> >sources, but there is divergence. This means there simply is a limit to how much you
> >can focus the laser.
>
> True, but you can still get a lot more focussed source than with
> regular light. And if a beam gets too wide at a given range, the only
> real option is to up the weapon power.
>
Absolutely right. Tim Allen would say:'More power!!'
>
> >There is a small 'window' in which the absorption of the atmosphere is relatively
> >small, near 1 micrometer. The HF, DF lasers and the COIL operate at wavelengths near
> >this window. For smaller wavelengths the absorption increases, but hardly any high
> >energy laser operates at these smaller wavelengths. (many semiconductor lasers do and
> >so would a FEL, but I can hardly call these high energy.) A wavelength near this
> >region seems like a reasonable compromise.
>
> I always thought the other window was in UV, specifically UV-B.
That is probably right. Unfortunately I don't have the numbers right now, they are
probably burried under one of the many piles of paper sitting on my desk.
>
>
> >Power, that is were the problem is. As for laser weapons programs, I think the ABL
> >will provide a limited protection against theatre ballistic missiles at best. Apart
> >from ASAT ground based lasers are practiclly useless, so I don't expect many
> >developments there.
>
> Not if the laser is put on top of mountains that generally are
> above the clouds.
That would help somewhat, though I still don't know for what the ground based laser would
be used. It's practically useless against incoming weapons (shielded to survive re-entry)
and using it in conjunction with a bunch of orbiting mirrors (as suggested during SDI)
requires so much power, you would probably have to built an additional power plant for
each laser you build.
>
>
> > I think that the problems involved and the lack of need for a
> >space based laser means that it will take a couple of decades at least, before an
> >operational system can be fielded, though a demonstrator will probably be built and
> >launched before that (that is if the US can convince Russia that the ABM treaty needs
> >modification or completely steps out of the ABM treaty.)
> >
> >Ralph
>
> Strictly speaking, the ABM treaty with with the Soviet Union, which
> no longer exists. Legally, the US can go ahead any time they want.
> Politically, they risk alienating the nationalists in Russia.
> FWIW, the proposal to develop a chemical based orbiting laser is
> on the order of $ 20 billion. That's just R&D alone.
> Eric Pinnell
>
> Qui Desiderat Pacem, Preparaet Bellum
> (Let Him Who Desire Peace, Prepare For War)
>
> Vegitius - 3rd Century BC
We've discussed the ABM treaty before. I'm not a diplomat, a historian nore a politician,
so I don't know the details of which treaties that applied to the SU, still apply to
Russia. Whatever the case, like you wrote, stepping out of the ABM treaty would not go
well in Russia.
$20 billion is quite a heap of money for a system for which there is relatively little
(percieved) need and which can be described as technologically risky.
Ralph
D. Scott Ferrin
>That would help somewhat, though I still don't know for what the ground based laser would
>be used. It's practically useless against incoming weapons (shielded to survive re-entry)
>and using it in conjunction with a bunch of orbiting mirrors (as suggested during SDI)
>requires so much power, you would probably have to built an additional power plant for
>each laser you build.
Wouldn't the laser even mess up the RV enough to let aerodynamic
heating do the rest? And why not just use a neutral particle beam to
mess up the RV's warhead anyway?
Ralph Savelsberg
I don't think so. Frankly I don't know how much an RV can take, so I can't give you any
conclusive answers based on my own calculations. However, according to most of the
literature I've read on the subject of laser weapons, they only work during boost phase (and
perhaps post-boost), unless almost unimaginable amounts of energy are available for the
laser.
Neutral particle beams are even more troublesome than lasers. Through collisions of the
particles with the molecules in the air, your particle beam would lose a very large amount of
its energy. Also, the easiest way to accelerate the particles would be using a very strong
magnetic field. However, neutral particles cannot be accelerated this way. Simply put, in
case of atoms the core would like to go in the opposite direction of the electrons and the
end result would be practically zero. There has been talk of neutronbeams (probably in Buck
Rogers or something similar), but I have no idea on how neutrons could be accelerated to
speeds sufficient to form a strong beamCharged particle beams might be an idea, using for
instance only the electrons. However, their energy is also absorbed (very efficiently as I
know from personal experience) by the ambient air. One suggestion for producing a beam of
neutral particles (I've read this in a book on SDI some time ago) is accelerating the charged
particles (the atom cores and the electrons) seperatly, and then allowing them to come
together to form neutral particles again. In practice this would be extremely difficult, if
at all possible. With particle beams we are moving further towards the realm of SF than we
already were when discussing the space based lasers.
Ralph
BTW, I know this thread was about orbital kills using small metal projectiles, but now we're
talking about lasers once again. I hope the origial poster of the ball-bearings story isn't
offended by this.
Eric Pinnell
<sibe...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>The unlimited capacity to destroy things is probably why the world won't
>tolerate such a system being fielded by the US - I suspect that no country
>would trade with the US if they tried to field such a system.
Not trade with the biggest economy in the world? Better yet, what
if the US decides they you will trade with it, or it might roast you?
>THOR has built in limits and can be deployed in such a way to make it
>defensive.
Hogwash. Launcha preemtive strike on the other guy by dropping
THOR projectiles on his key infrastructure. Who says you gotta target
a tank?
Eric Pinnell
>
>Not like you can't track a "large vehicle" like a tank from orbit?
>There's one hell of a lot of difference between finding a tank on
>a super hi-resolution photo taken from orbit and finding one in
>real time not from a say 150 mile KH11 orbit but from LEO or
>synch. At 250 miles up (1320000 feet) a 30 foot tank (Big!) will
>subtend 5 seconds of arc. (arctan 30/1320000).
What you do is field low orbit high resolution satellites with real
time digital datalinks. You can then use this satellite to find the
targets, whose coordinates are uploaded to the THOR projectiles by
datalink.
>A plain old iron rod say 5" in diameter by 6 feet long weighing oh
>about 440 pounds with a GPS midcourse guidance and terminal homing
>using mm-wave or IR seeker would spear right through any tank ever
>made. And you wouldn't even need a space station - an old Titan III
>could loft 10 tons or so of these homing crowbars half-way around
>the world in 30 minutes from launch.
Ah, but the cost is prohibitive for the THOR, until such times as
cheaper lift technoligies appear.
>Again any orbiting vehicle is terribly vulnerable to a 'shotgun'
>attack. A high and narrow elliptical trajectory intercepting the
>earth's surface somewhere 'benign' would minimize 'collateral
>damage' - what we used to call 'oops -sorry 'bout that!' And here
>is where old Minuteman and Polaris missiles could be used.
> Walt BJ ftr plt ret
The only problem I see with a shotgun attack is in getting accurate
enough targetting to be able to fire teh projectiles in a very narrow
area. And as I mentioned, the target may decide to move.
Eric Pinnell
<ra...@vortex.phys.tue.nl> wrote:
>
>That would help somewhat, though I still don't know for what the ground based laser would
>be used. It's practically useless against incoming weapons (shielded to survive re-entry)
>and using it in conjunction with a bunch of orbiting mirrors (as suggested during SDI)
>requires so much power, you would probably have to built an additional power plant for
>each laser you build.
Again, if you have a powerful enough weapon, all the ablative
shielding on the nosecone won't survive the thermal shock. They key
is BIG amounts of power. Multi-megwatt instead of multi-kilowatt.
>We've discussed the ABM treaty before. I'm not a diplomat, a historian nore a politician,
>so I don't know the details of which treaties that applied to the SU, still apply to
>Russia. Whatever the case, like you wrote, stepping out of the ABM treaty would not go
>well in Russia.
>$20 billion is quite a heap of money for a system for which there is relatively little
>(percieved) need and which can be described as technologically risky.
>
>Ralph
>
Not really. $20 billion is what the F22 cost. Nowadays, ALL
major weapons programs take tens of billions.
Eric Pinnell
Ferrin) wrote:
>Wouldn't the laser even mess up the RV enough to let aerodynamic
>heating do the rest? And why not just use a neutral particle beam to
>mess up the RV's warhead anyway?
Because neutral particle beams (such as Sipapu) won't work in the
atmosphere.
Eric Pinnell
(Maury Markowitz) wrote:
> Uhh, you can't easily track a target like that from space, and the tank
>and easily get out of the way. The issue is response time, given a beam
>footprint of (say) the meter range from (say) and a tank moving at 30km/h
>represented by a 5m circle, the tank moves out from under the beam in about
>1/2 a second. That means that your whole system - detector, tragetting and
>steering - has to respond in less than that time. Not easy to do at all
>when you're talking about something the size of a laser, and
>(realistically) a ground controller somewhere else in the link.
The system would auto-track and attack any target. Remember that
from 300 miles up, you've got 1/1000th of a second delay in signal
processing each way, so it's easy to measure the location of a tank
and fry it.
> Moreover the detection issue is very difficult. Detecting meter sized
>targets with radar from reasonable ranges is not at all easy. Although you
>can do it with SAR that requires longish timelines to integrate, and out
>goes you time turnaround again.
You could radar, IR or just plain optics. All you want to do is be
able to see the target. Once seen, it's easy to kill/
> Kinetic energy weapons, like the HVR, are FAR cheaper and easier than any
>orbit based weapon. In the time it takes to deorbit the "crowbars" the
>tanks are long gone, and hitting a force of tanks is going to take a LOT of
>crowbars. Moreover they're pretty expensive crowbars that can de-orbit
>themselves, survive re-entry, do terminal guidance, and kill a tank.
>
> Larry was just not thinking things through (not all that untypical
>though).
>
>Maury
Actually, you haven't thought things through. The problem with
THOR is targetting. Fine. All you need is an orbiting targetting
laser that can be used to designate targets. Or a recon drone. or
some grunt on the ground with a designator.
Eric Pinnell
<ra...@vortex.phys.tue.nl> wrote:
>Neutral particle beams are even more troublesome than lasers. Through collisions of the
>particles with the molecules in the air, your particle beam would lose a very large amount of
>its energy. Also, the easiest way to accelerate the particles would be using a very strong
>magnetic field. However, neutral particles cannot be accelerated this way. Simply put, in
>case of atoms the core would like to go in the opposite direction of the electrons and the
>end result would be practically zero.
Sipapu solve this problem by stripping the electrons off of
hydrogen atoms, and accelerating both the particle streams
simultanoeusly. They were then combined in a chamber and
continued on their merry way.
> There has been talk of neutronbeams (probably in Buck
>Rogers or something similar), but I have no idea on how neutrons could be accelerated to
>speeds sufficient to form a strong beamCharged particle beams might be an idea, using for
>instance only the electrons. However, their energy is also absorbed (very efficiently as I
>know from personal experience) by the ambient air. One suggestion for producing a beam of
>neutral particles (I've read this in a book on SDI some time ago) is accelerating the charged
>particles (the atom cores and the electrons) seperatly, and then allowing them to come
>together to form neutral particles again. In practice this would be extremely difficult, if
>at all possible. With particle beams we are moving further towards the realm of SF than we
>already were when discussing the space based lasers.
>
>Ralph
>
>BTW, I know this thread was about orbital kills using small metal projectiles, but now we're
>talking about lasers once again. I hope the origial poster of the ball-bearings story isn't
>offended by this.
Thread drift. There's a novel idea ;-)
Eric Pinnell
Gallacci) wrote:
>Uhm, what about the ablative surfaces, which specifically protects against
>oodles of energy, or even worse, in close in terminal defense, the
>reentry plasma sheath is somewhat of a shield in its own right?
>
>"Sandcasters"? Sounds like you've been playing "Traveler" too long.
Trouble is, such weapons are under development. Not so much
Sci-Fi anymore.
>An airbreathing SAM is too slow for ABM duties, or at least need a longer
>development time than already proven technologies.
No, use a scramjet motor. At Mach 15+, it's plenty fast to hit an
incoming warhead.
>Overall, you seem enraputered with all the really neat goshwow technology
>that is still near the edge of sci-fi wishful thinking. Not a bad thing,
>but until there is some clearer demonstrations that they work in the real
>world, your strident defense of it all is a bit wearisome.
You have to look at future technologies, because existing
technology either don't work or are simply not cost effective for the
defender.
>Personally, I have real doubts about anything like a godsat happening
>within my lifetime. (and considering the doubious political potential of
>such a system, it would not be an issue I'd like to live to see)
Well, just remember that before SDI, the most powerful laser they
had was in the 5 kilowatt range. They can now make lasers a thousand
times more poweful. If this continues, you'll get weapons that are so
powerful that they can fry anything from orbit,
Paul F Austin
Eric Pinnell wrote
> "Paul F Austin" wrote:
>
>>Directed energy weapons _won't_ be useful for terminal defense. There's a
>>reason the ABL is tasked with boost-phase defense: boosters are soft. RVs
>>are extremely tough objects _designed_ for extreme thermal enviroments.
The
>>thermal environments they're designed for are the fireballs of nuclear
>>weapons. The thermal fluences the RVs are designed to survive are such
that
>>they are un-lucrative targets for any DEW.
>
> Not if if you have sufficient power behind the energy weapon.
>The RVs are designed to withstand the heat of re-entry, which is why
>frying them is tough.
What you're describing amounts to "how hard is your target? let there be a
LASER 10x tougher". Eric, you don't know what you're talking about.
The thermal loads that modern RVs are designed to are _not_ the re-entry
loads. They are designed to survive and function after a large nuclear burst
at close range. The people who work on orbital LASER systems know what those
limits are. That's why those systems are designed for _boost phase_
intercept.
Think back on the system proposed by SDIO: orbital DEW or KE interceptors
for boost-phase intercept, a mid-course EXO interceptor layer designed to
engage post-boost RV against a cold space background and finally there's an
ENDO interceptor layer to catch the leakers. All _three_ layers were
required to even begin to promise "no leakers" defense of CONUS.
If orbital LASERs had the infinite puissance that you've fantasize, do you
think that competent system engineers would add the two other (very
expensive) layers for funsies?
The boost phase layer justified its existence because each kill of an ICBM
prior to busing has great payoff with 5-10 nuclear weapons killed with each
booster. Once boost phase is over, the RVs are coasting against a 4K
background. Don't you think that someone might have thought to put the many
LEO LASERs to further use by having the ones that _weren't_ over the launch
area roll over and shoot at the RVs? They _did_ think of that, ran the
numbers and found out that a LASER has low lethality against an RV.
> But 10 Megwatts is a hell of a beam. If you focussed it on a
>square meter warhead, it would mean an energy density 10,000 times
>that of ordinary sunlight. Yow!
Read "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons". Run some of the numbers. Compare them
with 1KW/cm^2.
In any case, large aperature LASERs aren't "focused". They present a
collimated beam that starts out the size of the launching optics and
diverges with distance.
> Terminal defense could be accomplished by a sandcaster or else an
>air breathing scramjet powered SAM.
Richard Garwin dreamed up the "sandcaster". You're going to have a hard time
selling it to the neighbors since although sand particles are lethal enough
to a M10 RV at 100,000 feet the way you _get_ the sand to 100,000 feet is
with a nuclear weapon of your own. Going off at ground level. Hence the
neighbors' complaints.
Think spears. Another thing that Garwin dreamed up were _very tall_ poles to
impale the RV before it got within the lethal radius of a very hard silo. Of
course that doesn't do your house much good since a nuclear cookie salvage
fuzed a thousand feet up is indistinguishable from a ground burst in your
living room.
As far as SCRAMJET powered interceptors, why bother? Rockets work perfectly
well and are a lot simpler. You're going to have more than enough
difficulties with the tracking RADAR, the engagement control system and the
seeker that you don't want propulsion headaches on top of it.
L'acrobat
> On Fri, 1 Oct 1999 13:12:52 +1000, "L'acrobat"
> <sibe...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>
>
> >The unlimited capacity to destroy things is probably why the world won't
> >tolerate such a system being fielded by the US - I suspect that no
country
> >would trade with the US if they tried to field such a system.
>
> Not trade with the biggest economy in the world? Better yet, what
> if the US decides they you will trade with it, or it might roast you?
Either way the US collapses, as soon as the US tries to field such a weapon
the US would most likely be alone - if they are allowed to field it then
they are too dangerous and the rest of the world would take steps.
>
>
> >THOR has built in limits and can be deployed in such a way to make it
> >defensive.
>
> Hogwash. Launcha preemtive strike on the other guy by dropping
> THOR projectiles on his key infrastructure. Who says you gotta target
> a tank?
Deploy in Geo synch orbit over the US, who's infrastructure can you hit -
defensive.
Eric Pinnell
<sibe...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>>
>> Not trade with the biggest economy in the world? Better yet, what
>> if the US decides they you will trade with it, or it might roast you?
>
>Either way the US collapses, as soon as the US tries to field such a weapon
>the US would most likely be alone - if they are allowed to field it then
>they are too dangerous and the rest of the world would take steps.
What steps? Throw rocks? Remember, we're talking about the US,
who has the capability of killing the entire planet several times
over. Face facts, teh "international community" can do little if the
Untied States decides to act however it wishes.
>Deploy in Geo synch orbit over the US, who's infrastructure can you hit -
>defensive.
Anyone's. Since you can fire the thursters to slow the weapons
down to go into a lower orbit, thus letting you position the weapons
any place over the globe.
Eric Pinnell
<pau...@digital.net> wrote:
>What you're describing amounts to "how hard is your target? let there be a
>LASER 10x tougher". Eric, you don't know what you're talking about.
>
>The thermal loads that modern RVs are designed to are _not_ the re-entry
>loads. They are designed to survive and function after a large nuclear burst
>at close range. The people who work on orbital LASER systems know what those
>limits are. That's why those systems are designed for _boost phase_
>intercept.
A large nuclear burst at close range would incinerate any
material object, assuming you were within the zone of total
destruction. In case you didn't know, the heat of a nuclear fireball
is many millions of degrees, and no structure can withstand a close
range blast.
>Think back on the system proposed by SDIO: orbital DEW or KE interceptors
>for boost-phase intercept, a mid-course EXO interceptor layer designed to
>engage post-boost RV against a cold space background and finally there's an
>ENDO interceptor layer to catch the leakers. All _three_ layers were
>required to even begin to promise "no leakers" defense of CONUS.
This is primarily due to the fact that the weapons are
projectiles, not energy weapons. None of the energy weapons developed
by SDI were ever deployed, except on the ground for testing purposes.
>If orbital LASERs had the infinite puissance that you've fantasize, do you
>think that competent system engineers would add the two other (very
>expensive) layers for funsies?
Not at all. But remember that SDI was created during the 80s, and
it's nearly two decades after the fact. Much has changed in laser
weaponry since then.
>The boost phase layer justified its existence because each kill of an ICBM
>prior to busing has great payoff with 5-10 nuclear weapons killed with each
>booster. Once boost phase is over, the RVs are coasting against a 4K
>background. Don't you think that someone might have thought to put the many
>LEO LASERs to further use by having the ones that _weren't_ over the launch
>area roll over and shoot at the RVs? They _did_ think of that, ran the
>numbers and found out that a LASER has low lethality against an RV.
No, the problem has always been weapon power. They have only
recently been able to make a megawatt plus class laser. And I'd like
to point out something else. If the RV is indeed undetectable, then
*ANY* weapon system will not function post boost phase, since by
definition you can't attack the undetectable object.
High powered LASERS are the *ONLY* effective means of attacking a
target during boost phaser. Orbiting missile killer platforms would
require the deployment of vast numbers of platforms, and they could
easily be overwhelmed, since only a portion of the platforms would be
in range at any given moment.
>Read "The Effects of Nuclear Weapons". Run some of the numbers. Compare them
>with 1KW/cm^2.
>
>In any case, large aperature LASERs aren't "focused". They present a
>collimated beam that starts out the size of the launching optics and
>diverges with distance.
All lasers have mirrors that are capable of shaping and focussing
the beam.
>Richard Garwin dreamed up the "sandcaster". You're going to have a hard time
>selling it to the neighbors since although sand particles are lethal enough
>to a M10 RV at 100,000 feet the way you _get_ the sand to 100,000 feet is
>with a nuclear weapon of your own. Going off at ground level. Hence the
>neighbors' complaints.
Well, technically, they plan to use some sort of super dense ball
bearings, but the principle is the same.
>Think spears. Another thing that Garwin dreamed up were _very tall_ poles to
>impale the RV before it got within the lethal radius of a very hard silo. Of
>course that doesn't do your house much good since a nuclear cookie salvage
>fuzed a thousand feet up is indistinguishable from a ground burst in your
>living room.
Hey, not all ideas from Sci-Fi have any real world use.
>
>As far as SCRAMJET powered interceptors, why bother? Rockets work perfectly
>well and are a lot simpler. You're going to have more than enough
>difficulties with the tracking RADAR, the engagement control system and the
>seeker that you don't want propulsion headaches on top of it.
The advantage of the scramjet powered SAM is range and altitude for
a given size of missile. Without having to carry an oxydizer around,
you increase the SAMs range or payload.
Also, a SAM that requires an oxydizer must use a solid fuel, which
has a lower specific impulse than liquid fuels.
Eric Archer
heard of it and it sounds kinda neat.
Eric Pinnell wrote:
> On Thu, 30 Sep 1999 00:03:55 -0700, se...@macol.net (Steve Hix) wrote:
>
> >Kinetic energy weapons, something like flying crowbars would
> >be cheaper and easier to use for killing tanks.
>
> But such orbital weapons require being thrown into space. Assume a
> project THOR projectile weighs 1000 pounds, it would take a million
> bucks to put it into orbit, in order to take out a four million dollar
> tank. And this assumes that THOR happens to be in the right place to
> attack the tank from low orbit. IOW, it's not that cost effective
> compared to a laser, which, if designed properly, would have an
> unlimited capacity to destroy things.
>
> Eric Pinnell
>
> Qui Desiderat Pacem, Preparaet Bellum
> (Let Him Who Desire Peace, Prepare For War)
>
> Vegitius - 3rd Century BC
--
Dr. Eric Archer far...@ucsd.edu
+----------------------+------------------------------------+
| Home: | Office: |
| 7928 Westbury Ave. | Southwest Fisheries Science Center |
| San Diego, CA 92126 | P.O. Box 271 |
| 858-695-3552 | La Jolla, CA 92038 |
| | 858-546-7072, 7003 (FAX) |
+----------------------+------------------------------------+
| "Marine Biologist?!...I didn't even know that WAS a job!" |
| - George Costanza |
| |
| "Get off the cross, we need the wood." |
| - Tori Amos |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
Jim Yanik
>
>Qui Desiderat Pacem, Preparaet Bellum
>(Let Him Who Desire Peace, Prepare For War)
>
>Vegitius - 3rd Century BC
Actually a THOR projectile does not need to be so heavy. All it needs is is to
be able to survive re-entry(ablative shield?),and carry a terminal homing
seeker to find the tank.Maybe a pound.The extreme velocity will do the rest.
You could use UAV's to locate and up-link initial co-ordinates for the strike.
Jim Yanik,NRA member
wal...@oneimage.com
>On Sat, 2 Oct 1999 08:31:39 +1000, "L'acrobat"><sibe...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>>>Deploy in Geo synch orbit over the US, who's infrastructure
can you hit - defensive.
Anyone's. Since you can fire the thursters to slow the weapons
>down to go into a lower orbit, thus letting you position the weapons
>any place over the globe.
True, but deltaVee doesn't come for free, esp when you're talking about
many tons of vehicle. Polar orbit is better but you need more than one
station. Still, anything up there is an open target saying 'hit me!'
Walt Bj ftr plt ret
L'acrobat
> >> if the US decides they you will trade with it, or it might roast you?
> >
> >Either way the US collapses, as soon as the US tries to field such a
weapon
> >the US would most likely be alone - if they are allowed to field it then
> >they are too dangerous and the rest of the world would take steps.
>
> What steps? Throw rocks? Remember, we're talking about the US,
> who has the capability of killing the entire planet several times
> over. Face facts, teh "international community" can do little if the
> Untied States decides to act however it wishes.
The US dies too with nukes, so they are of limited use as a "conquer the
world" weapon - a Laser based system (as you describe) is a weapon of
conquest, what could the world do about it? - crash the US economy in peace
time (given the choice between a depression and allowing any one country the
ability to rule the world, the depression wins every time) or in war, deploy
it's own weapons of mass destruction (Lasers are nice but of little use
against Bio weapons, most of which are easy to produce and deploy and very
hard to trace back to an "owner".
>
>
> >Deploy in Geo synch orbit over the US, who's infrastructure can you hit -
> >defensive.
>
> Anyone's. Since you can fire the thursters to slow the weapons
> down to go into a lower orbit, thus letting you position the weapons
> any place over the globe.
But take too much time to get there - no use as a first strike surprise
weapon and can be tracked to see what they will hit, allowing a potential
"victim" to launch their own weapons - much safer than letting any country
deploy a light speed, unlimited use weapon.
John Keeney
>On 28 Sep 1999 21:54:24 GMT, bev...@netcom.com (Bev Clark/Steve
>Gallacci) wrote:
>
>
>>bad example. An aceteline torch can cut through steel plate too, but it
>>makes a lousey weapon.
>
> Well, let's see how you feel if I hold the torch to your head ;-)
>
>
>>And an aluninized mylar, down-filled quilt has a good chance of
>>protecting either a tank or a person from even a 10MW laser.
>
> Actually, this is strictly not true. Once you get into extremely
>high powered lasers, the mirror will still heat up a bit because it
>doesn't reflect 100% of the light. And putting a mirror on your tank
>causes all sorts of problems, like being easily detected by anyone
>with an IR sensor.
>
>
>>Energy on target physics makes lasers particularly poor weapons in
>>pratical field conditions.
>
> The problems have always been getting enough power on target. You
>need multi-kilowatt systems even to do something like shoot down a
>helicopter. And even then, the systems I've seen use hydorgen
>fluoride as a reactant. Not exactly the kind of crap you want your
>grunts messing around with.
>
>
>>
>>But, ultimalty, until there is some really good/realistic high-power laser
>>demos, we are still just batting around speculation at best, or wishfull
>>thinking/fantasy scenarios at worst. I'm certainly not going to loose
>>sleep over it.
>
> I don't see battlefield lasers being practical for a while.
>However, it is conceivable the US could start deploying >10 MW
>orbiting lasers in a decade or so. And that would change everything
>at the strategic level.
>
>Eric Pinnell
>
>Qui Desiderat Pacem, Preparaet Bellum
>(Let Him Who Desire Peace, Prepare For War)
>
>Vegitius - 3rd Century BC
Back in the 70's the US Army was playing with an APC mounted laser
-shooting down Firebees as I recall. It was actually a twin APC system,
one shooter, one power supply. What kind of system was this thing?
In the same time frame there was an Air Force NKC-135 (137?) blasting away
at Sidewinders, what was it?? That planes in Dayton now.
Paul F Austin
Eric Pinnell wrote
>"Paul F Austin" wrote:
>
>material object, assuming you were within the zone of total
>destruction. In case you didn't know, the heat of a nuclear fireball
>is many millions of degrees, and no structure can withstand a close
>range blast.
Like I said before: you don't know what you're talking about. Study up.
Spartan warheads (MT range) were optimized for X-ray kills of incoming RVs.
Read up on the mechanisms. You may learn something. I would suggest George
Messenger's book (chapter 4).
>
>
>>Think back on the system proposed by SDIO: orbital DEW or KE interceptors
>>for boost-phase intercept, a mid-course EXO interceptor layer designed to
>>engage post-boost RV against a cold space background and finally there's
an
>>ENDO interceptor layer to catch the leakers. All _three_ layers were
>>required to even begin to promise "no leakers" defense of CONUS.
>
> This is primarily due to the fact that the weapons are
>projectiles, not energy weapons. None of the energy weapons developed
>by SDI were ever deployed, except on the ground for testing purposes.
>
_None_ of the SDI systems were even prototyped. The SDIO architecture
projected technology for _all_ systems rather than monomaniacally focusing
of "my favorite coool weapon". Those people know a great deal more than you
do. You would learn something from reading about their plans.
>
>
>>...Once boost phase is over, the RVs are coasting against a 4K
>>background. Don't you think that someone might have thought to put the
many
>>LEO LASERs to further use by having the ones that _weren't_ over the
launch
>>area roll over and shoot at the RVs? They _did_ think of that, ran the
>>numbers and found out that a LASER has low lethality against an RV.
>
> No, the problem has always been weapon power. They have only
>recently been able to make a megawatt plus class laser.
The people working at SDIO on Directed Energy Weapons were aiming for precis
ely the LASER battle stations you're dreaming about. They didn't see them as
GodSats at the time and they're not now.
>And I'd like
>to point out something else. If the RV is indeed undetectable, then
>*ANY* weapon system will not function post boost phase, since by
>definition you can't attack the undetectable object.
Go back and read again. I didn't say anything about "undetectable".
Midcourse intercept depends on something like SBIRS-Low, looking up at cold
space to detect RVs in flight: relatively easy. A high orbit system like
SBIRS-High has to look down at a warm earth and pick the RVs out of clutter:
very difficult.
The detection systems (SBIRS and Ground Based RADAR) provide track data for
interceptors. If the LASERs _could_ kill RVs, they would be superior to
Kinetic Energy Kill Vehicles. They can't so they're not.
> High powered LASERS are the *ONLY* effective means of attacking a
>target during boost phaser. Orbiting missile killer platforms would
>require the deployment of vast numbers of platforms, and they could
>easily be overwhelmed, since only a portion of the platforms would be
>in range at any given moment.
_Any_ boost-phase attack system is going to be flying in LEO in large
numbers. Even a HEO system is too distant to be effective, never mind GEO.
Believe it, if you want an orbital boost-phase killer, you're going to buy a
lot of satellites and put them in LEO.
If you can't understand anything else, calculate the two-way delay between
GEO and the surface. You're going to try to hold a 20 nanoradian-precise
pointing system with a quarter-second delay while the target moves about 20
_micro-radians_ during your loop delay. Your target can be anywhere in a
1000-spot size volume by the time your LASER pulse arrives. Moving to HEO
cuts that uncertainty by a factor of 4 to only 250-spot size uncertainty.
>
>>
>>In any case, large aperature LASERs aren't "focused". They present a
>>collimated beam that starts out the size of the launching optics and
>>diverges with distance.
>
> All lasers have mirrors that are capable of shaping and focussing
>the beam.
No shit? They also generate a collimated beam that's "focused" on infinity.
If you think your "orbital battle station" is going to dynamically point
focus its beam, you're wrong.
>
>
>>Richard Garwin dreamed up the "sandcaster". You're going to have a hard
time
>>selling it to the neighbors since although sand particles are lethal
enough
>>to a M10 RV at 100,000 feet the way you _get_ the sand to 100,000 feet is
>>with a nuclear weapon of your own. Going off at ground level. Hence the
>>neighbors' complaints.
>
> Well, technically, they plan to use some sort of super dense ball
>bearings, but the principle is the same.
Um, who's "they"? Game designers? You don't seem to understand.
"Sandcasters" are nuclear mines which are set off prior to the first RV
arriving to fling debris into air to kill incoming weapons. Think about
explaining to a farmer in Nebraska that the site you want to build in the
east forty contains a 100KT nuke that you plan on setting off when you
_think_ an attack is imminent.
>
>
>>Think spears. Another thing that Garwin dreamed up were _very tall_ poles
to
>>impale the RV before it got within the lethal radius of a very hard silo.
Of
>>course that doesn't do your house much good since a nuclear cookie salvage
>>fuzed a thousand feet up is indistinguishable from a ground burst in your
>>living room.
>
> Hey, not all ideas from Sci-Fi have any real world use.
Richard Garwin isn't a science fiction writer. He's an IBM Fellow who was
working under contract to BMDO in the seventies.
Ralph Savelsberg
Actually, the Army shoe-horned a chemical laser into an ltpv-7 Amphibious
tracktor they borrowed from the Marines. The vehicle was so densely packed with
equipment that to perform maintenance on the laser, the thing had to be
disassembled. I don't know whether this system was actually used to intercept
anything.
The USAF NKC-135 you mention was the Airborne Laser Laborotory. This was
equiped with a chemical laser and a turret on top of the fuselage with an
optical system to aim the laser. This was used to intercept a number of
sidewinder missile during trials, but the technology was found not to be mature
enough for it to be of any real use at that time.
Ralph
Ralph Savelsberg
> On Fri, 01 Oct 1999 13:28:00 +0200, Ralph Savelsberg
> <ra...@vortex.phys.tue.nl> wrote:
>
> >Neutral particle beams are even more troublesome than lasers. Through collisions of the
> >particles with the molecules in the air, your particle beam would lose a very large amount of
> >its energy. Also, the easiest way to accelerate the particles would be using a very strong
> >magnetic field. However, neutral particles cannot be accelerated this way. Simply put, in
> >case of atoms the core would like to go in the opposite direction of the electrons and the
> >end result would be practically zero.
>
> Sipapu solve this problem by stripping the electrons off of
> hydrogen atoms, and accelerating both the particle streams
> simultanoeusly. They were then combined in a chamber and
> continued on their merry way.
>
> > There has been talk of neutronbeams (probably in Buck
> >Rogers or something similar), but I have no idea on how neutrons could be accelerated to
> >speeds sufficient to form a strong beamCharged particle beams might be an idea, using for
> >instance only the electrons. However, their energy is also absorbed (very efficiently as I
> >know from personal experience) by the ambient air. One suggestion for producing a beam of
> >neutral particles (I've read this in a book on SDI some time ago) is accelerating the charged
> >particles (the atom cores and the electrons) seperatly, and then allowing them to come
> >together to form neutral particles again. In practice this would be extremely difficult, if
> >at all possible. With particle beams we are moving further towards the realm of SF than we
> >already were when discussing the space based lasers.
> >
> >Ralph
>
Though it may be possible to accelerate the electrons and the cores seperately, that still leaves
the problem of collisions with the air.
Particle weapons inside the atmosphere simply don't work.
Ralph
Ralph Savelsberg
> On Fri, 01 Oct 1999 09:38:51 +0200, Ralph Savelsberg
> <ra...@vortex.phys.tue.nl> wrote:
>
> >
> >That would help somewhat, though I still don't know for what the ground based laser would
> >be used. It's practically useless against incoming weapons (shielded to survive re-entry)
> >and using it in conjunction with a bunch of orbiting mirrors (as suggested during SDI)
> >requires so much power, you would probably have to built an additional power plant for
> >each laser you build.
>
> Again, if you have a powerful enough weapon, all the ablative
> shielding on the nosecone won't survive the thermal shock. They key
> is BIG amounts of power. Multi-megwatt instead of multi-kilowatt.
>
> >We've discussed the ABM treaty before. I'm not a diplomat, a historian nore a politician,
> >so I don't know the details of which treaties that applied to the SU, still apply to
> >Russia. Whatever the case, like you wrote, stepping out of the ABM treaty would not go
> >well in Russia.
> >$20 billion is quite a heap of money for a system for which there is relatively little
> >(percieved) need and which can be described as technologically risky.
> >
> >Ralph
> >
>
> Not really. $20 billion is what the F22 cost. Nowadays, ALL
> major weapons programs take tens of billions.
>
> Eric Pinnell
>
> Qui Desiderat Pacem, Preparaet Bellum
> (Let Him Who Desire Peace, Prepare For War)
>
> Vegitius - 3rd Century BC
I said it before and I will say it again: power is the thing that is most important in this
whole discussion. Many of the tasks people think laserweapons can do are simply impossible
because the power is not available ( things like impulse kills, lasers in geostationary
orbit, ground based lasers for missile defense, frying tanks on the ground etc. etc.)
Relistically a 10 MW laser will be very difficult to power in and get into orbit. As I
explained earlier 10 MW is rather low in the context of space based lasers. The lack of power
is the reason, why space based lasers are so limited in their possibilities. The famous
MIRACL laser produced only 2.2 MW and was a huge installation. The COIL planned for ABL is
designed for 3 MW, and (including fuel and optics) fills up most of the space in a B-747.
These thing are huge and produce only limited power.
To do the things the US DoD would like their space based laser to do (kill missiles at a
range of 5000kms in 5 seconds) you need dozens of MWs. It is not going to happen yet. Maybe
in twenty or thirty years at best.
Ralph
Eric Pinnell
wrote:
>Actually a THOR projectile does not need to be so heavy. All it needs is is to
>be able to survive re-entry(ablative shield?),and carry a terminal homing
>seeker to find the tank.Maybe a pound.The extreme velocity will do the rest.
>You could use UAV's to locate and up-link initial co-ordinates for the strike.
>
>Jim Yanik,NRA member
>
But you need to have a dufficiently powerful sensor in the
projectile to be able to detect and track the target at long ranges,
in order to be able to get good kill probability.
Figure out how big a passive IR sesnor would have to be to detect
aa tank at 100 miles. Then figure out the associated weight for
thrusters (deoribiting), and control surfaces for terminal
maneuvering. You're probably looking at 100 pounds or more.
Eric Pinnell
>Back in the 70's the US Army was playing with an APC mounted laser
>-shooting down Firebees as I recall. It was actually a twin APC system,
>one shooter, one power supply. What kind of system was this thing?
A hydrogen fluoride chemical laser.
>In the same time frame there was an Air Force NKC-135 (137?) blasting away
>at Sidewinders, what was it?? That planes in Dayton now.
I'm not sure. I think it was a CO2 eximer laser, but I'd have to
root around a lot to find out.
Eric Pinnell
<ra...@vortex.phys.tue.nl> wrote:
>I said it before and I will say it again: power is the thing that is most important in this
>whole discussion. Many of the tasks people think laserweapons can do are simply impossible
>because the power is not available ( things like impulse kills, lasers in geostationary
>orbit, ground based lasers for missile defense, frying tanks on the ground etc. etc.)
>Relistically a 10 MW laser will be very difficult to power in and get into orbit.
That would depend on the weight of the installation. You can
always bring back the Saturn V rocket.
> As I
>explained earlier 10 MW is rather low in the context of space based lasers.
Low? Do you have any idea how INSANELY powerful a 10 MW beam would
be?
>The lack of power
>is the reason, why space based lasers are so limited in their possibilities. The famous
>MIRACL laser produced only 2.2 MW and was a huge installation.
MIRACL was *CLAIMED* to produce 2.2 MW. Since they have already
faked one test, the final power levels may also have been exaggerated.
>The COIL planned for ABL is
>designed for 3 MW, and (including fuel and optics) fills up most of the space in a B-747.
The laser takes up a fair bit of space, but it is the fuel supply
that is enormous. That one of the reasons they're looking at making
the weapon an electrically powered laser.
>These thing are huge and produce only limited power.
>To do the things the US DoD would like their space based laser to do (kill missiles at a
>range of 5000kms in 5 seconds) you need dozens of MWs. It is not going to happen yet. Maybe
>in twenty or thirty years at best.
>
>Ralph
Listen. The thin skin of a missile isn't going to stop a
multi-megawatt laser. Period.
Eric Pinnell
<sibe...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>The US dies too with nukes, so they are of limited use as a "conquer the
>world" weapon -
Unless of course, you strike first and/or have an effective ABM
system.
> a Laser based system (as you describe) is a weapon of
>conquest, what could the world do about it? - crash the US economy in peace
>time (given the choice between a depression and allowing any one country the
>ability to rule the world, the depression wins every time)
I don't believe anyone could crash the US exonomy. Remember, if
you don't want to trade with an expansionist US, they simply take you
over.
>or in war, deploy
>it's own weapons of mass destruction (Lasers are nice but of little use
>against Bio weapons, most of which are easy to produce and deploy and very
>hard to trace back to an "owner".
Trouble is, Bio weapons may spread over the entire planets surface,
and they DO have a nasty tendency to mutate.
>But take too much time to get there - no use as a first strike surprise
>weapon and can be tracked to see what they will hit, allowing a potential
>"victim" to launch their own weapons - much safer than letting any country
>deploy a light speed, unlimited use weapon.
Which is why someone referred to a high powered laser as a GodSat.
Once in place, there is little the rest of the world could do about
such a weapon.
Eric Pinnell
>True, but deltaVee doesn't come for free, esp when you're talking about
>many tons of vehicle. Polar orbit is better but you need more than one
>station. Still, anything up there is an open target saying 'hit me!'
But all you need do is slow the vehicle down sufficiently so that
it deorbits. And when you want to fire at a THOR cluster, which of
the 10,000 or so orbiting weapons do you want to fire at?
Eric Pinnell
wrote:
>Could someone direct me to more information regarding THOR? I've never
>heard of it and it sounds kinda neat.
Do a Web search on Project High Frontier.
Eric Pinnell
<pau...@digital.net> wrote:
>
>Eric Pinnell wrote
>>"Paul F Austin" wrote:
>>
>> A large nuclear burst at close range would incinerate any
>>material object, assuming you were within the zone of total
>>destruction. In case you didn't know, the heat of a nuclear fireball
>>is many millions of degrees, and no structure can withstand a close
>>range blast.
>
>Like I said before: you don't know what you're talking about. Study up.
>Spartan warheads (MT range) were optimized for X-ray kills of incoming RVs.
>Read up on the mechanisms. You may learn something. I would suggest George
>Messenger's book (chapter 4).
OK smart guy. Name ONE object that can withstand a 1 megaton
nuclear warhead detonated at a range of 100 meters. Even
superhardened missile silos don't cut it. So tell me, what is this
magical mystical obtainium you intent to make your RVs out of?
>_None_ of the SDI systems were even prototyped. The SDIO architecture
>projected technology for _all_ systems rather than monomaniacally focusing
>of "my favorite coool weapon". Those people know a great deal more than you
>do. You would learn something from reading about their plans.
I have read. Even wrote a little.
>The people working at SDIO on Directed Energy Weapons were aiming for precis
>ely the LASER battle stations you're dreaming about. They didn't see them as
>GodSats at the time and they're not now.
they will be if they can make the weapons powerful enough.
>Go back and read again. I didn't say anything about "undetectable".
>Midcourse intercept depends on something like SBIRS-Low, looking up at cold
>space to detect RVs in flight: relatively easy. A high orbit system like
>SBIRS-High has to look down at a warm earth and pick the RVs out of clutter:
>very difficult.
Start below. Look up.
>The detection systems (SBIRS and Ground Based RADAR) provide track data for
>interceptors. If the LASERs _could_ kill RVs, they would be superior to
>Kinetic Energy Kill Vehicles. They can't so they're not.
<Sigh>. You think a ten megawatt laser is useless, right?
>_Any_ boost-phase attack system is going to be flying in LEO in large
>numbers. Even a HEO system is too distant to be effective, never mind GEO.
>Believe it, if you want an orbital boost-phase killer, you're going to buy a
>lot of satellites and put them in LEO.
Not necessarily. We're talking about how powerful the weapon is,
how accurate the pointing mechanism, how big the beam is, and so on
and so forth. Big power lets you destroy a target quickly. It also
lets you have a much bigger laser beam if you want to be able to have
a wider target area.
>If you can't understand anything else, calculate the two-way delay between
>GEO and the surface. You're going to try to hold a 20 nanoradian-precise
>pointing system with a quarter-second delay while the target moves about 20
>_micro-radians_ during your loop delay. Your target can be anywhere in a
>1000-spot size volume by the time your LASER pulse arrives. Moving to HEO
>cuts that uncertainty by a factor of 4 to only 250-spot size uncertainty.
You assume a pulse weapon. I don't need to fire a pulse. You
measure the distance between the target and you, and then calculate
where it is going to be in order hit it an any give moment in time.
Hint: I served as a gunner, ballistics is my forte.
>
>Um, who's "they"? Game designers? You don't seem to understand.
>"Sandcasters" are nuclear mines which are set off prior to the first RV
>arriving to fling debris into air to kill incoming weapons.
No. Think: Coil gun.
Paul F Austin
Eric Pinnell wrote
>"Paul F Austin"wrote:
>>Eric Pinnell wrote
>>>"Paul F Austin" wrote:
>>>
>>> A large nuclear burst at close range would incinerate any
>>>material object, assuming you were within the zone of total
>>>destruction. In case you didn't know, the heat of a nuclear fireball
>>>is many millions of degrees, and no structure can withstand a close
>>>range blast.
>>
>>Like I said before: you don't know what you're talking about. Study up.
>>Spartan warheads (MT range) were optimized for X-ray kills of incoming
RVs.
>>Read up on the mechanisms. You may learn something. I would suggest George
>>Messenger's book (chapter 4).
>
>nuclear warhead detonated at a range of 100 meters. Even
>superhardened missile silos don't cut it. So tell me, what is this
>magical mystical obtainium you intent to make your RVs out of?
>
>
Technology) for USASDC in the late '80s. My job was to design and build a
computer for interceptors that would survive and function while inside the
fireball. I succeeded.
If you look in Messenger's book, you see a picture (figure 4.6) of a 1MT
fireball 6ms after detonation. At 300m, the temperature is 16,000K. If you
look at figure 4.12, you see a late time fireball and at 1500m, the
temperature is 2000K. Somewhere in there, you'll find a distance that's
survivable.
Paul F Austin
Eric Pinnell wrote in message <37fe4205...@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net>...
>"Paul F Austin"
>
>
>>If you can't understand anything else, calculate the two-way delay between
>>GEO and the surface. You're going to try to hold a 20 nanoradian-precise
>>pointing system with a quarter-second delay while the target moves about
20
>>_micro-radians_ during your loop delay. Your target can be anywhere in a
>>1000-spot size volume by the time your LASER pulse arrives. Moving to HEO
>>cuts that uncertainty by a factor of 4 to only 250-spot size uncertainty.
>
> You assume a pulse weapon. I don't need to fire a pulse. You
>measure the distance between the target and you, and then calculate
>where it is going to be in order hit it an any give moment in time.
>Hint: I served as a gunner, ballistics is my forte.
"You assume a pulse weapon. I don't need to fire a pulse" I assumed no such
thing and in any case, your comment is a nonsequitur. If you served as a
gunner, you know that the only way to hit a jinking target is by filling the
sky with metal.
Your notions put this quote by Liddell Hart in mind: "An important
difference between a military operation and a surgical operation is that the
patient is not tied down. But it's a common fault of generalship to assume
that he is".
L'acrobat
> On Sun, 3 Oct 1999 12:08:12 +1100, "L'acrobat"
> <sibe...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>
>
> >The US dies too with nukes, so they are of limited use as a "conquer the
> >world" weapon -
>
> Unless of course, you strike first and/or have an effective ABM
> system.
Nuclear winter, if you hit hard enough to do any good - you die.
>
> > a Laser based system (as you describe) is a weapon of
> >conquest, what could the world do about it? - crash the US economy in
peace
> >time (given the choice between a depression and allowing any one country
the
> >ability to rule the world, the depression wins every time)
>
> I don't believe anyone could crash the US exonomy. Remember, if
> you don't want to trade with an expansionist US, they simply take you
> over.
>
Simply refusing to send oil tankers to the US would do most of the work - if
nobody will trade with you most of you and US assets frozen the economy
stops and that hurts fast - with no support from your allies (in fact
probably with their active opposition) and no shipping reaching the US try
taking over some countries.
> >or in war, deploy
> >it's own weapons of mass destruction (Lasers are nice but of little use
> >against Bio weapons, most of which are easy to produce and deploy and
very
> >hard to trace back to an "owner".
>
> Trouble is, Bio weapons may spread over the entire planets surface,
> and they DO have a nasty tendency to mutate.
>
>
Given the choice between a guaranteed world domination by 1 country or the
risk of widespread epidemic - take the epidemic, it is safer.
> >But take too much time to get there - no use as a first strike surprise
> >weapon and can be tracked to see what they will hit, allowing a potential
> >"victim" to launch their own weapons - much safer than letting any
country
> >deploy a light speed, unlimited use weapon.
>
> Which is why someone referred to a high powered laser as a GodSat.
> Once in place, there is little the rest of the world could do about
> such a weapon.
Except crash your economy or use bio weapons, both of which are easy to do.
Ralph Savelsberg
> Eric Pinnell
>
> Qui Desiderat Pacem, Preparaet Bellum
> (Let Him Who Desire Peace, Prepare For War)
>
> Vegitius - 3rd Century BC
>
I can use the blow-torch analogy you used earlier. A blow-torch close to your head is very
dangerous, but at the other end of the room it is useless.
I don't know how to get this in your head. If the laser is far away from the target (like a
couple of thousand kms) a lot of power is lost. Of the power put out at the laser only a
fraction reaches the target. To do some real damage (in a short amount of time) you need a lot
more than 10MW. I know 10 MW is an insane amount. That is why this whole thing is so difficult.
Period
Ralph
Grantland
>
>Eric Pinnell <epi...@ibm.net> wrote in message
>>
>> Which is why someone referred to a high powered laser as a GodSat.
>> Once in place, there is little the rest of the world could do about
>> such a weapon.
>
>Except crash your economy or use bio weapons, both of which are easy to do.
>
>
It should be a Queensbury System - *every* ballistic launch gets
shot down. Ron's idea.
Grantland
Orval Fairbairn
OR: Launch enough decoy missiles that the laser either runs out of juice
or burns out. After all, the thing has to perform without maintenance and
resupply once it is launched. If it can't, it's just another piece of
(EXPENSIVE!) space junk.
Shaman
> "L'acrobat" <sibe...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>
> >
> >Eric Pinnell <epi...@ibm.net> wrote in message
> >>
> >> Which is why someone referred to a high powered laser as a GodSat.
> >> Once in place, there is little the rest of the world could do about
> >> such a weapon.
> >
> >Except crash your economy or use bio weapons, both of which are easy to do.
> >
> >
> It should be a Queensbury System - *every* ballistic launch gets
> shot down. Ron's idea.
>
> Grantland
Could it not be taken out by a sophisticated/high power ground based laser
weapon? What works in one direction should in theory work in the other - and
without the same power supply and weight/size constraints you could potentialy
have a much more powerful/accurate(more room to work with to make it
super-accurate an compensate for atmospheric distortions etc). I realize that
you are talking about a fast moving target vs a stationary one - but with the
advantages stated above you should be able to have a much better fire control
system on the ground. That, coupled with the laser's inate long range / speed
of light time-to-target characteristics should make the shoot down of an
orbiting platform more than feasible. Not to mention all of this could be done
at a fraction of the cost of the orbiting version so you could potentially build
several terrestrial systems for every one orbiting version.
Just my uneducated two cents
Curtis
Leslie Swartz
Good points Chris AND consider that in any "artillery duel" the space-based
system would be much more vulnerable than the ground-based system.
AND the ground based system could "zig" while the space-based system could
only change orbits.
--
*********************************
Steve & Leslie Swartz
Abolish the Police State
and
the Welfare State
VOTE LIBERTARIAN!
********************************
Shaman <sha...@shuttle.net> wrote in message
news:38029C8D...@shuttle.net...
Grantland
A dispersed system - a hundred(s) coordinated lasers at varying
orbits - could only be degraded slowly. It would be obvious where the
attack was coming from. Since each unit would be small - a few
hundred kw, say - it would be doable - no "superlasers" needed. A
ground system would have to be a superlaser. It would be the (single)
ground system that would be vulnerable.
Any ICBM gets shot, regardless of origins. No more pushbutton
warfare. Back to bombers and cruise missiles - or whatever.
Armageddon would have to be a calculated decision, given the slower,
(reversible) escalation.
Grantland
Nickolay Kuzmin
Grantland wrote:
>
<snip>
> A dispersed system - a hundred(s) coordinated lasers at varying
> orbits - could only be degraded slowly. It would be obvious where the
> attack was coming from. Since each unit would be small - a few
> hundred kw, say - it would be doable - no "superlasers" needed. A
> ground system would have to be a superlaser. It would be the (single)
> ground system that would be vulnerable.
But it would also enjoy protection of a thick concrete shell.
Dispersed system would be slow to react and would need perfect orchestration.
With a single laser you just hit somewhere on the target, with 10 co-operating
lasers you have to hit *THE SPOT* being illuminated by other lasers.
It would require *thousands* of 100kW lasers to do the job of a dozen 10MW ones.
Moreover, due to increased reaction time it would be vulnerable to saturation
attack.
As for ground-based contermeasures - a good EM gun can throw small projectiles
into orbit and kill satellites quite cheaply. It should't be any more expensive
than a 100kW orbital laser so you can have a lot of them and every one is lethal
even when operating alone, while 100kW lasers are lethal in group only.
>
> Any ICBM gets shot, regardless of origins. No more pushbutton
> warfare. Back to bombers and cruise missiles - or whatever.
> Armageddon would have to be a calculated decision, given the slower,
> (reversible) escalation.
Armageddon will start with saturation attack. No more chance to disarm
enemy by a well-placed limited strike. Everything you own, decoys included,
must be up in the very first seconds of the conflict.
--
"Politics": from poli = many, tics = blood-sucking parasites
Grantland
>
>
>Grantland wrote:
>>
>
><snip>
>
>> A dispersed system - a hundred(s) coordinated lasers at varying
>> orbits - could only be degraded slowly. It would be obvious where the
>> attack was coming from. Since each unit would be small - a few
>> hundred kw, say - it would be doable - no "superlasers" needed. A
>> ground system would have to be a superlaser. It would be the (single)
>> ground system that would be vulnerable.
>
>But it would also enjoy protection of a thick concrete shell.
>
Ah! Of course. Nevertheless, it would still take time to knock out
a dispersed system - hence no surprise ICBM saturation attack..
>Dispersed system would be slow to react
Not necessarily.
> and would need perfect orchestration.
Yes..
>With a single laser you just hit somewhere on the target, with 10 co-operating
>lasers you have to hit *THE SPOT* being illuminated by other lasers.
Perhaps you're wrong - THE SPOT - is (how big?) - think of a solar
array.. 1m2 flat mirrors, 1m2 SPOT You dump enough energy, and you
have a margin.. maybe. Maybe not. And you could co-ordinate the
laser pulse. Maybe.
>It would require *thousands* of 100kW lasers to do the job of a dozen 10MW ones.
I doubt it. 120MW? Too much. As I said before, I wouldn't really
know.
>Moreover, due to increased reaction time it would be vulnerable to saturation
>attack.
>
Why the "increased reaction time"? Seconds.
>As for ground-based contermeasures - a good EM gun can throw small projectiles
Hum.. maybe. Terminally-guided projectiles of course. Ablative
shield, GPS ..high-G electronics, seeker, rockets for steering ,
seeker .. quite a piece.
Unless you have an extraordinarily accurate gun. }:-)~
>into orbit and kill satellites quite cheaply. It should't be any more expensive
>than a 100kW orbital laser so you can have a lot of them and every one is lethal
>even when operating alone, while 100kW lasers are lethal in group only.
>
..umm... welll..
>> Any ICBM gets shot, regardless of origins. No more pushbutton
>> warfare. Back to bombers and cruise missiles - or whatever.
>> Armageddon would have to be a calculated decision, given the slower,
>> (reversible) escalation.
>
>Armageddon will start with saturation attack. No more chance to disarm
>enemy by a well-placed limited strike. Everything you own, decoys included,
>must be up in the very first seconds of the conflict.
>
It's like that now anyway. And the target does exactly the same
within minutes, inevitably. (ESPECIALLY if a few "well-placed" satchel
mines (eg) have given trigger-alertness paranoia..) - MAD. Suicide
Armageddon insanity. Guaranteed that someone will use cobalt to
exterminate the elite, would-be "winners". Lunacy.
>--
>"Politics": from poli = many, tics = blood-sucking parasites
Grantland
Grantland
> Unless you have an extraordinarily accurate gun. }:-)~
- or a nuclear shell.. }:-(
Eric Pinnell
<pau...@digital.net> wrote:
>If you look in Messenger's book, you see a picture (figure 4.6) of a 1MT
>fireball 6ms after detonation. At 300m, the temperature is 16,000K. If you
>look at figure 4.12, you see a late time fireball and at 1500m, the
>temperature is 2000K. Somewhere in there, you'll find a distance that's
>survivable.
>--
>Conscience, that quiet voice that says "Someone may be watching"
>
>Paul F Austin
>pau...@digital.net
Srurvable from a WARHEADS point of view? Remember, we're not
talking something that's made out of reinforced concrete. But even if
you say 1 KM is a kill range, that's certainly easily obtained even
with 1960s style interceptor missiles.
And it's a lot less accuracy than you need to score a kill with a
kinetic kill vehicle
Eric Pinnell
<ra...@vortex.phys.tue.nl> wrote:
>I can use the blow-torch analogy you used earlier. A blow-torch close to your head is very
>dangerous, but at the other end of the room it is useless.
>I don't know how to get this in your head. If the laser is far away from the target (like a
>couple of thousand kms) a lot of power is lost.
It's not lost. It's spread out as the beam widens.
>Of the power put out at the laser only a
>fraction reaches the target. To do some real damage (in a short amount of time) you need a lot
>more than 10MW. I know 10 MW is an insane amount. That is why this whole thing is so difficult.
>Period
>
>Ralph
Again, it depends on the range of the target. Certainly a 10MW
weapon in low earth orbit would crispy fry anything within a few
hundred miles of itself.
Eric Pinnell
>thing and in any case, your comment is a nonsequitur. If you served as a
>gunner, you know that the only way to hit a jinking target is by filling the
>sky with metal.
Trouble is, we're talking light speed weapons. A jinking pilot
isn't going to do diddly poop in the few milliseconds he's got between
the weapon detection and the time it fires. It's tough to miss with a
laser.
Paul F Austin
Eric Pinnell wrote
>"Paul F Austin"wrote:
>
>>If you look in Messenger's book, you see a picture (figure 4.6) of a 1MT
>>fireball 6ms after detonation. At 300m, the temperature is 16,000K. If you
>>look at figure 4.12, you see a late time fireball and at 1500m, the
>>temperature is 2000K. Somewhere in there, you'll find a distance that's
>>survivable.
>
>talking something that's made out of reinforced concrete. But even if
>you say 1 KM is a kill range, that's certainly easily obtained even
>with 1960s style interceptor missiles.
> And it's a lot less accuracy than you need to score a kill with a
>kinetic kill vehicle
>
RVs are a lot tougher than reinforced concrete. The heat shield is made of
carbon-carbon composites. If you look up graphite, you find that it's
maximum use temperature is 2500K. The bomb itself is fairly simple and very
rugged. I'm sure you read about the latest mod to the B-61 bomb that makes
it an earth-penetrating weapon.
It _does_ require a lot less accuracy with a nuke but it's a lot easier to
get weapons free when nuclear munitions aren't involved. One of the major
reasons why interceptors went to KKVs instead of nuclear warheads was
precisely that.
They still had to deal with a nuclear threat because an obvious
countermeasure was to salvage-fuze the RVs so as to kill the follow-on
interceptors.
As far as nuclear weapons in space is concerned, the major weapons effect is
heating from soft X-rays. The Spartan warhead was a 1MT weapon optimized for
X-ray effects. In a vacuum, there's no blast and little heating from
conductive transfer from the blast medium. It's just too rarefied to
transfer any appreciable energy. The X-rays on the other hand have _very_
long range in a vacuum. A megaton range nuke detonation in LEO can kill
(unhardened) satellites in GEO.
Another major effect is trapping of fission fragments in the Van Allen
belts. The fission fragments just bounce back and forth between the magnetic
poles, radiating their heads off. It's possible for 1 or 2 fission weapons
to kill all commercial satellites through this mechanism. The Defense
Special Weapons Agency has been trying to alert owners of commercial sats to
this threat. The commercial users don't want to pay the 30% increase in
satellite cost that hardening would bring.
_Military_ satellites on the other hand are fully radiation hardened, so
this isn't a problem.
Paul F Austin
Eric Pinnell wrote
> "Paul F Austin" wrote
such
>>thing and in any case, your comment is a nonsequitur. If you served as a
>>gunner, you know that the only way to hit a jinking target is by filling
the
>>sky with metal.
>
> Trouble is, we're talking light speed weapons. A jinking pilot
>isn't going to do diddly poop in the few milliseconds he's got between
>the weapon detection and the time it fires. It's tough to miss with a
>laser.
>
That depends on the distance to the target. If your weapon is in GEO, that's
a quarter second round-trip delay. That's a lot of time for evasive action.
LEO LASERs are a lot better. At a range of a thousand kilometers, you're
right. There's no dodging.
The problem with LEO is that you need many orbital planes to insure the
LASERs are where you need them, when you need them. In addition, your LASER
platform is easier to get at by angry strangers.
Paul F Austin
Maury Markowitz wrote in message
>(Paul F Austin) wrote in
>
>>rarefied to transfer any appreciable energy. The X-rays on the other
>>hand have _very_ long range in a vacuum. A megaton range nuke detonation
>>in LEO can kill (unhardened) satellites in GEO.
>
>actually. What sort of flux are we talking about here? I assume that the
>air is a lot more x-ray opaque than I thought.
Not from heating but from displacement damage to active semiconductor
regions and (mostly) trapped charge in oxide layers causing Vt shifts that
knock the hell out of transistor gains.
>
>>Another major effect is trapping of fission fragments in the Van Allen
>>belts. The fission fragments just bounce back and forth between the
>>magnetic poles, radiating their heads off. It's possible for 1 or 2
>>fission weapons to kill all commercial satellites through this
>>mechanism.
>
> Kill them, or simply make them non-useable? ie, is the sat actually
>"hurt" by this, or can its signals just not penetrate the VA belts?
Dead as mackerels. George Messenger's book (The Effects of Radiation on
Electronics Systems) is the bible on space radiation effects.
Nickolay Kuzmin
Grantland wrote:
>
> Nickolay Kuzmin <ni...@nlb.siberia.net> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >Grantland wrote:
> >>
> >
> ><snip>
> >
> >> A dispersed system - a hundred(s) coordinated lasers at varying
> >> orbits - could only be degraded slowly. It would be obvious where the
> >> attack was coming from. Since each unit would be small - a few
> >> hundred kw, say - it would be doable - no "superlasers" needed. A
> >> ground system would have to be a superlaser. It would be the (single)
> >> ground system that would be vulnerable.
> >
> >But it would also enjoy protection of a thick concrete shell.
> >
> Ah! Of course. Nevertheless, it would still take time to knock out
> a dispersed system - hence no surprise ICBM saturation attack..
>
> >Dispersed system would be slow to react
>
> Not necessarily.
You'll need not only retarget 10 times more lasers but also syncronise them.
>
> > and would need perfect orchestration.
>
> Yes..
The coordination implies either vulnerable communication network nodes and
hubs or self-organising neural network, but that makes an AI God a couple
of levels beyound current science and even more dangerous than enemy ICBMs.
>
> >With a single laser you just hit somewhere on the target, with 10 co-operating
> >lasers you have to hit *THE SPOT* being illuminated by other lasers.
>
> Perhaps you're wrong - THE SPOT - is (how big?) - think of a solar
> array.. 1m2 flat mirrors, 1m2 SPOT You dump enough energy, and you
> have a margin.. maybe. Maybe not. And you could co-ordinate the
> laser pulse. Maybe.
>
moreover, all firing lasers need to be on the same side of target as
cooking the whole thing takes much more energy.
> >It would require *thousands* of 100kW lasers to do the job of a dozen 10MW ones.
>
> I doubt it. 120MW? Too much. As I said before, I wouldn't really
> know.
>
One laser may attack only one target a time.
> >Moreover, due to increased reaction time it would be vulnerable to saturation
> >attack.
> >
> Why the "increased reaction time"? Seconds.
>
> >As for ground-based contermeasures - a good EM gun can throw small projectiles
>
> Hum.. maybe. Terminally-guided projectiles of course. Ablative
> shield, GPS ..high-G electronics, seeker, rockets for steering ,
> seeker .. quite a piece.
> Unless you have an extraordinarily accurate gun. }:-)~
No, just fill the sky with metal - EM guns can have extremely high rate of
fire.
>
> >into orbit and kill satellites quite cheaply. It should't be any more expensive
> >than a 100kW orbital laser so you can have a lot of them and every one is lethal
> >even when operating alone, while 100kW lasers are lethal in group only.
> >
> ..umm... welll..
>
> >> Any ICBM gets shot, regardless of origins. No more pushbutton
> >> warfare. Back to bombers and cruise missiles - or whatever.
> >> Armageddon would have to be a calculated decision, given the slower,
> >> (reversible) escalation.
> >
> >Armageddon will start with saturation attack. No more chance to disarm
> >enemy by a well-placed limited strike. Everything you own, decoys included,
> >must be up in the very first seconds of the conflict.
> >
> It's like that now anyway. And the target does exactly the same
> within minutes, inevitably. (ESPECIALLY if a few "well-placed" satchel
> mines (eg) have given trigger-alertness paranoia..) - MAD. Suicide
> Armageddon insanity. Guaranteed that someone will use cobalt to
> exterminate the elite, would-be "winners". Lunacy.
The real winners will be roaches.
Nickolay Kuzmin
Grantland wrote:
>
> > Unless you have an extraordinarily accurate gun. }:-)~
>
> - or a nuclear shell.. }:-(
Which would also knock out communications of most nearby lasers
efectively neutralising them.
Grantland
>The coordination implies either vulnerable communication network nodes and
>hubs
Coded laser - jamproof. At low power, of course. :)
> or self-organising neural network, but that makes an AI God a couple
>of levels beyound current science and even more dangerous than enemy ICBMs.
>
Even if (if such an AI *was* used - unlikely) it went nuts and shot
at everything in sight ... still no nukes involved. Nothing could be
worse than an ICBM exchange.
>>
Grantland
Nickolay Kuzmin
Grantland wrote:
>
> Nickolay Kuzmin <ni...@nlb.siberia.net> wrote:
>
> >The coordination implies either vulnerable communication network nodes and
> >hubs
>
> Coded laser - jamproof. At low power, of course. :)
>
Striking down a node will disrupt network, even for a moment, increasing
chance of a successuf strike at the next one.
> > or self-organising neural network, but that makes an AI God a couple
> >of levels beyound current science and even more dangerous than enemy ICBMs.
> >
> Even if (if such an AI *was* used - unlikely) it went nuts and shot
> at everything in sight ... still no nukes involved. Nothing could be
> worse than an ICBM exchange.
Being locked in a ratbox without any hope of space exploration is much
worse fate, IMHO.
Eric Pinnell
<sibe...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>Nuclear winter, if you hit hard enough to do any good - you die.
Nonsense. Use air bursts on civilian population centers.
>Simply refusing to send oil tankers to the US would do most of the work - if
>nobody will trade with you most of you and US assets frozen the economy
>stops and that hurts fast - with no support from your allies (in fact
>probably with their active opposition) and no shipping reaching the US try
>taking over some countries.
<Sigh>. And the US supply of coal is how many centuries? Ever
heard of a company called Syntroleum? Next question, please.
>Given the choice between a guaranteed world domination by 1 country or the
>risk of widespread epidemic - take the epidemic, it is safer.
Is it? Possible destruction of the entire planet versus being
ruled over by the USA? How many suicidal types out there do you think
there are?
>Except crash your economy or use bio weapons, both of which are easy to do.
You can't crash the US economy. As for Bio Weapons, well, use em
and it's time to reply with cobalt bombs.
Eric Pinnell
Fairbairn) wrote:
>OR: Launch enough decoy missiles that the laser either runs out of juice
>or burns out. After all, the thing has to perform without maintenance and
>resupply once it is launched. If it can't, it's just another piece of
>(EXPENSIVE!) space junk.
One would assume that the active (firing) live of a laser would be
many hours. If not, why go to all the expense of putting it into
orbit?
Eric Pinnell
<leslie...@erinet.com> wrote:
>
>Good points Chris AND consider that in any "artillery duel" the space-based
>system would be much more vulnerable than the ground-based system.
>
>AND the ground based system could "zig" while the space-based system could
>only change orbits.
Sounds almost like a Bolo. I suppose you could design a big vehicle
to carry a high powered laser, but such a vehicle would most likely
not be very mobile. And frankly, I don't see a ground based laser
being less vulnerable than a space based one. You can't armor up a
truck carrying a ground based laser.
William Baird
> to carry a high powered laser, but such a vehicle would most likely
> not be very mobile. And frankly, I don't see a ground based laser
> being less vulnerable than a space based one. You can't armor up a
> truck carrying a ground based laser.
Look up MTHEL.
Will
> Eric Pinnell
--
Will Baird email: wba...@acca.nmsu.edu http://acca.nmsu.edu/~wbaird/
Phantoms! Whenever I think I fully understand mankind's purpose on earth...
suddenly I see phantoms dancing in the shadows...[saying] pointly as words,
"What you know is nothing little man; what you have to learn, immense." - CD
Maury Markowitz
<s0aikh...@corp.supernews.com>:
>It _does_ require a lot less accuracy with a nuke but it's a lot easier
>to get weapons free when nuclear munitions aren't involved. One of the
>major reasons why interceptors went to KKVs instead of nuclear warheads
>was precisely that.
Indeed.
>rarefied to transfer any appreciable energy. The X-rays on the other
>hand have _very_ long range in a vacuum. A megaton range nuke detonation
>in LEO can kill (unhardened) satellites in GEO.
Whoa, all from soft-X-ray heating? I always wondered about that
actually. What sort of flux are we talking about here? I assume that the
air is a lot more x-ray opaque than I thought.
>Another major effect is trapping of fission fragments in the Van Allen
>belts. The fission fragments just bounce back and forth between the
>magnetic poles, radiating their heads off. It's possible for 1 or 2
>fission weapons to kill all commercial satellites through this
>mechanism.
Kill them, or simply make them non-useable? ie, is the sat actually
"hurt" by this, or can its signals just not penetrate the VA belts?
Maury
Grantland
>> Even if (if such an AI *was* used - unlikely) it went nuts and shot
>> at everything in sight ... still no nukes involved. Nothing could be
>> worse than an ICBM exchange.
>
>Being locked in a ratbox without any hope of space exploration is much
>worse fate, IMHO.
>
>--
>"Politics": from poli = many, tics = blood-sucking parasites
Refueling.
Exhaust it with dummies. No problem. Just give it enough plus a
little fuel to do its proper job.
Grantland
Grantland
> Refueling.
> Exhaust it with dummies. No problem. Just give it enough plus a
>little fuel to do its proper job.
(But I'd rather have a non-autonomous system under Security Council
control.)
Grantland
Grantland
> Is it? Possible destruction of the entire planet versus being
>ruled over by the USA? How many suicidal types out there do you think
>there are?
"Ruled over"? By the USA? How absurd. The US would just love to
retreat behind secure borders like a clam, if it could. It wants to
"rule over" nobody. Unless you think the US "rules over" Japan and
Europe and China and India and ..
Grantland
Eric Pinnell
wrote:
Absolutely. The USa really doesn't NEED the rest of the world, but
it certainly could be a world conquerer if it wanted to.
Eric Pinnell
<pau...@digital.net> wrote:
>As far as nuclear weapons in space is concerned, the major weapons effect is
>heating from soft X-rays. The Spartan warhead was a 1MT weapon optimized for
>X-ray effects. In a vacuum, there's no blast and little heating from
>conductive transfer from the blast medium.
There's not NO blast, just weak blast. Remember that some of the
mass of a nuclear weapons is converted to a high energy plasma, which
expands outward as it cools. The area where such a shockwave would
actualyl damage anything is almost certainly less than the zone of
total destruction, so it's moot anyway.
> It's just too rarefied to
>transfer any appreciable energy. The X-rays on the other hand have _very_
>long range in a vacuum. A megaton range nuke detonation in LEO can kill
>(unhardened) satellites in GEO.
EMP is always good for giggles too.