Future weapons.
Ayende Rahien
now.
According to SF, we are likely to have widespread use of handheld beam
weapon. I don't think so. While it certainly be made possible to produce
such weapons, I don't see any major advantage in having beam weapons over
normal weapons, beside not being affected by wind. And maybe being more
quiet than normal weapons.
There is also some sort of stun guns, which I don't see coming anytime soon
(except maybe Niven's mercy gun in A Gift From Earth, which is basically a
modification of tranquilazier gun.).
There is a weapon that either trigger pain nerves or kill the nerves.
(Asimov & Briar.)
Personally, I can't get rid of a mental image of a miniature catapult (one
like those designed to send things to space) which shot anything
magnetizable in high speed. It may be crazy, but I just got the image of
loading the weapon with paperclips and shotting them in 5 - 6 kilometers per
second, I think it was Erik Max Francis that said that steel would evadrope
in 6 kilometers per second, and I just can't get it out of my mind.
Personally, I think it would be mainly an assasination weapon. Just because
I can see the headlines "The President of the US was shot and killed today
by a paperclip."
Anyway, I'm interested in hearing what you think would be the weapons of the
21th century. In every field.
I'm especially interested in strange\silly weapons. (Such as the current
underwater guns, which has LONG reloading time. They have to be sent to the
factory to be reloaded.)
_______
Ayende Rahien
Ancient Right unnoticed as the breath we draw--
Leave to live by no man's leave, underneath the Law.
~Rudyard Kipling, Old Issue
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
JWMeritt
Ayende Rahien
jwme...@aol.com (JWMeritt) wrote:
> Watch out! This was the subject that sent His Majesty off the deep end before!
>
>
Oh? Who was he? What happened to him? And why?
--
All we have of freedom, all we use or know--
This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.
Ancient Right unnoticed as the breath we draw--
Leave to live by no man's leave, underneath the Law.
__________
Ayende Rahien
Luke Campbell
> I was thinking about what weapons would look like in several decades from
> now.
> According to SF, we are likely to have widespread use of handheld beam
> weapon. I don't think so. While it certainly be made possible to produce
> such weapons, I don't see any major advantage in having beam weapons over
> normal weapons, beside not being affected by wind. And maybe being more
> quiet than normal weapons.
Advantages of laser guns:
Anything you can see, you can hit. Just aim at the image of what you see, you
do not have to worry about wind, gravity, or that the displacement of the image
due to optical effects. The beam follows the same path back to the target that
it took to get from the target to your eye.
As a consequence of the above, laser weapons are likely to be extremely
accurate. You do not even need to adjust for range.
Once you have enough power to do serious damage to a human, it might be
difficult to armor that person. Kevlar vaporizes much more easily than flesh,
the beam will burn right through bullet proof vests. Spectra not ony vaporizes
easily, it also catches on fire. The difference between the energy needed to
varporize steel and that needed to vaporize tissue is much less than the
difference in the forces needed to rupture steel compared to that needed to
rupture flesh. A plate of steel that protects against bullets may not offer
significant protection against a focused beam.
It takes very little energy to blind a person using a laser. Just set the beam
to scan across everything in front of you, and anyone facing in your direction
will be blinded.
No recoil. In addition to the comfort factor, and the advantages to zero-G
combat, it will allow autofire or continuous beam lasers to hold very tight
groups, unlike projectile weapons wich kick around and spray bullets over a
comparitively wide area when autofired.
The beam itself is silent. The beam may also be invisible, although weapons
grade lasers operating at visible light frequencies will still have visible
beams even in perfectly clear air. Note that the generation of the laser beam
need not be invisible or quiet - gas dynamic lasers and gas dynamic chemical
lasers in particular may make a loud roar like a rocket and emit plumes of
flame as they operate (all very high powered lasers operating today that are
suitable for use as weapons are of the gas dynamic type). Note also that the
interaction of the beam with the target will be anything but silent or
invisible - you will get a bright flash, star hot incandescent plasma, an
explosive boom or at least a crackling roar, sparks flying all over the place,
screams, blood, the smell of ozone and the stench of burned and cooked meat,
scattered gobbets of steaming flesh, miscelaneous flying body parts ...
The disadvantages to lasers are multiple, but this mostly centers on the
hardware necessary to make such a high powered beam. If compact power supplies
and beam generators can be perfected, most of these disadvantages disappear.
The one disadvantage I can think of now that you cannot get around with a tech
fix is that the beam may be partially reflected from the target or intervening
materials. Even a tiny fraction of the beam power, if reflected specularly, is
sufficient to blind the user or bystanders. Diffuse scattering may also cause
problems. In the visible part of the spectrum, this would result in an intense
flash of light that might dazzle anyone nearby.
One disadvantage people usually think of with lasers is that they will be
unable to affect targets with a reflective coat. This is not neccessarily
true. The best broad band reflectors are only about 98 or 99% reflective in
the visible, near UV, and near IR. If the laser beam is highly focused, the
intensity will be high enough to flash the surface of the reflector to a plasma
from the small amount of the initial beam that is absorbed. The rest of the
beam is then absorbed by the plasma rather than the target, and couples to the
target via the plasma, possibly through radiation diffusion or shock heating to
vaporize the material in the vicinity of the plasma layer, or maybe the beam
will cause mostly mechanical damage through the explosive vaporization of the
surface of the target. In any case, the results of that pulse leave the
surface much less reflective, and subsequent pulses directed to the same spot
can be used to burn through the target (I am envisioning here a rapid train of
pulses, so closely spaced that the target does not move farther than the spot
size of the beam in the time it takes for the next pulse to arrive).
Often in science fiction, particle beams or x-ray lasers are used as weapons.
Although fine for spacecraft and armored fighting vehicles, it would be a bad
idea to use these as personal weapons. These are essentially beams of ionizing
radiation. The radiation beams will interact with the atmosphere, and there
will be some backscatter. This will cause radiation sickness and other
problems associated with radiation exposure to the person using the gun. In
addition, the radiation scattered from the target will deliver lethal doses to
anyone standing near the target at the time it is hit. The target, of course,
will recieve a lethal dose of radiation even if the beam does not kill it,
death will follow in hours, weeks, or months.
In space combat, x-ray lasers have a major advantage in that they can be
focused very tightly at long ranges, and that the beam moves at the speed of
light. The radiation from x-ray lasers and particle beams can also disrupt
electronics and kill the occupants of vehicles.
> There is also some sort of stun guns, which I don't see coming anytime soon
> (except maybe Niven's mercy gun in A Gift From Earth, which is basically a
> modification of tranquilazier gun.).
An electric stun gun is supposedly already in development. It uses a low
powered UV laser to ionize a conductive path through the air and then
discharges electric current along this path to the target. Whether this
actually works or not, I do not know, but it is a definite possibility for a
future stun gun.
Another non-lethal weapon is a foam that is sprayed onto the target. It
hardens immediately, trapping the target. These weapons currently exist, but
are not used for fear of suffocating the target.
Sonic weapons also exist that can incapacitate a target without killing it, but
these are also not used much for fear of causing ear damage up to and including
deafness.
Various stun projectiles have been developed, the most widely used seems to be
rubber bullets. The basic idea behind all of these is that they batter and
bruise but are less likely to kill.
> Personally, I can't get rid of a mental image of a miniature catapult (one
> like those designed to send things to space) which shot anything
> magnetizable in high speed. It may be crazy, but I just got the image of
> loading the weapon with paperclips and shotting them in 5 - 6 kilometers per
> second, I think it was Erik Max Francis that said that steel would evadrope
> in 6 kilometers per second, and I just can't get it out of my mind.
> Personally, I think it would be mainly an assasination weapon. Just because
> I can see the headlines "The President of the US was shot and killed today
> by a paperclip."
Not just an assasination weapon. Expect to see front line infantry using guns
like this. If the power supply can be made compact enough, the ammunition will
weigh much less, so an individual soldier could carry a lot more shots for his
gun. In addition, higher velocity projectiles are better at piercing armor.
At 2 to 4 km/s, you can use tungsten or uranium projectiles that will punch
through steel plate. At 6+ km/s, any material will vaporize, creating an
explosion and an armor piercing jet that can get through even more armor.
Finally, the higher the velocity of the projectile, the lower the recoil for a
given amount of energy of the projectile. With a method of compact energy
storage, these electromagnetic projectile launchers have every advantage of
modern bullets, and some advantages of their own, as well.
> Anyway, I'm interested in hearing what you think would be the weapons of the
> 21th century. In every field.
> I'm especially interested in strange\silly weapons. (Such as the current
> underwater guns, which has LONG reloading time. They have to be sent to the
> factory to be reloaded.)
High pressure water sprayers? Supersonic gerbil launchers? A tune so catchy
that you cannot get it out of your head, and it eventualy uses up all of your
mental processes leaving you unable to function (A. C. Clarke, Tales From the
White Hart)?
For some really weird weapons that were actually developed and sometimes even
used, see if you can find a copy of the book Secret Weapons of World War II.
Here you will read about everything from invisible boats to flaming rocket
propelled wheels that roll along the ground to destroy concrete fortifications
to high explosive anti-aircraft baloons to steam guns that fire potatos and
cans of beer as their ammunition, not to mention trains that can drive across
any terrain (including water), rocket landing jeeps, methods to make the waves
in the sea go away, and a way to get a train car all to yourself when
travelling by rail.
Luke
Kristopher/EOS
>
> One disadvantage people usually think of with lasers is
> that they will be unable to affect targets with a
> reflective coat. This is not neccessarily true. The
> best broad band reflectors are only about 98 or 99%
> reflective in the visible, near UV, and near IR. If the
> laser beam is highly focused, the intensity will be high
> enough to flash the surface of the reflector to a plasma
> from the small amount of the initial beam that is
> absorbed. The rest of the beam is then absorbed by the
> plasma rather than the target, and couples to the target
> via the plasma, possibly through radiation diffusion or
> shock heating to vaporize the material in the vicinity of
> the plasma layer, or maybe the beam will cause mostly
> mechanical damage through the explosive vaporization of
> the surface of the target. In any case, the results of
> that pulse leave the surface much less reflective, and
> subsequent pulses directed to the same spot can be used
> to burn through the target (I am envisioning here a
> rapid train of pulses, so closely spaced that the target
> does not move farther than the spot size of the beam in
> the time it takes for the next pulse to arrive).
Meanwhile, your buddy 2 yards to the left is popped by
the 98% of the pulse that was reflected...
Kristopher/EOS
Ayende Rahien
> The beam itself is silent. The beam may also be invisible, although weapons
> grade lasers operating at visible light frequencies will still have visible
> beams even in perfectly clear air. Note that the generation of the laser beam
> need not be invisible or quiet - gas dynamic lasers and gas dynamic chemical
> lasers in particular may make a loud roar like a rocket and emit plumes of
> flame as they operate (all very high powered lasers operating today that are
> suitable for use as weapons are of the gas dynamic type). Note also that the
> interaction of the beam with the target will be anything but silent or
> invisible - you will get a bright flash, star hot incandescent plasma, an
> explosive boom or at least a crackling roar, sparks flying all over the place,
> screams, blood, the smell of ozone and the stench of burned and cooked meat,
> scattered gobbets of steaming flesh, miscelaneous flying body parts ...
If this is so noisy and firey, I don't think it will be used, for one thing,
the user will be temporary blind/deaf. At least, it wouldn't be an automatic
rifle. Yes, you can have special eyes/ears covers, but that wouldn't work for
the average soldier, as he would need to be able to notice everything around
him, and can't let himself be deafened/blinded by the special equipment to
use his weapon. Not to mention that it doesn't sound like a weapon you would
like to use in close range. Also a disadvantage, since when you choose a
weapon, you have better choose it so you could use it in close range rather
than on long range, being able to shot someone a mile away mean little when
you don't dare to shot someone threatening you with a gun a meter away.
> The disadvantages to lasers are multiple, but this mostly centers on the
> hardware necessary to make such a high powered beam. If compact power supplies
> and beam generators can be perfected, most of these disadvantages disappear.
The biggest problem that I can see is energy storage, and the other one is
keeping the rifle in working condition. I'm as far away from being an expert
as you can get, and I still think that it would be *hard* to keep something
like this in good shape in field conditions, even harder to fix it if you
break something. And endurance would be another big matter, how long can the
weapon keep firing without ruining itself. Size and weight are also big
problems. And one last, and major, problem, is cost. I can't see laser guns
ever beating normal guns in their prices. Even if they would manage to
produce them in a ready-to-battle modes, I don't think they could beat the
normal weapons in price or be common in armies, it would simply not worth the
extra cost.
> The one disadvantage I can think of now that you cannot get around with a tech
> fix is that the beam may be partially reflected from the target or intervening
> materials. Even a tiny fraction of the beam power, if reflected specularly, is
> sufficient to blind the user or bystanders. Diffuse scattering may also cause
> problems. In the visible part of the spectrum, this would result in an intense
> flash of light that might dazzle anyone nearby.
If you know that you are in danger from lasers, you put a glass in front of
you, it would distort the beam enough not to kill you. Blinding laser already
exist and I think were used in serbia or bosnia or israel or somewhere like
that. I remember reading an article about it once, the UN objected to it
because it was a cruel weapon, the article asked whatever shotting someone's
legs off wasn't cruel. But I can't remember when and where it was.
> One disadvantage people usually think of with lasers is that they will be
> unable to affect targets with a reflective coat. This is not neccessarily
> true. The best broad band reflectors are only about 98 or 99% reflective in
> the visible, near UV, and near IR. If the laser beam is highly focused, the
> intensity will be high enough to flash the surface of the reflector to a plasma
> from the small amount of the initial beam that is absorbed. The rest of the
> beam is then absorbed by the plasma rather than the target, and couples to the
> target via the plasma, possibly through radiation diffusion or shock heating to
> vaporize the material in the vicinity of the plasma layer, or maybe the beam
> will cause mostly mechanical damage through the explosive vaporization of the
> surface of the target. In any case, the results of that pulse leave the
> surface much less reflective, and subsequent pulses directed to the same spot
> can be used to burn through the target (I am envisioning here a rapid train of
> pulses, so closely spaced that the target does not move farther than the spot
> size of the beam in the time it takes for the next pulse to arrive).
How many pulses can you shot before your barrel get too hot? Is that a factor
in lasers?
> Often in science fiction, particle beams or x-ray lasers are used as weapons.
> Although fine for spacecraft and armored fighting vehicles, it would be a bad
> idea to use these as personal weapons. These are essentially beams of ionizing
> radiation. The radiation beams will interact with the atmosphere, and there
> will be some backscatter. This will cause radiation sickness and other
> problems associated with radiation exposure to the person using the gun. In
> addition, the radiation scattered from the target will deliver lethal doses to
> anyone standing near the target at the time it is hit. The target, of course,
> will recieve a lethal dose of radiation even if the beam does not kill it,
> death will follow in hours, weeks, or months.
Small mass murder weapons?
> In space combat, x-ray lasers have a major advantage in that they can be
> focused very tightly at long ranges, and that the beam moves at the speed of
> light. The radiation from x-ray lasers and particle beams can also disrupt
> electronics and kill the occupants of vehicles.
Why visible light can't focus so tightly over long distances?
> > There is also some sort of stun guns, which I don't see coming anytime soon
> > (except maybe Niven's mercy gun in A Gift From Earth, which is basically a
> > modification of tranquilazier gun.).
>
> An electric stun gun is supposedly already in development. It uses a low
> powered UV laser to ionize a conductive path through the air and then
> discharges electric current along this path to the target. Whether this
> actually works or not, I do not know, but it is a definite possibility for a
> future stun gun.
Humans will wear something like trucks do, the strip of metal that touch the
ground to ground the electricity. Possible?
> Another non-lethal weapon is a foam that is sprayed onto the target. It
> hardens immediately, trapping the target. These weapons currently exist, but
> are not used for fear of suffocating the target.
Ouch, that is not something you want to get stucked in, how do you get out?
> Sonic weapons also exist that can incapacitate a target without killing it, but
> these are also not used much for fear of causing ear damage up to and including
> deafness.
I assume it is not the kind of weapon you can protect yourself from by
putting somehting in your ears, right?
> Various stun projectiles have been developed, the most widely used seems to be
> rubber bullets. The basic idea behind all of these is that they batter and
> bruise but are less likely to kill.
Rubber bullets are ineffective, they can kill quite well, even if the soldier
isn't trying. they can pull someone's eyes out or main very severly.
> > Personally, I can't get rid of a mental image of a miniature catapult (one
> > like those designed to send things to space) which shot anything
> > magnetizable in high speed. It may be crazy, but I just got the image of
> > loading the weapon with paperclips and shotting them in 5 - 6 kilometers per
> > second, I think it was Erik Max Francis that said that steel would evadrope
> > in 6 kilometers per second, and I just can't get it out of my mind.
> > Personally, I think it would be mainly an assasination weapon. Just because
> > I can see the headlines "The President of the US was shot and killed today
> > by a paperclip."
>
> Not just an assasination weapon. Expect to see front line infantry using guns
> like this. If the power supply can be made compact enough, the ammunition will
> weigh much less, so an individual soldier could carry a lot more shots for his
> gun. In addition, higher velocity projectiles are better at piercing armor.
> At 2 to 4 km/s, you can use tungsten or uranium projectiles that will punch
> through steel plate. At 6+ km/s, any material will vaporize, creating an
> explosion and an armor piercing jet that can get through even more armor.
> Finally, the higher the velocity of the projectile, the lower the recoil for a
> given amount of energy of the projectile. With a method of compact energy
> storage, these electromagnetic projectile launchers have every advantage of
> modern bullets, and some advantages of their own, as well.
Cool, but, how do you use uranium in a magnetic weapon, is uranium magnetic?
> > Anyway, I'm interested in hearing what you think would be the weapons of the
> > 21th century. In every field.
> > I'm especially interested in strange\silly weapons. (Such as the current
> > underwater guns, which has LONG reloading time. They have to be sent to the
> > factory to be reloaded.)
>
> High pressure water sprayers? Supersonic gerbil launchers? A tune so catchy
> that you cannot get it out of your head, and it eventualy uses up all of your
> mental processes leaving you unable to function (A. C. Clarke, Tales From the
> White Hart)?
Supersonic GERBIL launchers? Gerbil = small rodent???
> For some really weird weapons that were actually developed and sometimes even
> used, see if you can find a copy of the book Secret Weapons of World War II.
> Here you will read about everything from invisible boats to flaming rocket
> propelled wheels that roll along the ground to destroy concrete fortifications
> to high explosive anti-aircraft baloons to steam guns that fire potatos and
> cans of beer as their ammunition, not to mention trains that can drive across
> any terrain (including water), rocket landing jeeps, methods to make the waves
> in the sea go away, and a way to get a train car all to yourself when
> travelling by rail.
I really DO hope you are kidding here.
Cause if you don't... shudder.
Is there something about it on the web?
Brian Trosko
: Anything you can see, you can hit. Just aim at the image of what you see, you
: do not have to worry about wind, gravity, or that the displacement of the image
: due to optical effects. The beam follows the same path back to the target that
: it took to get from the target to your eye.
By the same token, what you can't see you can't hit. Conventional
artillery can attack without LOS, but a laser weapon can not.
: rupture flesh. A plate of steel that protects against bullets may not offer
: significant protection against a focused beam.
But if you're pumping that much energy through the air, you're going to
waste a lot of it heating the air. How much will be left to hit the
target? How do you generate this power in the first place?
: It takes very little energy to blind a person using a laser. Just set the beam
: to scan across everything in front of you, and anyone facing in your direction
: will be blinded.
Anyone not wearing protective goggles, you mean.
: In space combat, x-ray lasers have a major advantage in that they can be
: focused very tightly at long ranges, and that the beam moves at the speed of
: light. The radiation from x-ray lasers and particle beams can also disrupt
: electronics and kill the occupants of vehicles.
In harder sf, x-ray lasers are nuclear-pumped, just like in SDI. So in
order to use one, you detonate a nuclear warhead. The gamma-ray lasers in
_Footfall_ worked similarly, but I don't think we even have much of a clue
about how to make those.
We actually tested a nuclear-pumped x-ray laser, but it didn't do much of
anything.
William Burns
wrote:
>In article <20000526160010...@ng-md1.aol.com>,
> jwme...@aol.com (JWMeritt) wrote:
>> Watch out! This was the subject that sent His Majesty off the deep end before!
>Oh? Who was he? What happened to him? And why?
It all started when JWMeritt posted an article that had absolutely
nothing to do with science, science in science fiction, or science
fiction itself. Eric politely pointed this out to him and suggested
he'd be better off posting the article in a more appropriate group.
JWMeritt went ballistic, insulted Eric on every post he (Meritt) made,
was generally ignored -- except by Eric, and (apparently) disappeared
from the group.
Recently he has reappeared and taken up where he left off. That is;
Insult Eric at Every Turn.
This time, even Eric seems to be ignoring him.
(posted and mailed)
--
William
Another 219 days, then it's "Welcome to the Third."
Erik Max Francis
> It all started when JWMeritt posted an article that had absolutely
> nothing to do with science, science in science fiction, or science
> fiction itself. Eric politely pointed this out to him and suggested
> he'd be better off posting the article in a more appropriate group.
Actually, it's even more fundamentally sad than that.
I was posting about Hawking radiation (specifically as it related to
Larry Niven's writing), and he came along to tell me that what I was
posting was inappropriate (ostensibly because it contained too much
science and I wasn't focussing on the fiction enough). When I pointed
out that he was mistaken, that's when this whole thing started, which
devolved into him fighting the tyranny present in this newsgroup, since
obviously I'm just the leader and everyone else who contributes is
simply a toadie. Yeah, that's it.
(Mind you, he insisted that this _wasn't_ what he meant, but 1. many
others perceived him to be saying the same thing, and 2. he never
bothered indicating what it was he _had_ meant.
> JWMeritt went ballistic, insulted Eric on every post he (Meritt) made,
> was generally ignored -- except by Eric, and (apparently) disappeared
> from the group.
Check Deja. I was by no means the only person who responded to him. I
ignored the majority of his posts; many others responded to try in vain
to convince him to find better things to do with his time.
--
Erik Max Francis / m...@alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
__ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/ \ Think twice before you speak to a friend in need.
\__/ Ambrose Bierce
Interstelen / http://www.interstelen.com/
A multiplayer, strategic, turn-based Web game on an interstellar scale.
madr...@metronet.com
wrote:
>I was thinking about what weapons would look like in several decades from
>now.
>According to SF, we are likely to have widespread use of handheld beam
>weapon. I don't think so. While it certainly be made possible to produce
>such weapons, I don't see any major advantage in having beam weapons over
>normal weapons, beside not being affected by wind. And maybe being more
>quiet than normal weapons.
Optical lasers do not have a good damage mechanism: they do surface
damage only. This can destroy a thin-skinned missile, destroy
unprotected sensors, and maim a human being, but sensors can be
protected, and lasers of that power have a significant signiture: the
beam makes a load "crack" when it turns off as the heated column of
air collapses. Also, a chemical laser will create a huge plume, like
a rocket exhaust. Form all that the US/Israeli THEL and USAF ABL
should be operational in 5-10 years for anti-missile defense
X-ray and gamma ray lasers are possible, and would have a better
damage mechanism. Using a nuclear explosion to pump an x-ray laser
seems a bit awkward, but not enough of the work has been declassified
to be much help. I'd say it will be at least twenty-fifty years
before we see X-ray or gamma ray lasers for vehicle weapons.
Another catagory of beam weapons are particle beams. These can do
more (and more appropriate) damage than lasers, but the range is
limited in the atmosphere. Back in the 80s both the US and the Soviet
Union was working on these, but today tbe only references a web search
turns up are for games. That may be bacause the technical limitations
were too severe, or because they are better space weapons and there is
no urgency right now, or because the development programs went "black"
because they work too well.
>There is also some sort of stun guns, which I don't see coming anytime soon
>(except maybe Niven's mercy gun in A Gift From Earth, which is basically a
>modification of tranquilazier gun.).
>There is a weapon that either trigger pain nerves or kill the nerves.
>(Asimov & Briar.)
Of course everyone knows about "stun guns" where a high voltage
current triggers muscle spasms by interfearing with nerves. The Tazer
uses spring loaded darts trailing wires to add about 10ft range. I
have also seen proposals for a salt-water squirt gun to extend the
range, and even using the ionized path of a laser beam to carry the
current. I see too many disadvantages to be practical.
>Personally, I can't get rid of a mental image of a miniature catapult (one
>like those designed to send things to space) which shot anything
>magnetizable in high speed. It may be crazy, but I just got the image of
>loading the weapon with paperclips and shotting them in 5 - 6 kilometers per
>second, I think it was Erik Max Francis that said that steel would evadrope
>in 6 kilometers per second, and I just can't get it out of my mind.
>Personally, I think it would be mainly an assasination weapon. Just because
>I can see the headlines "The President of the US was shot and killed today
>by a paperclip."
The US Army calls it an "Electromagnetic Accellerator," and they hope
to replace 120mm 1.5 KPS tank cannon with a 30mm 5 KPS system in about
twenty years. Other names are the "rail gun" (only good for one shot,
but it has caught the immagination) and "coil gun" (good for repeat
use, but not as fast, yet). A term from science-fiction (well, the
better SF gaming) is the "Gauss" gun, from the unit of magnetic
intensity.
It works alot better with a special purpose "dart." I doubt a
paperclip would be stable enough.
>Anyway, I'm interested in hearing what you think would be the weapons of the
>21th century. In every field.
>I'm especially interested in strange\silly weapons. (Such as the current
>underwater guns, which has LONG reloading time. They have to be sent to the
>factory to be reloaded.)
In the next twenty years I expect to see "personal defense weaponse"
like a big pistol or small SMG firing caseless ammunition with
ballistics and accuracy similar to 5.56mm NATO (M16) ammunition.
For the typical infanty weapon I expect to see a weapon similar to the
American OICW or French POPOV, using a smart grenade. I can even see
a homing projectile (based on the USAF "adaptive" projectile) for
sniping. Also a "behive " APERS round.
Bob Lyle
Ayende Rahien
that you probably couldn't use them in high humidity, fog, snow, rain, sleet
situations. Too much chance of the beam refracting from water.
Ayende Rahien
madr...@metronet.com wrote:
> On Fri, 26 May 2000 19:11:53 GMT, Ayende Rahien <Aye...@softhome.net>
> wrote:
>
> >I was thinking about what weapons would look like in several decades from
> >now.
> >According to SF, we are likely to have widespread use of handheld beam
> >weapon. I don't think so. While it certainly be made possible to produce
> >such weapons, I don't see any major advantage in having beam weapons over
> >normal weapons, beside not being affected by wind. And maybe being more
> >quiet than normal weapons.
> Optical lasers do not have a good damage mechanism: they do surface
> damage only. This can destroy a thin-skinned missile, destroy
> unprotected sensors, and maim a human being, but sensors can be
> protected, and lasers of that power have a significant signiture: the
> beam makes a load "crack" when it turns off as the heated column of
> air collapses. Also, a chemical laser will create a huge plume, like
> a rocket exhaust. Form all that the US/Israeli THEL and USAF ABL
> should be operational in 5-10 years for anti-missile defense
> X-ray and gamma ray lasers are possible, and would have a better
> damage mechanism. Using a nuclear explosion to pump an x-ray laser
> seems a bit awkward, but not enough of the work has been declassified
> to be much help. I'd say it will be at least twenty-fifty years
> before we see X-ray or gamma ray lasers for vehicle weapons.
I do not doubt that vehicle laser would come to use. The problem is whatever
it would be cost effective. How far is LOS? In some places, jungles, for
examples, or montains, or creaks, or cities, it will be very short.
> Another catagory of beam weapons are particle beams. These can do
> more (and more appropriate) damage than lasers, but the range is
> limited in the atmosphere. Back in the 80s both the US and the Soviet
> Union was working on these, but today tbe only references a web search
> turns up are for games. That may be bacause the technical limitations
> were too severe, or because they are better space weapons and there is
> no urgency right now, or because the development programs went "black"
> because they work too well.
How does a practicle beam work?
> >There is also some sort of stun guns, which I don't see coming anytime soon
> >(except maybe Niven's mercy gun in A Gift From Earth, which is basically a
> >modification of tranquilazier gun.).
> >There is a weapon that either trigger pain nerves or kill the nerves.
> >(Asimov & Briar.)
>
> Of course everyone knows about "stun guns" where a high voltage
> current triggers muscle spasms by interfearing with nerves. The Tazer
> uses spring loaded darts trailing wires to add about 10ft range. I
> have also seen proposals for a salt-water squirt gun to extend the
> range, and even using the ionized path of a laser beam to carry the
> current. I see too many disadvantages to be practical.
What are the disadvatages?
> >Personally, I can't get rid of a mental image of a miniature catapult (one
> >like those designed to send things to space) which shot anything
> >magnetizable in high speed. It may be crazy, but I just got the image of
> >loading the weapon with paperclips and shotting them in 5 - 6 kilometers per
> >second, I think it was Erik Max Francis that said that steel would evadrope
> >in 6 kilometers per second, and I just can't get it out of my mind.
> >Personally, I think it would be mainly an assasination weapon. Just because
> >I can see the headlines "The President of the US was shot and killed today
> >by a paperclip."
>
> The US Army calls it an "Electromagnetic Accellerator," and they hope
> to replace 120mm 1.5 KPS tank cannon with a 30mm 5 KPS system in about
> twenty years. Other names are the "rail gun" (only good for one shot,
> but it has caught the immagination) and "coil gun" (good for repeat
> use, but not as fast, yet). A term from science-fiction (well, the
> better SF gaming) is the "Gauss" gun, from the unit of magnetic
> intensity.
> It works alot better with a special purpose "dart." I doubt a
> paperclip would be stable enough.
There really is something like this? Cool. :) (Pround smile)
I actually had a semi-original thought that is worth something.
The paper clip idea is for laugher.
What are you talking about when you are talking about stable?
> >Anyway, I'm interested in hearing what you think would be the weapons of the
> >21th century. In every field.
> >I'm especially interested in strange\silly weapons. (Such as the current
> >underwater guns, which has LONG reloading time. They have to be sent to the
> >factory to be reloaded.)
> In the next twenty years I expect to see "personal defense weaponse"
> like a big pistol or small SMG firing caseless ammunition with
> ballistics and accuracy similar to 5.56mm NATO (M16) ammunition.
>
> For the typical infanty weapon I expect to see a weapon similar to the
> American OICW or French POPOV, using a smart grenade. I can even see
> a homing projectile (based on the USAF "adaptive" projectile) for
> sniping. Also a "behive " APERS round.
All of them variations of existing weapons, or improvement, right?
I do believe that guns will get more accurate/strong/intimidating and so on.
I want to know about other stuff.
JJ
It was talking about weapons that had been described in science fiction
that were now undergoing testing.
They showed a tank armed with a rail gun, its capacitor could only
fire five shots an hour. But the 20mm projectile it fired left the
muzzle at 5mps. Made a mess of the target though.
They also talked about the orbital crow bars they were getting
ready to test. Put a bunch in orbit, and when you need a ground target
hit, deorbit one or more. Each has a memory of the target and its
location, and sensor package to guide it to it.
I especially liked the soldier of the future gear they were
testing. Helmets with built in night and ir vision gear. Guns with tv
camera's on them, that can be displayed in the soldiers helmet system or
sent to other soldiers. Also instead of sticking your head around an
obstacle stick the gun around instead for a view. If you need a longer
ranged view, take a small plane and remote control out of your pocket
and launch it for a look around. Their own personal remote observation
vehicle. Short ranged and subject to winds, but better than nothing.
This is only some of the stuff their admitting to, who knows what
else is in the works that hasn't been heard about yet.
john jordan
madr...@metronet.com
wrote:
>I do not doubt that vehicle laser would come to use. The problem is whatever
>it would be cost effective. How far is LOS? In some places, jungles, for
>examples, or montains, or creaks, or cities, it will be very short.
They are designed as anti-missile weapons.. LOS is measured in
kilometers for the THEL and tens (hundreds?) of kilometers for the ABL
>How does a practicle beam work?
>
It is a particle accelerator, like the electron gun in a TV tube, but
much more powerfully, nearly to the speed of light. . The simplest
type accelerates a bean of electrons. This only has a range of a
couple of hundred yards in air, but was investigated by the US Navy
for close-in antimissile defense. Supposedly the Navy had a
prototype, before the whole project dropped out of sight.
More typical are charged particle beam weapons shooting the nuclei of
atoms. again at the nearly the speed of light.. These weapons could
penetrate nearly a kilometer of air by puling down the same channel in
the air. Also, these weapons could be effective against sheilded
targets.
In space, a chargred particle beam has a range of thousands of
kilometers but is easily deflected by the earths magnetic field or
even the solar "wind." For space use, electrons are added to the
charged partcle beam, making a Neutral Particle Beam. A neutral beam
isn't as cohesive as a charged beam, but it is easier to aim. NBW
were the heart of Reagan's "Star Wars."
>> Of course everyone knows about "stun guns" where a high voltage
>> current triggers muscle spasms by interfearing with nerves. The Tazer
>> uses spring loaded darts trailing wires to add about 10ft range. I
>> have also seen proposals for a salt-water squirt gun to extend the
>> range, and even using the ionized path of a laser beam to carry the
>> current. I see too many disadvantages to be practical.
>
>What are the disadvatages?
Water or ionized air, the current path is easily disruped by air
movement. Also, a laser powerful enough to ionize air will cause
painful burns.
>
>There really is something like this? Cool. :) (Pround smile)
>I actually had a semi-original thought that is worth something.
>The paper clip idea is for laugher.
>What are you talking about when you are talking about stable?
The paperclip will tumble and have an unpredictable trajectory as the
air resistance varies. IIRC, in one SF story they used straightened
slivers of steel and nails when they ran out of ammo for their
'needlers."
>
>All of them variations of existing weapons, or improvement, right?
>I do believe that guns will get more accurate/strong/intimidating and so on.
>I want to know about other stuff.
Well, not exactly. The French PAPOP (my bad, not PAPOV) is an
advanced version of the 40mm GL/rifle cobination pioneered by the US
Army in the 1960s. It supports the rifle squad by attacking area
targets. The US OICW uses explosive ordnance to attack point targets,
relegating the 5.56mm rifle to close defence: a glorified baynet.
Homing rounds will complete the tranformation.
Even more revolutionary will be the use of advanced sights, on any
weapon. Not only will this permit use of the weapon at night, but the
shooter can shoot around corners or over walls using a helmet display.
Also the sights will be able to detect motion and target it. You can
no longer advance by rushes. within sight of an ordinary infantryman.
The change in warfare is as complete as the change from direct fire
artillery of the 19th century to the indirect barrages of WWI.
Bob Lyle
Tom Breton
> Ayende Rahien wrote:
>
>
> > There is also some sort of stun guns, which I don't see coming anytime soon
> > (except maybe Niven's mercy gun in A Gift From Earth, which is basically a
> > modification of tranquilazier gun.).
>
> An electric stun gun is supposedly already in development. It uses a low
> powered UV laser to ionize a conductive path through the air and then
> discharges electric current along this path to the target. Whether this
> actually works or not, I do not know, but it is a definite possibility for a
> future stun gun.
It actually works, but it's far too bulky to be useful. It's about
the size of a refrigerator. They claim that some Polish research will
result in UV lasers of manageable size, but I really doubt we'll see
that for a long time.
--
Tom Breton, http://world.std.com/~tob
Not using "gh" since 1997. http://world.std.com/~tob/ugh-free.html
Hop David
Luke Campbell wrote:
> The one disadvantage I can think of now that you cannot get around with a tech
> fix is that the beam may be partially reflected from the target or intervening
> materials. Even a tiny fraction of the beam power, if reflected specularly, is
> sufficient to blind the user or bystanders. Diffuse scattering may also cause
> problems. In the visible part of the spectrum, this would result in an intense
> flash of light that might dazzle anyone nearby.
If you take three mirrors and set them up at right angles to each other (like two
walls and a ceiling), they will send a beam back in the same direction it comes
from.
Reflectors on bikes use this principle.
Perhaps an armor covered with an array of such mirrors could cause the attacker
some discomfort before the mirrors burn up.
Hop
Lance Purple
>Luke Campbell <lwc...@u.washington.edu> writes:
>> An electric stun gun is supposedly already in development. It uses a low
>> powered UV laser to ionize a conductive path through the air and then
>> discharges electric current along this path to the target. Whether this
>> actually works or not, I do not know, but it is a definite possibility for a
>> future stun gun.
>
>the size of a refrigerator. They claim that some Polish research will
>result in UV lasers of manageable size, but I really doubt we'll see
>that for a long time.
Even if they solved the power supply problem,
I can see two big problems right off the bat:
- In urban areas, sooner or later you're going to hit
a powerline. This'll probably do bad things to the
shooter and/or the victim they were trying to "stun".
- For similar reasons, you'd better not use the weapon
if storm clouds are anywhere nearby, or Mother Nature
may give your "stun beam" a ten thousand amp upgrade...
--
,--------------------------------------------,
| Lance Purple (lpurple at netcom dot com) |
'--------------------------------------------'
LEG
>
> Anyway, I'm interested in hearing what you think would be the weapons of the
> 21th century. In every field.
> I'm especially interested in strange\silly weapons. (Such as the current
> underwater guns, which has LONG reloading time. They have to be sent to the
> factory to be reloaded.)
>
One of the really interesting things is "smart" weapons:
- Mines that cen tell the difference between friend and enemy.
- Miniature helicopters with weapons or even just loaded with explosives
that home in on the sound signature or enemy gunfire.
- Grenades that explode in mid-air over the enemy position.
Another thing are sonic weapons. IIRC, some business is already working
on a device that produces a directed sound wave (does for sound what
a laser does for light). This could be more effective than lasers
against anti-laser measures (fog, anti-laser aerosols).
Electromagnetic guns are also very likely.
Ayende Rahien
I actually thought about that one alone without knowing about its exitance
from exterior source. :)
John Schilling
> Ayende Rahien wrote:
>
> > There is also some sort of stun guns, which I don't see coming anytime soon
> > (except maybe Niven's mercy gun in A Gift From Earth, which is basically a
> > modification of tranquilazier gun.).
>
> An electric stun gun is supposedly already in development. It uses a low
> powered UV laser to ionize a conductive path through the air and then
> discharges electric current along this path to the target. Whether this
> actually works or not, I do not know, but it is a definite possibility for a
> future stun gun.
I seem to recall learning way back in grade school that electric current only
flows when there is a complete circuit. "Discharges electric current along
this path to the target" is only half of the equation; the current is going
to want a return path to the "stun gun" real bad, and if it doesn't find one
it is not going to head out to the target in the first place.
The obvious return paths (ground, parallel beams) have obvious and severe
problems. Until the current-return issue is addressed, and I have never
seen it addressed, it is far from a "definite possibility".
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
John Schilling
>Luke Campbell wrote:
>> The one disadvantage I can think of now that you cannot get around with a tech
>> fix is that the beam may be partially reflected from the target or intervening
>> materials. Even a tiny fraction of the beam power, if reflected specularly, is
>> sufficient to blind the user or bystanders. Diffuse scattering may also cause
>> problems. In the visible part of the spectrum, this would result in an intense
>> flash of light that might dazzle anyone nearby.
>If you take three mirrors and set them up at right angles to each other (like two
>walls and a ceiling), they will send a beam back in the same direction it comes
>from.
>Reflectors on bikes use this principle.
>Perhaps an armor covered with an array of such mirrors could cause the attacker
>some discomfort before the mirrors burn up.
Unlikely - retroreflectors only approximately send the beam back in the same direction
it came from. In particular, they suffer from substantial beam divergence due to lack
of focus and diffraction effects. Note that in the bicycle reflectors you cite, the
driver of the car can see the light reflected back from his headlights, even though
his eyes are a meter or so away from the headlights.
The hypothetical laser gunner would be illuminated by only a diffuse reflection of
his beam, while the target gets the full concentrated intensity. Assuming the
laser platform is even moderately hardened against laser attack itself, the only
thing the retroreflectors would do is provide an easy aim point in the brief
interval before they vaporized.
Hop David
John Schilling wrote:
> Hop David <hops...@tabletoptelephone.com> writes:
>
> (snip)
> >If you take three mirrors and set them up at right angles to each other (like two
> >walls and a ceiling), they will send a beam back in the same direction it comes
> >from.
>
> >Reflectors on bikes use this principle.
>
> >Perhaps an armor covered with an array of such mirrors could cause the attacker
> >some discomfort before the mirrors burn up.
>
> Unlikely - retroreflectors only approximately send the beam back in the same direction
> it came from. In particular, they suffer from substantial beam divergence due to lack
> of focus
focus? I could see using a parabolic reflector to focus ordinary light on a target at a
specific distance. But with lasers? A parabolic reflector would make parrallel beams non
parrallel and actually _cause_ beam divergence (except at the focal point). It seems to
me positioning the focal point on the attacker would be exceedingly difficult. A focusing
mirror doesn't make much sense to me in this situation.
> and diffraction effects. Note that in the bicycle reflectors you cite, the
> driver of the car can see the light reflected back from his headlights, even though
> his eyes are a meter or so away from the headlights.
I'm generally ignorant of physics. ISTR that light is refracted if the width of the slit
it's passing through is equal to or less than its wavelength. Could you reduce refraction
effects by making the mirrors larger?
>
>
> The hypothetical laser gunner would be illuminated by only a diffuse reflection of
> his beam, while the target gets the full concentrated intensity. Assuming the
> laser platform is even moderately hardened against laser attack itself, the only
> thing the retroreflectors would do is provide an easy aim point in the brief
> interval before they vaporized.
How would you harden against laser attack? It seems to me that your armor would need to
be reflective with a high melting point.
Any reflective armor would be quite visible. But the retroreflective armor I suggest
would be _less_ of an easy aim point since the attacker would only see reflected light
that comes from the attacker. The attacker could send light out in all directions to see
such armor, but that makes the attacker very visible.
And if larger, higher quality retroreflectors couldn't eliminate enough diffraction to
send a lethal beam back to the attacker, they might still be able to return a blinding
beam.
regards,
Hop
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html
Hop David
Hop David wrote:
> I'm generally ignorant of physics.
and I prove it with this post
> ISTR that light is refracted if the width of the slit
> it's passing through is equal to or less than its wavelength. Could you reduce refraction
> effects by making the mirrors larger?
meant "diffracted" not "refracted". Hope that makes more sense.
-- Hop
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html
Chuck Stewart
<392EF4E0...@u.washington.edu>:
>Advantages of laser guns:
For theoretical purposes of hand-held weaponry lasers have one
great advantage of projectile weapons.
There is no limit to the power of the laser.
There are limits in what you can make it out of and power it with,
but there is no limit on the power of the beam.
Assuming you could stuff an ICBM-killer into a compact 10 kilo
package a soldier could wield it... with goggles and a nomex
uniform :)
The variety of mass-projectors postulated do not have this
advantage.
There is a limit to how much recoil a handheld system can generate
and still be useable.
--
Chuck Stewart
"Anime-style catgirls: Threat? Menace? Or just studying algebra?"
Paul F. Dietz
> For theoretical purposes of hand-held weaponry lasers have one
> great advantage of projectile weapons.
>
> There is no limit to the power of the laser.
> There are limits in what you can make it out of and power it with,
> but there is no limit on the power of the beam.
If the beam is too powerful(*), the air breaks down, and the
beam can't propagate. So there is a limit.
Paul
(*) An extremely short (femtoseconds) pulse can have higher power,
since the air doesn't have as much time to break down.
This leads to the interesting phenomenon of self-focusing
light pulses, or 'light strings'.
Paul F. Dietz
> >(*) An extremely short (femtoseconds) pulse can have higher
> >power,
> > since the air doesn't have as much time to break down.
> > This leads to the interesting phenomenon of self-focusing
> > light pulses, or 'light strings'.
>
> How many joules could you pack into a pulse though?
Not much, IIRC (mJs), but you could repeat them at a very high
rate.
Paul
sierra...@yahoo.com
> Luke Campbell <lwc...@u.washington.edu> writes:
>
> I seem to recall learning way back in grade school that electric current only
> flows when there is a complete circuit. "Discharges electric current along
Not if it is static electricity though. Maybe this device generates
a powerful static electricity charge.
--
Da Katt
[This space for rent]
See my work at http://www.geocities.com/sierra_tigris
Chuck Stewart
<3931AB04...@interaccess.com>:
>Chuck Stewart wrote:
>
>> For theoretical purposes of hand-held weaponry lasers have one
>> great advantage of projectile weapons.
>>
>> There is no limit to the power of the laser.
>> There are limits in what you can make it out of and power it
>> with, but there is no limit on the power of the beam.
>
>
>If the beam is too powerful(*), the air breaks down, and the
>beam can't propagate. So there is a limit.
Is this plasma bloom?
I thought that if a beam was sufficiently powerful the shockwave of
expanding air would leave an empty tunnel for the beam... or have i
got this confused with something else?
>
> Paul
>
>(*) An extremely short (femtoseconds) pulse can have higher
>power,
> since the air doesn't have as much time to break down.
> This leads to the interesting phenomenon of self-focusing
> light pulses, or 'light strings'.
?
How many joules could you pack into a pulse though?
--
Brett Evill
wrote...
>
>schi...@spock.usc.edu (John Schilling) writes:
>
>> Luke Campbell <lwc...@u.washington.edu> writes:
>>
>> I seem to recall learning way back in grade school that electric current
only
>> flows when there is a complete circuit. "Discharges electric current along
>
> Not if it is static electricity though. Maybe this device generates
>a powerful static electricity charge.
It is more likely to rely on earth return. Early telegraphs, and field
telephones as late as WWI, were earth return devices.
Regards,
--
Brett Evill
(The opinions expressed above are not those of the Bureau of Transport
Economics, the Federal Department of Transport and Regional Services, or the
Australian Commonwealth Government.)
madr...@metronet.com
(Brett Evill) wrote:
>It is more likely to rely on earth return. Early telegraphs, and field
>telephones as late as WWI, were earth return devices.
>
>Regards,
Earth return. Through the shooter's own feet and body, I presume. ;-)
Yes, I know, run a ground wire to the soles of the shoe.
Still, the variable resistance of different types of soil and
artificial flooring renders this mechanism . . . uncertain.
Bob Lyle
Brett Evill
wrote...
>
>On 29 May 2000 02:32:40 GMT, BEv...@nospicedham.email.dot.gov.au
>(Brett Evill) wrote:
>
>>It is more likely to rely on earth return. Early telegraphs, and field
>>telephones as late as WWI, were earth return devices.
>>
>>Regards,
>
>Earth return. Through the shooter's own feet and body, I presume. ;-)
Well, you *could* do it that way. I'd want something like a zap strap myself,
but you do whatever flicks yours switch. ;-)
>Yes, I know, run a ground wire to the soles of the shoe.
>Still, the variable resistance of different types of soil and
>artificial flooring renders this mechanism . . . uncertain.
For some reason which I am far from understanding, earth return doesn't work as
badly as you might think from the resitivity of soils and rock. I think it is
least ineffective in situations in which the current averages zero (phone
signals, AC, etc.)
What I would be worried about is a return current through the ionised air left
by the original beam: zap a target and it zaps right back. I'll stick to sonic
stunners, thanks.
John Schilling
>In article <8766ryg...@smtp.mail.yahoo.com>, sierra...@yahoo.com
>wrote...
>>schi...@spock.usc.edu (John Schilling) writes:
>>> Luke Campbell <lwc...@u.washington.edu> writes:
>>>
>>> I seem to recall learning way back in grade school that electric current
>>> only flows when there is a complete circuit. "Discharges electric current
>>> along
>>
>> Not if it is static electricity though. Maybe this device generates
>>a powerful static electricity charge.
>It is more likely to rely on earth return. Early telegraphs, and field
>telephones as late as WWI, were earth return devices.
"Earth Return" means that the full current returns through the earth, up my
legs, through my torso, and down my arm to the hand holding the stun gun.
That's fine if we're talking about the microamps necessary to run a telephone,
but a bit of a problem for stun-gun levels of current.
Lance Purple
>
> "Earth Return" means that the full current returns through the earth,
> up my legs, through my torso, and down my arm to the hand holding the
> stun gun.
>
> That's fine if we're talking about the microamps necessary to run a
> telephone, but a bit of a problem for stun-gun levels of current.
Couldn't the current also return through the earth, and up an aluminum
ground-return chain trailing from the butt of the weapon?
I think the real problem is: what happens when this "stun beam" misses
the target and hits a neighborhood power-line? Or the underbelly of a
nearby storm cloud? The aluminum chain had better be thick enough to
conduct several hundred amps, and the person holding the weapon better
be wearing big utility-worker gloves and dark goggles...
Tom Breton
> In article <8766ryg...@smtp.mail.yahoo.com>, sierra...@yahoo.com
> wrote...
> >
> >schi...@spock.usc.edu (John Schilling) writes:
> >
> > Not if it is static electricity though. Maybe this device generates
> >a powerful static electricity charge.
>
> It is more likely to rely on earth return. Early telegraphs, and field
> telephones as late as WWI, were earth return devices.
No, the subject under discussion were tasers, which (except on Buffy)
use 2 wires to build a complete circuit. Or 2 ionized channels, in
the case under discussion.
JWMeritt
>I was posting about Hawking radiation (specifically as it related to
>Larry Niven's writing), and he came along to tell me that what I was
>posting was inappropriate (ostensibly because it contained too much
>science and I wasn't focussing on the fiction enough).
Nice try. Check. You were posting in a THREAD, and it was inappropriate to
THAT. I did NOT say it was inappropriate for the newsgroup. Nice try, though.
>When I pointed
>out that he was mistaken, that's when this whole thing started, which
>devolved into him fighting the tyranny present in this newsgroup, since
>obviously I'm just the leader and everyone else who contributes is
>simply a toadie. Yeah, that's it.
Clever retelling. Not true, but what the heck.
Jim Meritt, CISSP, CISA
Kristopher/EOS
Kristopher/EOS
Home
High pressure water sprayers are used for mob control during riots. I saw
some of them when I was stationed in Germany in the early 80s. I had
forgotten that there was an anti-American demonstration going on and rode a
strassenbahn (street car) right through the middle. I opted to get off at
another stop :)
A tune so catchy
> that you cannot get it out of your head, and it eventualy uses up all of
your
> mental processes leaving you unable to function
I am reminded of a Monty Python skit where someone invented the ultimate
joke. It was so funny that anyone reading it would immediately have
convulsions and die. They translated it into German by having a team of
translators translate one word each, and used it in WWII.
Ray
JWMeritt
>> High pressure water sprayers?
>
>High pressure water sprayers are used for mob control during riots
Fire hose pressures are OK for mob control - especially if you add a little
something to the water. EXTREMELY high pressure is good for cutting rock and
metal. Not a good thing for mob control (well, a bit better than jeeps a'la
China in that it may clean up the mess it makes).
yuch...
Jim Meritt, CISSP, CISA
Erik Max Francis
> I am reminded of a Monty Python skit where someone invented the
> ultimate
> joke. It was so funny that anyone reading it would immediately have
> convulsions and die. They translated it into German by having a team
> of
> translators translate one word each, and used it in WWII.
I'm also reminded of a stand-up routine by Lewis Black which I saw
yesterday on Comedy Central, where hearing dumb things caused your brain
to keep replaying the dumb phrase over and over in your head, trying to
figure it out, until it caused an aneurism.
--
Erik Max Francis / m...@alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
__ San Jose, CA, US / 37 20 N 121 53 W / ICQ16063900 / &tSftDotIotE
/ \ Stars are the golden fruit of a tree beyond reach.
\__/ George Eliot
REALpolitik / http://www.realpolitik.com/
Get your own customized newsfeed online in realtime ... for free!
Luke Campbell
> > The beam itself is silent. The beam may also be invisible, although weapons
> > grade lasers operating at visible light frequencies will still have visible
> > beams even in perfectly clear air. Note that the generation of the laser beam
> > need not be invisible or quiet - gas dynamic lasers and gas dynamic chemical
> > lasers in particular may make a loud roar like a rocket and emit plumes of
> > flame as they operate (all very high powered lasers operating today that are
> > suitable for use as weapons are of the gas dynamic type). Note also that the
> > interaction of the beam with the target will be anything but silent or
> > invisible - you will get a bright flash, star hot incandescent plasma, an
> > explosive boom or at least a crackling roar, sparks flying all over the place,
> > screams, blood, the smell of ozone and the stench of burned and cooked meat,
> > scattered gobbets of steaming flesh, miscelaneous flying body parts ...
>
> If this is so noisy and firey, I don't think it will be used, for one thing,
> the user will be temporary blind/deaf.
You could say the same thing about a normal rifle. They are loud and they make a
flash from the muzzle when fired. People using lasers probably would want special
goggles for eye protection, but this need not inhibit vision.
> use his weapon. Not to mention that it doesn't sound like a weapon you would
> like to use in close range. Also a disadvantage, since when you choose a
> weapon, you have better choose it so you could use it in close range rather
> than on long range, being able to shot someone a mile away mean little when
> you don't dare to shot someone threatening you with a gun a meter away.
At a meter you might get a bit splattered, but unless you were using power levels
far higher than that necessart to incapacitate an enemy soldier, you probably
wouldn't be incapcitated yourself.
> > The disadvantages to lasers are multiple, but this mostly centers on the
> > hardware necessary to make such a high powered beam. If compact power supplies
> > and beam generators can be perfected, most of these disadvantages disappear.
>
> The biggest problem that I can see is energy storage, and the other one is
> keeping the rifle in working condition. I'm as far away from being an expert
> as you can get, and I still think that it would be *hard* to keep something
> like this in good shape in field conditions, even harder to fix it if you
> break something. And endurance would be another big matter, how long can the
> weapon keep firing without ruining itself. Size and weight are also big
> problems. And one last, and major, problem, is cost. I can't see laser guns
> ever beating normal guns in their prices. Even if they would manage to
> produce them in a ready-to-battle modes, I don't think they could beat the
> normal weapons in price or be common in armies, it would simply not worth the
> extra cost.
These are the real problems, in addition to the size of the laser itself (a laser
that was effeicient at killing soldiers, made with today's technology, might be able
to fit into the back of a van, but could not be carried around by a soldier).
> If you know that you are in danger from lasers, you put a glass in front of
> you, it would distort the beam enough not to kill you. Blinding laser already
> exist and I think were used in serbia or bosnia or israel or somewhere like
> that. I remember reading an article about it once, the UN objected to it
> because it was a cruel weapon, the article asked whatever shotting someone's
> legs off wasn't cruel. But I can't remember when and where it was.
The Soviet Union once dazzled an american jet pilot with a laser device. The US
military had done some research into blinding lasers, I am not aware that they
actually fielded any, though. They abandonded research into this area after an
international agreement not to use battlefield lasers soley for blinding.
> How many pulses can you shot before your barrel get too hot? Is that a factor
> in lasers?
Yes. There is no "barrel" as such, but you do have to worry about both the heat
build up in the lasing medium and in the optics used to direct the beam. Modern
lasers deal with the heat build up in the lasing medium either by waiting a long
time for the material to cool, or by flowing the medium out of the resonator and
replacing it with fresh, cool material. Free electron lasers use a beam of
electrons as the lasing medium - no need to worry about heating here. The lenses,
windows, and mirrors used to direct the beam are also vulnerable to getting too hot
and distorting. The way to fix this is to use wider lenses, windows, and mirrors so
the laser intensity is lower. You want to have wide focusing elements anyways so
the intensity at your target is much higher than the intensity in your gun - you
focus the beam down to a much smaller point on your target than it is while it is in
your gun.
> > Often in science fiction, particle beams or x-ray lasers are used as weapons.
> > Although fine for spacecraft and armored fighting vehicles, it would be a bad
> > idea to use these as personal weapons. These are essentially beams of ionizing
> > radiation. The radiation beams will interact with the atmosphere, and there
> > will be some backscatter. This will cause radiation sickness and other
> > problems associated with radiation exposure to the person using the gun. In
> > addition, the radiation scattered from the target will deliver lethal doses to
> > anyone standing near the target at the time it is hit. The target, of course,
> > will recieve a lethal dose of radiation even if the beam does not kill it,
> > death will follow in hours, weeks, or months.
>
> Small mass murder weapons?
Perhaps, but if you want to live after using one, you still have to fire it with
some sort of heavy shielding between yourself and the gun.
> > In space combat, x-ray lasers have a major advantage in that they can be
> > focused very tightly at long ranges, and that the beam moves at the speed of
> > light. The radiation from x-ray lasers and particle beams can also disrupt
> > electronics and kill the occupants of vehicles.
>
> Why visible light can't focus so tightly over long distances?
There is a physical limit called diffraction that spreads beams. When the beam
passes through any opening, it will start to spread out. The beam spreads less from
wide openings than from narrow openings, and shorter wavelengths spread less than
longer wavelengths. Thus, if you want to direct your beam into a very small spot at
long distances, you want very short wavelengths and very wide beam pointers. X-rays
have much shorter wavelengths than visible light, so they focus better at longer
ranges.
> > An electric stun gun is supposedly already in development. It uses a low
> > powered UV laser to ionize a conductive path through the air and then
> > discharges electric current along this path to the target. Whether this
> > actually works or not, I do not know, but it is a definite possibility for a
> > future stun gun.
>
> Humans will wear something like trucks do, the strip of metal that touch the
> ground to ground the electricity. Possible?
If you are expecting to be zapped, yes. You also need a conductive mesh around your
body.
> > Another non-lethal weapon is a foam that is sprayed onto the target. It
> > hardens immediately, trapping the target. These weapons currently exist, but
> > are not used for fear of suffocating the target.
>
> Ouch, that is not something you want to get stucked in, how do you get out?
You don't. That's the idea. I suppose you could always have one of your friends
chisel you out, or break it off some other way. If you still had a hand free, you
might be able to break some of it off yourself.
>
> > Sonic weapons also exist that can incapacitate a target without killing it, but
> > these are also not used much for fear of causing ear damage up to and including
> > deafness.
>
> I assume it is not the kind of weapon you can protect yourself from by
> putting somehting in your ears, right?
This is a weakness of some sonic weapons - they can be easily defended against with
simple ear protection.
> > Various stun projectiles have been developed, the most widely used seems to be
> > rubber bullets. The basic idea behind all of these is that they batter and
> > bruise but are less likely to kill.
>
> Rubber bullets are ineffective, they can kill quite well, even if the soldier
> isn't trying. they can pull someone's eyes out or main very severly.
Yes, but they are less likely to kill. At least compared to metal bullets.
> Cool, but, how do you use uranium in a magnetic weapon, is uranium magnetic?
Most of these weapons work by having a very strong magnetic field affect a current
flowing through the projectile. The projectile itself does not need to be
magnetic. The simplest of these is the railgun. A current flows directly across
the projectile, and a strong magnetic field applies a force on teh current,
accelerating the projectile down the barrel. A slightly more comlicated version is
called a coil gun. Here, magnetic induction sets up a current in a metal winding
around the projectile, turning it into a tiny electromagnet. The two magnetic
fields act on each other to push the projectile down the barrel.
> Supersonic GERBIL launchers? Gerbil = small rodent???
Well, you said you wanted strange/silly weapons.
> > For some really weird weapons that were actually developed and sometimes even
> > used, see if you can find a copy of the book Secret Weapons of World War II.
> > Here you will read about everything from invisible boats to flaming rocket
> > propelled wheels that roll along the ground to destroy concrete fortifications
> > to high explosive anti-aircraft baloons to steam guns that fire potatos and
> > cans of beer as their ammunition, not to mention trains that can drive across
> > any terrain (including water), rocket landing jeeps, methods to make the waves
> > in the sea go away, and a way to get a train car all to yourself when
> > travelling by rail.
>
> I really DO hope you are kidding here.
Nope. These weapons were all proposed and (except for the all terrain trains)
developed into at least experimental prototypes in world war II. For more details,
you should track down the book. This may be difficult since it is currently out of
print.
Luke
Luke Campbell
> Oh, and about lasers. Another disadvantage that they are going to have is
> that you probably couldn't use them in high humidity, fog, snow, rain, sleet
> situations. Too much chance of the beam refracting from water.
The main problem is the light scattering out of the beam and weakening the
beam. Remember, if you can see your target, light can get from your target to
you, so you can shoot your target. There may be a danger of beam blindness
when using the laser in rain, but anyone using a laser should have laser
protective eyewear anyway, so they will not have to worry about it.
Luke
Luke Campbell
> Luke Campbell wrote:
> >
> > One disadvantage people usually think of with lasers is
> > that they will be unable to affect targets with a
> > reflective coat. This is not neccessarily true. The
> > best broad band reflectors are only about 98 or 99%
> > reflective in the visible, near UV, and near IR. If the
> > laser beam is highly focused, the intensity will be high
> > enough to flash the surface of the reflector to a plasma
> > from the small amount of the initial beam that is
> > absorbed. The rest of the beam is then absorbed by the
> > plasma rather than the target, and couples to the target
> > via the plasma, possibly through radiation diffusion or
> > shock heating to vaporize the material in the vicinity of
> > the plasma layer, or maybe the beam will cause mostly
> > mechanical damage through the explosive vaporization of
> > the surface of the target. In any case, the results of
> > that pulse leave the surface much less reflective, and
> > subsequent pulses directed to the same spot can be used
> > to burn through the target (I am envisioning here a
> > rapid train of pulses, so closely spaced that the target
> > does not move farther than the spot size of the beam in
> > the time it takes for the next pulse to arrive).
>
> Meanwhile, your buddy 2 yards to the left is popped by
> the 98% of the pulse that was reflected...
Which blinds him if he wasn't wearing his laser safety glasses, since
any slight curvature of the surface of the target is enough to spread
out the beam sufficiently that it will at most cause minor burns (if
that) by the time it reaches your buddy.
Luke
Luke Campbell
> Luke Campbell <lwc...@u.washington.edu> writes:
>
> : Anything you can see, you can hit. Just aim at the image of what you see, you
> : do not have to worry about wind, gravity, or that the displacement of the image
> : due to optical effects. The beam follows the same path back to the target that
> : it took to get from the target to your eye.
>
> By the same token, what you can't see you can't hit. Conventional
> artillery can attack without LOS, but a laser weapon can not.
Very true. Lasers cannot be used for indirect fire. You have to use orbiting
mirrors or laser satelites for that kind of effect.
> : rupture flesh. A plate of steel that protects against bullets may not offer
> : significant protection against a focused beam.
>
> But if you're pumping that much energy through the air, you're going to
> waste a lot of it heating the air. How much will be left to hit the
> target? How do you generate this power in the first place?
These are very real concerns with present day laser systems. Several very promising
high energy lasers cannot be used because most of their energy will be absorbed by
atmospheric water vapor, carbon dioxide, or methane before striking the target
(carbon dioxide lasers and hydrogen fluorine lasers, to name two). Of those that
are still in consideration, tose that work in the infrared still seem to have
something of a problem with atmospheric absorption. Although the light from
deuterium fluorine and oxygen iodine lasers can (mostly) make it to targets many
kilometers away, enough is absorbed that the air heats up a bit, causing a lensing
effect and spreading the beam out. This can be partly corrected for by using
adaptive optics, but the laser weapon systems currently under development all seem
to have much larger spot sizes than you would expect from diffraction limeted beams,
probably because of this lensing problem.
Things do not seem nearly so bad in the visible and near IR, or in the near UV. The
main loss mechanism at these frequencies seems to be scattering. In perfectly clear
air, the mean free path for 400 nm violet light is about 25 kilometers. The mean
free path of light scales as the fourth power of the wavelength, so 650 nm red light
will have a mean free path of about 170 km, and 230 nm light in the UV-B band will
have a mean free path of around 2.5 km. Since this light is not absorbed, it does
not contribute to ionization or heating the air, and thus does not contribute to
defocusing the beam. It also means that visible and near visible lasers should be
able to bring nearly their full power to bear on targets within the atmosphere
(except at the higher UV bands that can propagate in the atmosphere). There is the
question of just how often there is perfectly clear air for the laser to propagate
in. In reality, think about how far away something has to be before it starts
getting visibly hazy. This is approximately the distance at which losses will
become important.
Beyond the near UV, individual photons pack enough energy to ionize air molecules
and atoms. These are strongly absorbed by the atmosphere, and are poor choices for
weapons to be used in an atmosphere. It may be possible to generate very narrow
beams of x-rays that can "burn" their way through an atmosphere, but x-ray lasers
will pose radiation hazards for their users.
> : In space combat, x-ray lasers have a major advantage in that they can be
> : focused very tightly at long ranges, and that the beam moves at the speed of
> : light. The radiation from x-ray lasers and particle beams can also disrupt
> : electronics and kill the occupants of vehicles.
>
> In harder sf, x-ray lasers are nuclear-pumped, just like in SDI. So in
> order to use one, you detonate a nuclear warhead. The gamma-ray lasers in
> _Footfall_ worked similarly, but I don't think we even have much of a clue
> about how to make those.
>
> We actually tested a nuclear-pumped x-ray laser, but it didn't do much of
> anything.
There are other ways to make x-ray lasers than by using a nuclear detonation to pump
it. Most of these methods are quite inefficient, but one method does hold promise.
This is the free electron laser. Modern syncrotron x-ray machines are "almost" free
electron x-ray lasers, the next generation of these machines (if they ever get
funding) will be full fledged x-ray lasers. The energy that does not go into the
x-ray beam remains as the kinetic energy of the electrons, so it can be re-used.
This raises the possibility of lasers with a very high efficiency at turning
electric energy into x-rays (or any other frequency, for that matter). In practice,
electron accelerators are enormously inefficient, and most of the electric energy is
wasted generating the beam. Designs using highly efficient electrostatic
accelerators have been tested which have yeilded nearly 100% efficiency, however
(these lase in the IR, but they demonstrate the concept). Unfortunately, you need
much higher voltages than can be delivered by electrostatic accelerators to get
x-ray radiation from free electrons.
Luke
Luke Campbell
> John Schilling wrote:
>
> > Hop David <hops...@tabletoptelephone.com> writes:
> >
> > (snip)
>
> > >If you take three mirrors and set them up at right angles to each other (like two
> > >walls and a ceiling), they will send a beam back in the same direction it comes
> > >from.
> >
> > >Reflectors on bikes use this principle.
> >
> > >Perhaps an armor covered with an array of such mirrors could cause the attacker
> > >some discomfort before the mirrors burn up.
> >
> > Unlikely - retroreflectors only approximately send the beam back in the same direction
> > it came from. In particular, they suffer from substantial beam divergence due to lack
> > of focus
>
> focus? I could see using a parabolic reflector to focus ordinary light on a target at a
> specific distance. But with lasers? A parabolic reflector would make parrallel beams non
> parrallel and actually _cause_ beam divergence (except at the focal point). It seems to
> me positioning the focal point on the attacker would be exceedingly difficult. A focusing
> mirror doesn't make much sense to me in this situation.
Focus here refers to the divergence of the beam. Presumably, the laser gun will be designed
so that the light comes from a relatively broad aperture in the weapon and converges to a
small spot size at the target. This beam is considered focused on the target, and this
effect is achieved using either lenses or curved mirrors or both, which are part of the
laser weapon itself. Even if the beam is perfectly reflected, the beam will have diverged
back to the spot size it was when it left the weapon by the time it gets back to the
gunner. However, the small size of the corner mirrors will diffract the beam so that the
beam is much wider than that by the time it reaches the gunner.
> > and diffraction effects. Note that in the bicycle reflectors you cite, the
> > driver of the car can see the light reflected back from his headlights, even though
> > his eyes are a meter or so away from the headlights.
>
> I'm generally ignorant of physics. ISTR that light is refracted if the width of the slit
> it's passing through is equal to or less than its wavelength. Could you reduce refraction
> effects by making the mirrors larger?
Light is diffracted when it passes through any aperture, meets any obstruction or obsticle,
or has a beam shape that varies at all in intensity from uniform illumination extending out
to infinity. The smaller the aperture, obstruction, obstacle, or variation in intensity,
the wider the resulting diffraction pattern. This is one reason why laser weapons would
probably have wide apertures - the minimum spot size of the laser is limited by diffraction,
and larger apertures allow a smaller spot and hence higher intensities. Likewise, the
larger the mirrors used in your corner reflectors, the less the diffractive effects.
Consider, however, that man portable combat lasers are likely to have apertures around 10 cm
or so, do you envision armoring your target with 10 cm corner mirrors?
> > The hypothetical laser gunner would be illuminated by only a diffuse reflection of
> > his beam, while the target gets the full concentrated intensity. Assuming the
> > laser platform is even moderately hardened against laser attack itself, the only
> > thing the retroreflectors would do is provide an easy aim point in the brief
> > interval before they vaporized.
>
> How would you harden against laser attack? It seems to me that your armor would need to
> be reflective with a high melting point.
Since the reflected light is likely to be diffuse enough that it will not burn the attacker,
you only need to worry about protecting your sensors. There are numerous ways of doing
this, for example, filters that block light of the laser wavelength.
Hardening against a laser attack in general is more difficult, and generally involved
putting a lot of material that absorbs a lot of energy when it vaporizes between you and the
source of the laser.
Luke
Luke Campbell
> On Fri, 26 May 2000 19:11:53 GMT, Ayende Rahien <Aye...@softhome.net>
> wrote:
>
> >I was thinking about what weapons would look like in several decades from
> >now.
> >According to SF, we are likely to have widespread use of handheld beam
> >weapon. I don't think so. While it certainly be made possible to produce
> >such weapons, I don't see any major advantage in having beam weapons over
> >normal weapons, beside not being affected by wind. And maybe being more
> >quiet than normal weapons.
> Optical lasers do not have a good damage mechanism: they do surface
> damage only. This can destroy a thin-skinned missile, destroy
> unprotected sensors, and maim a human being, but sensors can be
> protected, and lasers of that power have a significant signiture: the
> beam makes a load "crack" when it turns off as the heated column of
> air collapses. Also, a chemical laser will create a huge plume, like
If you can create short duration, high power pulses of light, you can create
explosive vaporization at the surface of the target. This explosion could
create significant interior damage. For example, imagine a 100 kilojoule, 1
microsecond pulse of light focused into a 1 cm spot. This has the approximate
energy of 20 grams of detonating TNT and is delivered over about the same time
scale. Imagine straping 20 grams of TNT to your body and then setting it off.
Current weapons lasers do not do this, they all have continuous beams, but look
at the sorts of things that the high power pulses used by lasers designed for
inertial confinement fusion do.
The film clips I have seen of the MIRACL laser in operation did not indicate a
crack when it was turned off (more of a continuous roar as it operated, IIRC).
Do you have any more information on this?
Also, in the visible part of the spectrum, there does not seem to be any
significant absorbtion of the beam by air. Scattering, yes, although this is
small (but sufficient to give beams that can be seen by the naked eye for
weapons grade lasers). In the IR bands that the deuterium fluorine and oxygen
iodine lasers operate at, I understand that there are significant absorption
mechanisms, enough to make atmospheric heating a problem. If you have any other
information on this subject, I would love to know about it (with references, if
possible).
> a rocket exhaust. Form all that the US/Israeli THEL and USAF ABL
> should be operational in 5-10 years for anti-missile defense
> X-ray and gamma ray lasers are possible, and would have a better
> damage mechanism. Using a nuclear explosion to pump an x-ray laser
> seems a bit awkward, but not enough of the work has been declassified
> to be much help. I'd say it will be at least twenty-fifty years
> before we see X-ray or gamma ray lasers for vehicle weapons.
In other posts, I have described mechanisms for making x-ray lasers without
nuclear detonation pumping. Still, twenty to fifty years seems optomistic for
compacting the enormous synchrotrons nessecary to build one of these x-ray
lasers today into something that could fit into a vehicle and still emit enough
power to do damage. I may very well be shown wrong, however.
Also, keep in mind that x-rays and gamma rays are strongly absorbed by air.
x-ray and gamma ray lasers might be used for short range vehicular weapons in
atmosphere, or very long range space weapons. They probably will never be used
as man portable weapons due to the radiation dangers.
> Another catagory of beam weapons are particle beams. These can do
> more (and more appropriate) damage than lasers, but the range is
> limited in the atmosphere. Back in the 80s both the US and the Soviet
> Union was working on these, but today tbe only references a web search
> turns up are for games. That may be bacause the technical limitations
> were too severe, or because they are better space weapons and there is
> no urgency right now, or because the development programs went "black"
> because they work too well.
Although these might also make good vehicle weapons, they have the same drawback
as x-ray lasers in posing severe radiation hazards to their users when
considered as man portable weapons.
Luke
Kristopher/EOS
>
> I don't think JW likes Erik. Call it a hunch.
To which JWMeritt replied, via email:
"My, you are swift.
Jim Meritt, CISSP, CISA"
JW, you've been added to my filters on email.
We over this once before. If you have something
to say to me regarding a Usenet post, then say
it in the newsgroup. Don't email me.
Did it ever occur to you that my post was a rather
dry comment on the irrational mad-on you seem to
have for Erik?
Kristopher/EOS
John
<droui...@home.com> wrote:
> > High pressure water sprayers?
>
> High pressure water sprayers are used for mob control during riots. I saw
> some of them when I was stationed in Germany in the early 80s. I had
> forgotten that there was an anti-American demonstration going on and rode a
> strassenbahn (street car) right through the middle. I opted to get off at
> another stop :)
Also heard that the water can be super-saturated with salt and chilled
to below freezing for extra shock value.
madr...@metronet.com
<lwc...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>If you can create short duration, high power pulses of light, you can create
>explosive vaporization at the surface of the target. This explosion could
>create significant interior damage. For example, imagine a 100 kilojoule, 1
>microsecond pulse of light focused into a 1 cm spot. This has the approximate
>energy of 20 grams of detonating TNT and is delivered over about the same time
>scale. Imagine straping 20 grams of TNT to your body and then setting it off.
>Current weapons lasers do not do this, they all have continuous beams, but look
>at the sorts of things that the high power pulses used by lasers designed for
>inertial confinement fusion do.
This kind of surface explosion is what I was thinking of as "maiming."
Horrible, but not necessarily stopping a determined man.
>The film clips I have seen of the MIRACL laser in operation did not indicate a
>crack when it was turned off (more of a continuous roar as it operated, IIRC).
>Do you have any more information on this?
I was thinking of the high energy laser used in the "lightcraft" laser
propulsion tests. Admittedly, a specialized application, of a TEA
laser, I believe.
>In other posts, I have described mechanisms for making x-ray lasers without
>nuclear detonation pumping. Still, twenty to fifty years seems optomistic for
>compacting the enormous synchrotrons nessecary to build one of these x-ray
>lasers today into something that could fit into a vehicle and still emit enough
>power to do damage. I may very well be shown wrong, however.
I believe I understated the time scale.
>
>Also, keep in mind that x-rays and gamma rays are strongly absorbed by air.
>x-ray and gamma ray lasers might be used for short range vehicular weapons in
>atmosphere, or very long range space weapons. They probably will never be used
>as man portable weapons due to the radiation dangers.
>
I hadn't thought about the scattering. Duh. I don't think beam
weapons will ever be significant personal weapons, anyway.. A kinetic
projectile is a much more efficient way to deliver energy, and in the
next twenty years infantry weapons will acquire significant non-line
of sight capabilities
Bob Lyle
Brett Evill
wrote...
>
>This kind of surface explosion is what I was thinking of as "maiming."
>Horrible, but not necessarily stopping a determined man.
Maiming is literally depriving a person of the use of a limb, mutiliating, or
crippling. The term is related to 'mayhem', the crime of maiming a person.
A better term for 'hurt badly but not kill' might be 'scotch'.
JWMeritt
[snip - discussion of laser weapondry]
>You could say the same thing about a normal rifle. They are loud and they
>make a
>flash from the muzzle when fired. People using lasers probably would want
>special
>goggles for eye protection, but this need not inhibit vision.
You may wish to refer to the musings of Wu in the Ringworld book, as he used a
hand laser against the Protector.
>These are the real problems, in addition to the size of the laser itself (a
>laser
>that was effeicient at killing soldiers, made with today's technology, might
>be able
>to fit into the back of a van, but could not be carried around by a soldier).
Consider that antiship lasers were only briefly considered. Seems the water
washdown system (already installed on all I know of) would work quite well
against localized heating. Bad on the bridge crew, though...
Jim Meritt, CISSP, CISA
JWMeritt
>> In harder sf, x-ray lasers are nuclear-pumped, just like in SDI. So in
>> order to use one, you detonate a nuclear warhead. The gamma-ray lasers in
>> _Footfall_ worked similarly, but I don't think we even have much of a clue
>> about how to make those.
>>
>> We actually tested a nuclear-pumped x-ray laser, but it didn't do much of
>> anything.
>
>There are other ways to make x-ray lasers than by using a nuclear detonation
>to pump
>it.
Works, though. Once. ;-)
Jim Meritt, CISSP, CISA
JWMeritt
> I don't think beam
>weapons will ever be significant personal weapons, anyway.. A kinetic
>projectile is a much more efficient way to deliver energy, and in the
>next twenty years infantry weapons will acquire significant non-line
>of sight capabilities
Concur. Besides which, we have a LOT of practice throwing rocks.
Opinion for warfare advances: "smarter" is better than "more force".
Jim Meritt, CISSP, CISA
JWMeritt
>To which JWMeritt replied, via email:
>
>"My, you are swift.
[snip]
>We over this once before. If you have something
>to say to me regarding a Usenet post, then say
>it in the newsgroup. Don't email me.
Or I'll publish it. Why did I expect polite behavior from you, I wonder?
>Did it ever occur to you that my post was a rather
>dry comment on the irrational mad-on you seem to
>have for Erik?
Did it occur to you that my response was emailed rather than posted to try to
take it off USENET?
Kristopher/EOS
>
> Kristopher/EOS wrote:
>
>> To which JWMeritt replied, via email:
>>
>> "My, you are swift.
>
> [snip]
>
>> We over this once before. If you have something
>> to say to me regarding a Usenet post, then say
>> it in the newsgroup. Don't email me.
>
> Or I'll publish it. Why did I expect polite behavior
> from you, I wonder?
You have no standing to expect polite anything.
>> Did it ever occur to you that my post was a rather
>> dry comment on the irrational mad-on you seem to
>> have for Erik?
>
> Did it occur to you that my response was emailed
> rather than posted to try to take it off USENET?
I don't *care* if you want to take it off Usenet.
You, sir, are a netkook. A digital crank, if you will.
Oh, btw, **plonk**
Kristopher/EOS
JWMeritt
>> Or I'll publish it. Why did I expect polite behavior
>> from you, I wonder?
>
>You have no standing to expect polite anything.
From you? Apparently not. Does anyone?
>> Did it occur to you that my response was emailed
>> rather than posted to try to take it off USENET?
>
>I don't *care* if you want to take it off Usenet.
Hmmmmm. A deep concern about time and place of postings. I understand.
Perhaps you should discuss with His Majesty appropriateness - it does not seem
to be within your usage.
>You, sir, are a netkook. A digital crank, if you will.
Thank you for your concern and attention.
Jim Meritt, CISSP, CISA
George William Herbert
>Consider that antiship lasers were only briefly considered. Seems the water
>washdown system (already installed on all I know of) would work quite well
>against localized heating. Bad on the bridge crew, though...
It's not necessarily localized heating. If you hit a ship with an energetic
enough laser pulse, it doesn't matter if what gets vaporized in 1E-6 sec is
a millimeter of the hull plate or several millimeters of water sprayed on
the outside; you get an impulsive momentum transfer into the structure which
causes it to resemble a fragmentation bomb rather than solid structure.
-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com
Luke Campbell
> On Tue, 30 May 2000 17:20:03 -0700, Luke Campbell
> <lwc...@u.washington.edu> wrote:
>
> >If you can create short duration, high power pulses of light, you can create
> >explosive vaporization at the surface of the target. This explosion could
> >create significant interior damage. For example, imagine a 100 kilojoule, 1
> >microsecond pulse of light focused into a 1 cm spot. This has the approximate
> >energy of 20 grams of detonating TNT and is delivered over about the same time
> >scale. Imagine straping 20 grams of TNT to your body and then setting it off.
> >Current weapons lasers do not do this, they all have continuous beams, but look
> >at the sorts of things that the high power pulses used by lasers designed for
> >inertial confinement fusion do.
>
> This kind of surface explosion is what I was thinking of as "maiming."
> Horrible, but not necessarily stopping a determined man.
I just found out this morning that a mere 10 joule pulse of light from a ruby laser
can pierce a 2mm slab of steel. Admittedly, this is a highly focused pulse at a
slab that is near the beam optics, but that laser was still able to propagate its
light through 2mm of steel in order to burn a 0.1 mm hole. This is with a pulse
lasting perhaps 10 ns. If the pulse energy were merely absorbed in the first skin
depth or so of the steel (maybe 0.01 mm?), you would expect a minor explosion with
a 10 joule energy, and that is nowhere near enough to penetrate the 2 mm slab.
Somehow that pulse was able to burth through with approximately the same beam
profile as it has in air.
Given this, is there any reason to expect that a highly focused train of pulses
could not penetrate deeply in solids? Imagine a train of one hundred 1 kilojoule,
10 nanosecond pulses spaced 1 microsecond apart. Assume these are made of 500
nanometer green light, focused by a 10 cm aperture beam pointer at a target 100
meters away. This gives a spot size of about 1 mm diameter. It takes slightly
less than a 3 kilojoules to vaporize a cubic centimeter of tissue, so each of those
kilojoule pulses will be evaporating a cylinder about 40 cm deep if the beam
propagates through tissue with the same beam profile it has in air. It may be
difficult to keep a 1 mm wide beam through 40 cm of vaporizing tissue with
turbulent plasma and gasses acting as lenses to disperse the beam, so say each
pulse only vaporizes a 1 cm deep section of tissue (corresponding to an average
diameter of 6.5 mm). Each subsequent pulse in the train will vaporize another 1 mm
deep, assuming the beam does not stray by more than 6.5 mm in the 0.1 millisecond
it takes to deliver all 100 pulses (at 100 meters, this is an angular spread of 65
microradians, so the gun would have to track at 0.65 radians per second or less, or
37 degrees per second or less). This generates a hole from vaporized tissue alone
that is one meter deep - much thicker than most people. The explosive vaporization
of that tissue will casue additional damage, and that will be damage to the deep
vital organs. On top of that, pulses that detonate in the bones can send bone
fragments flying through the body, which can also pierce vital organs. On the
whole, this sounds quite lethal.
> >The film clips I have seen of the MIRACL laser in operation did not indicate a
> >crack when it was turned off (more of a continuous roar as it operated, IIRC).
> >Do you have any more information on this?
>
> I was thinking of the high energy laser used in the "lightcraft" laser
> propulsion tests. Admittedly, a specialized application, of a TEA
> laser, I believe.
Ahh. This makes sense. The TEA CO_2 laser radiation is more strongly absorbed by
air than the DF laser radiation of the MIRACL (which is one reason why the military
chose DF lasers over CO_2 lasers for weapons research).
Luke
Hop David
Luke Campbell wrote:
> Focus here refers to the divergence of the beam. Presumably, the laser gun will be designed
> so that the light comes from a relatively broad aperture in the weapon and converges to a
> small spot size at the target. This beam is considered focused on the target, and this
> effect is achieved using either lenses or curved mirrors or both, which are part of the
> laser weapon itself. Even if the beam is perfectly reflected, the beam will have diverged
> back to the spot size it was when it left the weapon by the time it gets back to the
> gunner. However, the small size of the corner mirrors will diffract the beam so that the
> beam is much wider than that by the time it reaches the gunner.
>
One of the virtues of a laser is it diverges very little. Have you seen the pointers used for
presentations? The dot is still quite small if the lecturer is standing 10 feet or 100 feet
from the screen.
For the sake of argument, let's say we're using parabolic mirrors to concentrate the laser.
An example of a parabolic reflector is a satellite TV dish. See where the antennae is suspended
in front of the dish? That point is the focus. The focus lies on the paraboloid's axis at a
specific distance from the vertex.
Parabolic mirrors are rigid (with the exception of rotating mercury mirrors which can only aim
straight up). That means the focus lies a fixed distance from the vertex, say a 100 meters.
Your weapon is useless against a target closer or further than a 100 meters. This is a major
flaw. An unaltered laser is potent over a much wider range.
Say you want to focus a 10 cm diameter beam into a 2 cm diameter beam, increasing it's
intensity 25 fold. If a point on the mirror reflected a beam just 1/200 of a degree off, you'd
have a beam ~4 centimeters in diameter. If the mirror were made for targets a kilometer away,
1/2000 of a degree. The mirrors would have to be very precisely polished and therefore quite
expensive.
If you could get affordable, variable, highly accurate parabolic mirrors (unlikely, IMO), your
weapon would still be much harder to aim than an ordinary laser. With a laser, you only need to
get the two angle spherical coordinates right, but with a focus beam you also need to get rho
right.
An earlier poster mentioned laser weapons would be fired in pulses to avoid a column (not cone)
of super heated air. the heat is dissipated by the air moving between pulses. Neither the
mirror or lenses could dissipate heat this way. It seems to me your lenses and mirrors would
burn up.
-- Hop
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html
Luke Campbell
> Luke Campbell wrote:
>
> > Focus here refers to the divergence of the beam. Presumably, the laser gun will be designed
> > so that the light comes from a relatively broad aperture in the weapon and converges to a
> > small spot size at the target. This beam is considered focused on the target, and this
> > effect is achieved using either lenses or curved mirrors or both, which are part of the
> > laser weapon itself. Even if the beam is perfectly reflected, the beam will have diverged
> > back to the spot size it was when it left the weapon by the time it gets back to the
> > gunner. However, the small size of the corner mirrors will diffract the beam so that the
> > beam is much wider than that by the time it reaches the gunner.
> >
>
> One of the virtues of a laser is it diverges very little. Have you seen the pointers used for
> presentations? The dot is still quite small if the lecturer is standing 10 feet or 100 feet
> from the screen.
Yes, but the dot still expands significantly. I was playing around with a friend's laser pointer
outside, and when reflected off of a wall perhaps 30 meters away, the spot was maybe 10 cm in
diameter. Even this is acheived using lenses to focus the laser. Diode lasers typically have a
wide beam divergence, so you need to use optics to avoid getting a beam with a 20 degree spread or
so. In fact, the output of any laser usually has significant geometrical divergence (as opposed
to diffraction divergence). The mirrors used in the resonant cavity need to converge the beam
(usually somewhere in the middle of the lasing medium) to acheive a stable resonator, so the beam,
upon exiting the resonator, is diverging (there are exceptions. Some lasers with very high gains
use unstable resonators where only one or two passes through the laser medium are neccessary to
generate the full power laser beam). If you want a nearly parallel beam, you need additional
optics.
> For the sake of argument, let's say we're using parabolic mirrors to concentrate the laser.
>
> An example of a parabolic reflector is a satellite TV dish. See where the antennae is suspended
> in front of the dish? That point is the focus. The focus lies on the paraboloid's axis at a
> specific distance from the vertex.
>
> Parabolic mirrors are rigid (with the exception of rotating mercury mirrors which can only aim
> straight up). That means the focus lies a fixed distance from the vertex, say a 100 meters.
> Your weapon is useless against a target closer or further than a 100 meters. This is a major
> flaw. An unaltered laser is potent over a much wider range.
First, the focusing mirrors used in laser weapons will not likely be rigid. In fact, the mirrors
used to focus modern laser weapons such as the ABL or THEL are not rigid. They use adaptive
optics, which shape the mirror dynamically to correct for optical distortion of the beam traveling
through the atmosphere.
Second, suppose you did have a rigid mirror designed so that it would focus the light of the laser
at 100 meters. You could alter this point of focus with a second mirror or lens, and alter the
resulting focal point by changing the location of the mirror or lens. Think about cameras. By
twiddling with the lens, you can get the camera to focus anywhere from perhaps a meter away up to
infinity. You can use the same optics tricks with lasers, just put a camera lens on the end of
your laser. Now your laser can focus anywhere from a meter away up to infinitely far away. You
are now limited by diffraction of the light beam as it passes through your lens, not the geometry
of converging the beam.
> If you could get affordable, variable, highly accurate parabolic mirrors (unlikely, IMO), your
> weapon would still be much harder to aim than an ordinary laser. With a laser, you only need to
> get the two angle spherical coordinates right, but with a focus beam you also need to get rho
> right.
Bounce a low powered laser pulse off your target and measure the time it takes for the pulse to
return. This tells you the distance to your target. Now use a computer to tell the lens and
mirror focusing elements how to arrange themselves for maximum light intensity at the target. The
gunner need only worry about getting the angular variables right, not the distance.
> An earlier poster mentioned laser weapons would be fired in pulses to avoid a column (not cone)
> of super heated air. the heat is dissipated by the air moving between pulses. Neither the
> mirror or lenses could dissipate heat this way. It seems to me your lenses and mirrors would
> burn up.
That is one reason you want big lenses and mirrors, so the intensity is low enough that they do
not burn up. Then you focus the light on your target so the intensity is high enough that your
target does burn up.
Really, this is always a problem. In order to generate a laser beam, you need to have an optical
resonator where the light bounces between two mirrors. If the intensity is too high, you destroy
your resonant laser cavity and you no longer get a laser beam. Even if you could do away with the
mirrors, you still have the problem of the light passing through the lasing medium. If the light
is too intense, your medium burns up (as with solid state lasers), or the windows in the walls you
use to contain the medium burn up (as with gas lasers), or the the windows in the walls you use to
keep the air out burn up (as with free electron lasers and many gas lasers which are operated at
less than atmospheric pressure). You cannot get around that really intense beams will destroy
your laser gun. You need the intensity low enough that your gun will survive, but you need the
intensity high enough to damage your target. This means you need active focusing.
Luke
JWMeritt
>>Consider that antiship lasers were only briefly considered. Seems the water
>>washdown system (already installed on all I know of) would work quite well
>>against localized heating. Bad on the bridge crew, though...
>
>It's not necessarily localized heating. If you hit a ship with an energetic
>enough laser pulse, it doesn't matter if what gets vaporized in 1E-6 sec is
>a millimeter of the hull plate or several millimeters of water sprayed on
>the outside; you get an impulsive momentum transfer into the structure which
>causes it to resemble a fragmentation bomb rather than solid structure.
You are talking power level way above and beyond anything I've ever heard of,
including within feet of a multimegaton detonation. Photonic pressure would be
the LEAST of your problems under those conditions.
Jim Meritt, CISSP, CISA
JWMeritt
>One of the virtues of a laser is it diverges very little. Have you seen the
>pointers used for
>presentations? The dot is still quite small if the lecturer is standing 10
>feet or 100 feet
>from the screen.
Yeah, but it is verry, very bad if you try to push an extremely powerful beam
through long distances. The !@@#$#$ blossoms as it goes through air.....
Look under "boost phase, in atmosphere" and "SDI".
Jim Meritt, CISSP, CISA
John Schilling
He's not talking about *photonic* pressure, he's talking about perfectly
ordinary gas pressure.
We're talking about a ship protected by a water washdown system, right?
Hit the ship with a laser pulse energetic enough to boil the water in
the spot illuminated by the laser. I assume you have no problem with
lasers being powerful enough to boil water.
You now have a layer of steam where you used to have a layer of water.
Probably superheated steam, but we won't worry about that - assume the
laser was just powerful enough to boil the water and no more. And we
specified a *pulsed* laser, so the boiling process can be effectively
instantaneous.
Conservation of mass still applies, so we've got the same mass of steam
that we did of water. And the laser pulse is fast enough that the steam
does not have time to expand significantly durning the process, so the
volume occupied by the steam is the same as the volume previously occupied
by the water. Same mass, same volume, so same density.
Now for your Engineering Thermodynamics 101 question:
What is the pressure of saturated steam with the density of liquid water?
And on to Structural Mechanics 101:
What happens to a ship hull suddenly and locally exposed to such pressure?
Now, of course, the pressure won't last very long - as soon as an expansion
wave can travel through the water layer, the steam adjacent to the hull can
begin to expand and the pressure will begin to decrease. We're talking
about a pressure impulse, not a static pressure.
And, of course, you can repeat it as often as you can pulse the laser.
The equivilant of a gatling gun firing small-caliber HESH rounds.
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
Matthew DeBell
>This is all Basic Laser 101. Any laser weaponry overview has this
>right at the beginning of the section on damage mechanisms.
Is there a good text that covers the subject?
--Matthew DeBell
JWMeritt
From that, very little. Air gives much better than something that is oft
designed for such. Consider shock testing.
Jim Meritt, CISSP, CISA
Luke Campbell
So consider a layer of material (water) with a mass density similar to that of
TNT and an energy density (due to the laser pulse) which can be many times higher
than TNT. This gives a shock overpressure and shock wave energy many times
higher than that of a detonating slab of TNT pressed against the boat's hull. I
am not familar with naval armor, but it sounds like this would disrupt the at
least the first layer of any sort of layered armor. Subsequent rapid pulses
could quickly destroy deeper layers of armor, inner hulls, and the like.
There is also the possibility that the frequency of light you are using is not
readily absorbed by water. In this case, the light propagates through the water
to the ships hull, where it is absorbed and flash vaporizes a layer of the hull.
Since the exploding substance (the hull) and the material through which the shock
wave is to propagate through (the hull) have the same physical characteristics,
the shock is even more effectively transfered to the hull material since there
will be no reflection of the shock.
Rather than washing down the hull with water, spraying the water out to make a
fountain of droplets or a thick fog might well be a better defense - this will
scatter the beam so it has a much lower intensity when it reaches the hull.
Luke
Ayende Rahien
>
> Luke
>
>
Not in rain, you may see someone in the rain, but when you try to shot it,
your beam would encounter a raindrop and scatter, I wasn't thinking about the
damage to the shooter, more about the damage to the one shoted, it wouldn't
be very useful in those conditions.
--
All we have of freedom, all we use or know--
This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.
Ancient Right unnoticed as the breath we draw--
Leave to live by no man's leave, underneath the Law.
__________
Ayende Rahien
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Ayende Rahien
> > > grade lasers operating at visible light frequencies will still have visible
> > > beams even in perfectly clear air. Note that the generation of the laser beam
> > > need not be invisible or quiet - gas dynamic lasers and gas dynamic chemical
> > > lasers in particular may make a loud roar like a rocket and emit plumes of
> > > flame as they operate (all very high powered lasers operating today that are
> > > suitable for use as weapons are of the gas dynamic type). Note also that the
> > > interaction of the beam with the target will be anything but silent or
> > > invisible - you will get a bright flash, star hot incandescent plasma, an
> > > explosive boom or at least a crackling roar, sparks flying all over the place,
> > > screams, blood, the smell of ozone and the stench of burned and cooked meat,
> > > scattered gobbets of steaming flesh, miscelaneous flying body parts ...
> >
> > If this is so noisy and firey, I don't think it will be used, for one thing,
> > the user will be temporary blind/deaf.
>
> You could say the same thing about a normal rifle. They are loud and they make a
> flash from the muzzle when fired. People using lasers probably would want special
> goggles for eye protection, but this need not inhibit vision.
About the noise, I agree, but I fired normal firearms (guns and M-16) and I
weren't blinded, even momentarily.
> > use his weapon. Not to mention that it doesn't sound like a weapon you would
> > like to use in close range. Also a disadvantage, since when you choose a
> > weapon, you have better choose it so you could use it in close range rather
> > than on long range, being able to shot someone a mile away mean little when
> > you don't dare to shot someone threatening you with a gun a meter away.
>
> At a meter you might get a bit splattered, but unless you were using power levels
> far higher than that necessart to incapacitate an enemy soldier, you probably
> wouldn't be incapcitated yourself.
You want to get an enemy *dead* at ten to one hundred meters when you are not
using snipper mode. That sound powerful enough, anything less and you might
be shot by someone else, anything more and you can't risk shotting someone
near you.
> > > The disadvantages to lasers are multiple, but this mostly centers on the
> > > hardware necessary to make such a high powered beam. If compact power supplies
> > > and beam generators can be perfected, most of these disadvantages disappear.
> >
> > The biggest problem that I can see is energy storage, and the other one is
> > keeping the rifle in working condition. I'm as far away from being an expert
> > as you can get, and I still think that it would be *hard* to keep something
> > like this in good shape in field conditions, even harder to fix it if you
> > break something. And endurance would be another big matter, how long can the
> > weapon keep firing without ruining itself. Size and weight are also big
> > problems. And one last, and major, problem, is cost. I can't see laser guns
> > ever beating normal guns in their prices. Even if they would manage to
> > produce them in a ready-to-battle modes, I don't think they could beat the
> > normal weapons in price or be common in armies, it would simply not worth the
> > extra cost.
>
> These are the real problems, in addition to the size of the laser itself (a laser
> that was effeicient at killing soldiers, made with today's technology, might be able
> to fit into the back of a van, but could not be carried around by a soldier).
Yes, I agree that those are the big problems. Is there any theoretical limit
(or even something that you can't solve using today's foreseen technology?)
for the size of a powerful enough laser to kill a man from 100 + meters?
> > If you know that you are in danger from lasers, you put a glass in front of
> > you, it would distort the beam enough not to kill you. Blinding laser already
> > exist and I think were used in serbia or bosnia or israel or somewhere like
> > that. I remember reading an article about it once, the UN objected to it
> > because it was a cruel weapon, the article asked whatever shotting someone's
> > legs off wasn't cruel. But I can't remember when and where it was.
>
> The Soviet Union once dazzled an american jet pilot with a laser device. The US
> military had done some research into blinding lasers, I am not aware that they
> actually fielded any, though. They abandonded research into this area after an
> international agreement not to use battlefield lasers soley for blinding.
Okay, that bring to mind the rest of the article (I think), Israel developed
them to the point of being (near) operational until the treaty.
> > How many pulses can you shot before your barrel get too hot? Is that a factor
> > in lasers?
>
> Yes. There is no "barrel" as such, but you do have to worry about both the heat
> build up in the lasing medium and in the optics used to direct the beam. Modern
> lasers deal with the heat build up in the lasing medium either by waiting a long
> time for the material to cool, or by flowing the medium out of the resonator and
> replacing it with fresh, cool material. Free electron lasers use a beam of
> electrons as the lasing medium - no need to worry about heating here. The lenses,
> windows, and mirrors used to direct the beam are also vulnerable to getting too hot
> and distorting. The way to fix this is to use wider lenses, windows, and mirrors so
> the laser intensity is lower. You want to have wide focusing elements anyways so
> the intensity at your target is much higher than the intensity in your gun - you
> focus the beam down to a much smaller point on your target than it is while it is in
> your gun.
Free elctron lasers are better in less heat, does it has disadvantages on
normal lasers?
> > > In space combat, x-ray lasers have a major advantage in that they can be
> > > focused very tightly at long ranges, and that the beam moves at the speed of
> > > light. The radiation from x-ray lasers and particle beams can also disrupt
> > > electronics and kill the occupants of vehicles.
> >
> > Why visible light can't focus so tightly over long distances?
>
> There is a physical limit called diffraction that spreads beams. When the beam
> passes through any opening, it will start to spread out. The beam spreads less from
> wide openings than from narrow openings, and shorter wavelengths spread less than
> longer wavelengths. Thus, if you want to direct your beam into a very small spot at
> long distances, you want very short wavelengths and very wide beam pointers. X-rays
> have much shorter wavelengths than visible light, so they focus better at longer
> ranges.
Good to know.
> > > An electric stun gun is supposedly already in development. It uses a low
> > > powered UV laser to ionize a conductive path through the air and then
> > > discharges electric current along this path to the target. Whether this
> > > actually works or not, I do not know, but it is a definite possibility for a
> > > future stun gun.
> >
> > Humans will wear something like trucks do, the strip of metal that touch the
> > ground to ground the electricity. Possible?
>
> If you are expecting to be zapped, yes. You also need a conductive mesh around your
> body.
Criminals would wear them, since police would like to use them ASAP, so they
could have more free use of their weapons without worrying about the results.
> > > Another non-lethal weapon is a foam that is sprayed onto the target. It
> > > hardens immediately, trapping the target. These weapons currently exist, but
> > > are not used for fear of suffocating the target.
> >
> > Ouch, that is not something you want to get stucked in, how do you get out?
>
> You don't. That's the idea. I suppose you could always have one of your friends
> chisel you out, or break it off some other way. If you still had a hand free, you
> might be able to break some of it off yourself.
I meant, how do you get someone out of this?
> >
> > > Sonic weapons also exist that can incapacitate a target without killing it, but
> > > these are also not used much for fear of causing ear damage up to and including
> > > deafness.
> >
> > I assume it is not the kind of weapon you can protect yourself from by
> > putting somehting in your ears, right?
>
> This is a weakness of some sonic weapons - they can be easily defended against with
> simple ear protection.
All sonic weapons can be blocked that easily? Okay, the next bulletproof vest
offer protection against lasers, being a mirror, agaist stun guns, being
conductive, against bullets, being made of kelvar, and against sonic weapons,
coming with two earplugs attached, FREE!
> > > Various stun projectiles have been developed, the most widely used seems to be
> > > rubber bullets. The basic idea behind all of these is that they batter and
> > > bruise but are less likely to kill.
> >
> > Rubber bullets are ineffective, they can kill quite well, even if the soldier
> > isn't trying. they can pull someone's eyes out or main very severly.
>
> Yes, but they are less likely to kill. At least compared to metal bullets.
I know, but still, if I have to shot someone with a rubber bullet, I would
still hesitate.
> > Cool, but, how do you use uranium in a magnetic weapon, is uranium magnetic?
>
> Most of these weapons work by having a very strong magnetic field affect a current
> flowing through the projectile. The projectile itself does not need to be
> magnetic. The simplest of these is the railgun. A current flows directly across
> the projectile, and a strong magnetic field applies a force on teh current,
> accelerating the projectile down the barrel. A slightly more comlicated version is
> called a coil gun. Here, magnetic induction sets up a current in a metal winding
> around the projectile, turning it into a tiny electromagnet. The two magnetic
> fields act on each other to push the projectile down the barrel.
Thanks for the information.
> > Supersonic GERBIL launchers? Gerbil = small rodent???
>
> Well, you said you wanted strange/silly weapons.
Not that silly.
> > > For some really weird weapons that were actually developed and sometimes even
> > > used, see if you can find a copy of the book Secret Weapons of World War II.
> > > Here you will read about everything from invisible boats to flaming rocket
> > > propelled wheels that roll along the ground to destroy concrete fortifications
> > > to high explosive anti-aircraft baloons to steam guns that fire potatos and
> > > cans of beer as their ammunition, not to mention trains that can drive across
> > > any terrain (including water), rocket landing jeeps, methods to make the waves
> > > in the sea go away, and a way to get a train car all to yourself when
> > > travelling by rail.
> >
> > I really DO hope you are kidding here.
>
> Nope. These weapons were all proposed and (except for the all terrain trains)
> developed into at least experimental prototypes in world war II. For more details,
> you should track down the book. This may be difficult since it is currently out of
> print.
DAMN!
I don't assume there is a version on the web, right?
> Luke
JWMeritt
>> >What happens to a ship hull suddenly and locally exposed to such pressure?
>>
>> From that, very little. Air gives much better than something that is oft
>> designed for such. Consider shock testing.
>
>So consider a layer of material (water) with a mass density similar to that
>of
>TNT and an energy density (due to the laser pulse) which can be many times
>higher
>than TNT. This gives a shock overpressure and shock wave energy many times
>higher than that of a detonating slab of TNT pressed against the boat's hull
The amount of water vaporized is small and the confinement on the OTHER side is
air. If you can deliver a high enough energy density (at a distance) to be
noticable under those conditions, again the "boom" would be the least of the
problems. The bridge crew could be made dead first. Don't aim at the SHIP,
aim at the bridge. Glass breaks a lot easier than steel or aluminum, and if it
is visible the optical damage would be sufficient to render the personnel
useless WAY before the metal is destroyed.
Next, how the heck do you intend to get something with a powerful enough power
supply to drive the thing close enough to a weapons platform under combat
conditions?
>Rather than washing down the hull with water, spraying the water out to make
>a
>fountain of droplets or a thick fog might well be a better defense -
That is how the system works. Looks really neat when it is used. The original
design was to prevent NBC substances from settling on the surfaces and
sticking. If you look real close on a picture of a ship (better yet, visit
one) you can see the nozzles. They are most evident on places like flight
decks.
Jim Meritt, CISSP, CISA
Luke Campbell
> Not in rain, you may see someone in the rain, but when you try to shot it,
> your beam would encounter a raindrop and scatter, I wasn't thinking about the
> damage to the shooter, more about the damage to the one shoted, it wouldn't
> be very useful in those conditions.
If you can see someone in the rain, then most of the time, when you shoot, your
beam will not encounter raindrops. Either that, or the beam will be wide enough at
that point that the raindrop will only intercept a fraction of the light from the
beam.
Luke
Luke Campbell
> Luke Campbell wrote:
> >> >What happens to a ship hull suddenly and locally exposed to such pressure?
> >>
> >> From that, very little. Air gives much better than something that is oft
> >> designed for such. Consider shock testing.
> >
> >So consider a layer of material (water) with a mass density similar to that
> >of
> >TNT and an energy density (due to the laser pulse) which can be many times
> >higher
> >than TNT. This gives a shock overpressure and shock wave energy many times
> >higher than that of a detonating slab of TNT pressed against the boat's hull
>
> The amount of water vaporized is small and the confinement on the OTHER side is
> air. If you can deliver a high enough energy density (at a distance) to be
The same argument holds for high explosives. I could say that placing a slab of
TNT against the side of a ship and detonating it would not cause much damage,
because the confinement on the other side is air. Locally, the total amount of
water vaporized does not matter, the intensity and overpressure of the shock will
depend only on the energy density and collumn mass density of the water in contact
with the hull. If the shock is strong enough to exceed the hull material's
structural strength, the hull will deform. If this deforms but does not rupture
the hull, follow it up with several more pulses to the same location.
> noticable under those conditions, again the "boom" would be the least of the
> problems. The bridge crew could be made dead first. Don't aim at the SHIP,
> aim at the bridge. Glass breaks a lot easier than steel or aluminum, and if it
> is visible the optical damage would be sufficient to render the personnel
> useless WAY before the metal is destroyed.
I would imagine the best use of any weapon is to aim at the most vulnerable
spots. The bridge crew is a good one, but if you could burn through to the fuel
or ammunition stores (or if any of this is stored on deck), this would be another
good target, as the ship would, again, be disabled.
> Next, how the heck do you intend to get something with a powerful enough power
> supply to drive the thing close enough to a weapons platform under combat
> conditions?
This is a science fiction newsgroup, right? I'll just wave my hands and say my
fighter jets/gunboats/laser sattelites/whatever have ultra-high energy density and
power density power supplies.
Actually, there are some realistic options. Chemical lasers are powered directly
from reactive chemicals, which have higher specific energies than chemical
batteries. It would not be unreasonable to have high powered lasers fueled by
relatively compact tanks of chemicals. The problem is that all the high energy
chemcial lasers I know of are continuous lasers, not pulsed (you can make pulsed
hydrogen fluoride or deuterium fluoride lasers, but I am not aware of any of these
that are high enough powered to be used as weapons systems).
Other options involve the use of advanced materials. A flywheel made from modern
carbon fibers could theoretically store more than 3 MJ/kg (tensile strength of 6
GPa, dansity of 1.78 g/cc). This is ignoring safety factors, the mass of
bearings, casing, and generators, and other such niceties, but if we assume a wel
engineered flywheel using only modern materials, 1 MJ/kg would not be
unreasonable. Given a relatively efficient laser (say a carbon dioxide laser with
25% efficiency, an excimer with 10% efficiency, or even a free electron laser with
efficiencies approaching 100% at turning electrical power into laser output), you
could have a relatively compact power supply for your weapon. If we wanted to get
into exotic materials, we could use carbon nanotubes. With tensile strengths of
around 100 MPa(!) and densities of around 1.4 g/cc, you can store a theoretical
maximim of on the order of 80 MJ/kg in a nanotube flywheel. Given realistic
engineering constraints, you might only be getting about 10 to 30 MJ/kg, even with
perfect nanotubes, but this should be more than enough to power your laser
weapons.
> >Rather than washing down the hull with water, spraying the water out to make
> >a
> >fountain of droplets or a thick fog might well be a better defense -
>
> That is how the system works. Looks really neat when it is used. The original
> design was to prevent NBC substances from settling on the surfaces and
> sticking. If you look real close on a picture of a ship (better yet, visit
> one) you can see the nozzles. They are most evident on places like flight
> decks.
Hmmm. I wonder if you could effectively blind everyone on deck or with a veiw of
the deck by just shooting the laser into the cloud of water droplets. You could
have eneryone wear laser-proof safety goggles, I suppose.
Anyway, it would be a nice defense - the problem is that to protect against lasers
you wouldn't be able to see out of it. As long as you are fighting by radar or
sonar this might not be too much of a problem, except that you will be bait for
HARM missiles and the like, and with the water spray defense up, you couldn't use
your own antimissile lasers against them. If part of the ship is not covered by
the spray, or if the system is turned off, then the ship is vulnerable.
Luke
Luke Campbell
> > You could say the same thing about a normal rifle. They are loud and they make a
> > flash from the muzzle when fired. People using lasers probably would want special
> > goggles for eye protection, but this need not inhibit vision.
>
> About the noise, I agree, but I fired normal firearms (guns and M-16) and I
> weren't blinded, even momentarily.
Likewise, the flash from the incandescent gas heated by the laser probably would not
blind, no more than the flash from an electrical arc, but like an electric arc it would
be easily visible. The light scattered from the laser pulse itself where it hits the
target could dazzle you if the laser is operating in the visible part of the spectrum,
and specualrly reflected laser light could blind you, whether it is in the visible or
not. Goggles that filter out the freqency of the laser you are using would protect you
against both the dazzling from scattered light and from specular reflection of the beam.
Alternately, you could use some sort of instant-darkening material that would go black
for a split second when the light gets too bright, but this option remains in the
provence of science fiction, not reality, as far as I know.
> > At a meter you might get a bit splattered, but unless you were using power levels
> > far higher than that necessart to incapacitate an enemy soldier, you probably
> > wouldn't be incapcitated yourself.
>
> You want to get an enemy *dead* at ten to one hundred meters when you are not
> using snipper mode. That sound powerful enough, anything less and you might
> be shot by someone else, anything more and you can't risk shotting someone
> near you.
As long as he is not shooting back, I do not care if my enemy is dead or just badly
hurt. If he is hurt but not dead, it is probably even better, since his buddies will
have to help him (taking them out of the fight), and he will take up bad guy resources
and money when his side tries to heal him.
> > These are the real problems, in addition to the size of the laser itself (a laser
> > that was effeicient at killing soldiers, made with today's technology, might be able
> > to fit into the back of a van, but could not be carried around by a soldier).
>
> Yes, I agree that those are the big problems. Is there any theoretical limit
> (or even something that you can't solve using today's foreseen technology?)
> for the size of a powerful enough laser to kill a man from 100 + meters?
If you can kill a man with a laser beam at 1 meter, you can kill him at 100+ meters as
long as your optics are good enough. Since normal camera optics (with, say, a 5 cm
aperture) would allow you to focus green light to a 1 mm radius spot at 100 meters, this
will not be much of a problem.
As to what the limits are for compacting lasers, I really do not know. I do not see any
physical limit that would prevent man portable laser weapons, but the engineering
problems will likely be large.
> Free elctron lasers are better in less heat, does it has disadvantages on
> normal lasers?
Free electron lasers have so many advantages over other lasers, I might start to drool.
They basically work by accelerating a beam of electrons to high energies and then making
the electrons go through a series of alternating magnetic fields inside the laser
resonator. The energy of the electron beam that does not go into the laser beam remains
as the kinetic energy of the laser, so it can be used again to recharge your battery or
to run it through the magnetic fields in the laser resonator again. In this way, they
can be nearly 100% efficient at taking the energy from the electron beam and putting it
into the light beam. Free electron lasers can also change the color of their beam, and
do so nearly continuously. In this way they can choose a beam color suited to a
particular range and atmospheric condition, for example. Free electron lasers are also
the only forseable x-ray laser that does not have truely horrible efficiencies.
They do have problems, however. Mostly, this comes from the need to accelerate the beam
of electrons. This is a wasteful and inefficient process, except for electrostatic
accelerators, and electrostatic accelerators cannot get to very high energies (although
there is an Israli research group working on a highly efficient electrostatic free
electron laser). In addition, electron accelerators tend to be large and bulky, although
there is some interesting research on relatively compact free electron lasers using
superconductive resonat cavities to accelerate the electron beam.
> > > > Another non-lethal weapon is a foam that is sprayed onto the target. It
> > > > hardens immediately, trapping the target. These weapons currently exist, but
> > > > are not used for fear of suffocating the target.
> > >
> > > Ouch, that is not something you want to get stucked in, how do you get out?
> >
> > You don't. That's the idea. I suppose you could always have one of your friends
> > chisel you out, or break it off some other way. If you still had a hand free, you
> > might be able to break some of it off yourself.
>
> I meant, how do you get someone out of this?
A hammer and chisel, I suppose. Perhaps just banging on it with rocks would break off
enough of the foam.
> > This is a weakness of some sonic weapons - they can be easily defended against with
> > simple ear protection.
>
> All sonic weapons can be blocked that easily? Okay, the next bulletproof vest
> offer protection against lasers, being a mirror, agaist stun guns, being
> conductive, against bullets, being made of kelvar, and against sonic weapons,
> coming with two earplugs attached, FREE!
Well, at least some sonic weapons can be defended against with earplugs. Others,
particularly those using infrasound, are much harder to defend against.
> > > > For some really weird weapons that were actually developed and sometimes even
> > > > used, see if you can find a copy of the book Secret Weapons of World War II.
> > > > Here you will read about everything from invisible boats to flaming rocket
> > > > propelled wheels that roll along the ground to destroy concrete fortifications
> > > > to high explosive anti-aircraft baloons to steam guns that fire potatos and
> > > > cans of beer as their ammunition, not to mention trains that can drive across
> > > > any terrain (including water), rocket landing jeeps, methods to make the waves
> > > > in the sea go away, and a way to get a train car all to yourself when
> > > > travelling by rail.
> > >
> > > I really DO hope you are kidding here.
> >
> > Nope. These weapons were all proposed and (except for the all terrain trains)
> > developed into at least experimental prototypes in world war II. For more details,
> > you should track down the book. This may be difficult since it is currently out of
> > print.
>
> DAMN!
>
> I don't assume there is a version on the web, right?
Not that I know of. If you find one, let me know.
Luke
George William Herbert
>Luke Campbell wrote:
>>> >What happens to a ship hull suddenly and locally exposed to such pressure?
>>> From that, very little. Air gives much better than something that is oft
>>> designed for such. Consider shock testing.
>>So consider a layer of material (water) with a mass density similar to that
>>of
>>TNT and an energy density (due to the laser pulse) which can be many times
>>higher
>>than TNT. This gives a shock overpressure and shock wave energy many times
>>higher than that of a detonating slab of TNT pressed against the boat's hull
>
>The amount of water vaporized is small and the confinement on the OTHER side is
>air. If you can deliver a high enough energy density (at a distance) to be
JW, you are simply not understanding physical reality here.
It doesn't matter how little confinement is on the other side.
The pressure will be applied for at least:
thickness of vaporized layer / sonic velocity in the layer
...as the release wave propogates through the vaporized layer from
the uncontained side.
Existing pulse lasers can emit pulses with enough energy to cause
the impulsive damage pulse to be lethal to aircraft and missile and
ship materials and structures.
Do you remember the late 1980s laser test which blew up a Titan missile
stage (on a test range, a few tens of meters from the laser)? That was
blown up by exactly this phenomenon.
This is reality. If people start using water washdown, ablative or
other "tricks" to avoid laser damage, pulse lasers can overmatch any
known defensive measure. Again, this is in any text or overview on
laser weaponry. It's very basic. It's well understood by anyone
working or seriously hobbying in the field. Why do you have such a
hard time understanding it?
-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com
J
Ayende Rahien <Aye...@softhome.net> wrote in message
news:8gne97$7l6$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> How many pulses can you shot before your barrel get too hot? Is that a
factor
> in lasers?
Depends more on the device... you can have one that needs a barrel to work,
and then there are other's that have an emitter instead of a barrel.
> Cool, but, how do you use uranium in a magnetic weapon, is uranium
magnetic?
Anything can be used in a magnetic weapon, as long as the field is strong
enough... uranium is probably going to be a little more easy than a gas.
But, then there is the ionizing, if you ionize the atom you'll also get a
better chance of being able to use it.
> Supersonic GERBIL launchers? Gerbil = small rodent???
I'm told a superconic ferret would be much more effective :-)
Later, J
--
_____________________
http://webj.cjb.net
m...@webj.cjb.net
Paul F. Dietz
> > Supersonic GERBIL launchers? Gerbil = small rodent???
>
> I'm told a superconic ferret would be much more effective :-)
I thought (super)Sonic was a hedgehog.
Paul
J
Later, J
--
_____________________
http://webj.cjb.net
m...@webj.cjb.net
Paul F. Dietz <di...@interaccess.com> wrote in message
news:39387A26...@interaccess.com...
Brian Trosko
: If you can see someone in the rain, then most of the time, when you shoot, your
: beam will not encounter raindrops. Either that, or the beam will be wide enough at
: that point that the raindrop will only intercept a fraction of the light from the
: beam.
Fog. Smoke. I can see someone through either one of those, out to a
certain range, but my beam'll scatter like a mofo.
Blaine Manyluk
<393839DE...@u.washington.edu>...
[Free electron lasers]
> They do have problems, however. Mostly, this comes from the need
> to accelerate the beam of electrons. This is a wasteful and
> inefficient process, except for electrostatic accelerators, and
> electrostatic accelerators cannot get to very high energies
> (although there is an Israli research group working on a highly
> efficient electrostatic free electron laser).
Here's an idea: An energy weapon usable as both a laser and particle
beam. The first stage is an electron accelerator, the output of
which could be either fired directly at the target, or sent to the
second stage, a free-electron laser.
Thus, when the user needs a particle beam, fire first stage only.
For a laser, fire both. I have this image of a long rifle-like gun
with the laser as an attachment on a hinge, folding under the barrel
when not needed. Neat, but probably not the most effective way.
A dual particle-laser weapon is good for atmospheric use. Some of the
energy could go into a weak laser beam to ionize the air, providing a
good channel for the electrons to flow. (Assuming the beam doesn't
twist, like in _Ghostbusters_.)
> In addition, electron accelerators tend to be large and bulky,
> although there is some interesting research on relatively compact
> free electron lasers using superconductive resonat cavities to
> accelerate the electron beam.
And there's also the energy storage (battery) problem.
======================================================================
[To reply, remove the S's from my address, and change the R's to N's.]
An infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters
will eventually come up with a good _Voyager_ script.
John Schilling
>John Schilling wrote:
[why pulsed high-energy lasers are Really Nasty]
>>Now for your Engineering Thermodynamics 101 question:
>>What is the pressure of saturated steam with the density of liquid water?
On examination, I seem to have asked a trick question. You can't get
saturated steam with the density of water because you are well past the
critical point of water by then. The pressure of the supercritical steam
will be at least 25,000 psi.
>>And on to Structural Mechanics 101:
>>What happens to a ship hull suddenly and locally exposed to such pressure?
>From that, very little. Air gives much better than something that is oft
>designed for such. Consider shock testing.
A remarkably difficult response to parse, but you seem to be suggesting
that the steam will just harmlessly expand into the air.
It doesn't work that way, because the steam immediately adjacent to the
ship's hull doesn't have the option of expanding into the air. *That*
layer of steam is trapped between the hull and an outer layer of steam.
And the outer layer of steam is trying to expand *inward* with the same
25,000+ psi of pressure that the inner layer of steam is trying to
expand outward.
Stalemate, and the hull by default gets the full 25,000+ psi.
For a little while, at least. The outermost layer of steam is of course
free to expand into the air, and will do so. This exposes the interior
layers, allowing them to successively expand as well - a continuous
process known, unsurprisingly, as an expansion wave. And when the
expansion wave reaches the hull, the pressure at the hull will drop.
Expansion waves are fast, but they aren't infinitely fast and they aren't
as fast as weapons-grade pulsed lasers. There will be a finite period
of time when the hull of the ship is exposed to the full pressure of
supercritical steam, which will have the effect of driving a fairly
hefty shock wave into the steel. And once that shock wave is underway,
it no longer cares what happens behind it.
There's a reason I described pulse laser weapons as the rough equivilants
of gatling guns firing HESH rounds. That really is about what they do.
Brett Evill
>
> lwc...@u.washington.edu (Luke Campbell) wrote in
> <392EF4E0...@u.washington.edu>:
> >Advantages of laser guns:
>
> For theoretical purposes of hand-held weaponry lasers have one
> great advantage of projectile weapons.
>
> There is no limit to the power of the laser.
> There are limits in what you can make it out of and power it with,
> but there is no limit on the power of the beam.
>
> Assuming you could stuff an ICBM-killer into a compact 10 kilo
> package a soldier could wield it... with goggles and a nomex
> uniform :)
>
> The variety of mass-projectors postulated do not have this
> advantage.
Projectile weapons are no more limited in power than a laser is. Kinetic
energy weapons may be, but there is no reason not to use explosive
bullets.
Take the compact energy source that you use to power the laser, and use
it to make an explosive. Then use a projectile weapon to throw bits of
the explosive at the enemy.
Besides, if the laser beam is so intense that the electric field
component exceeds the dielectric breakdown point of air, you can lose a
lot of energy to ionising oxygen and nitrogen. Not to mention the
resulting thermal bloom destroying the collimation of your beam. To
achieve abitrary power in laser beams you need arbitrarily wide beams,
which means arbitrarily wide apetures, which soon become inconvenient in
an infantry weapon.
Regards,
Brett Evill
Brett Evill
>
> > > Sonic weapons also exist that can incapacitate a target without killing it, but
> > > these are also not used much for fear of causing ear damage up to and including
> > > deafness.
> >
> > I assume it is not the kind of weapon you can protect yourself from by
> > putting somehting in your ears, right?
>
> simple ear protection.
Perhaps not all of them. I have heard of an approach using a soliton
(non-dispersing wave) of sound with effects rather like those of a
rubber bullet. The simplest worked by firing a special cartridge in a
(modified?) full-cylinder bore shotgun. I have heard that another such
weapon (cunning concealed in an apparent pair of binoculars) was used to
nobble a racehorse during a race in Hong Kong in about 1987.
But I understand from the little I know of solitons that this weapon
would probably be ineffective through heavy clothing, but quite as
dangerous as a rubber bullet if you hit the target in a vulnerable spot
such as the head. Neither reliably effective nor reliably safe, it is
not being put to use at present, though R&D may continue for all that I
know.
Regards,
Brett Evill
Brett Evill
>
> >If the beam is too powerful(*), the air breaks down, and the
> >beam can't propagate. So there is a limit.
>
> Is this plasma bloom?
>
> I thought that if a beam was sufficiently powerful the shockwave of
> expanding air would leave an empty tunnel for the beam... or have i
> got this confused with something else?
It takes energy to produce the shockwave, and that energy has to come
from the beam, thus reducing the amount of energy available to deposit
on the target. The process will not be efficient, either: a lot of the
energy in the light at the front of the pulse will be refracted and
scattered while heating the air to the point of thermal explosion. This
effect will limit the effective range of laser weapons in atmosphere:
after a certain distance the beam will no longer be powerful enough to
produce the explosion, and thermal bloom will take over.
The vacuum channels produced by powerful lasers are not stable: wind,
turbulence, and (especially) precipitation can disturb them, not to
mention that they soon collapse under air pressure like a popping
balloon.
And as a final little bonus, these channels will be surrounded by
ionised air, which will conduct lightning strikes to the weapon: even, I
think, under blue skies, though I'm not certain of that last.
Regards,
Brett Evill
JWMeritt
>> You want to get an enemy *dead* at ten to one hundred meters when you are
>not
>> using snipper mode. That sound powerful enough, anything less and you might
>> be shot by someone else, anything more and you can't risk shotting someone
>> near you.
>
>As long as he is not shooting back, I do not care if my enemy is dead or just
>badly
>hurt. If he is hurt but not dead, it is probably even better, since his
>buddies will
>have to help him (taking them out of the fight), and he will take up bad guy
>resources
>and money when his side tries to heal him.
Yeah. More "bang for the buck" if you simply injure him big time. That way
you not only take HIM out of action, but the corpman, helo pilot,... and all
the others that it takes to take care of him. A MUCH bigger drain on enemy
resources to simply blind the guy than punch a hole through his head!
Jim Meritt, CISSP, CISA
JWMeritt
>> The amount of water vaporized is small and the confinement on the OTHER
>side is
>> air. If you can deliver a high enough energy density (at a distance) to be
>
>The same argument holds for high explosives. I could say that placing a slab
>of
>TNT against the side of a ship and detonating it would not cause much damage,
>because the confinement on the other side is air.
Right. That's why you don't proxy detonate against ships with the explosive on
the OUTSIDE. You have the warhead detonate after penetration, better yet with
full gas tanks. The fire afterwards causes more damage than the blast.
Consider that Exocet.....
>I would imagine the best use of any weapon is to aim at the most vulnerable
>spots. The bridge crew is a good one, but if you could burn through to the
>fuel
>or ammunition stores (or if any of this is stored on deck), this would be
>another
>good target, as the ship would, again, be disabled.
Aiming at bridge crew is real good. Aiming at antenna farm would be good
(usually painted black. Nice, isn't it?) but the phased array systems are
built into the hull (those disks on the front of an Aegis crouser
superstructure). I haven't heard of anything that stages explosives (even for
onloading while at ammo anchorage) on the deck - well, except for barges
hauling it out...
>This is a science fiction newsgroup, right? I'll just wave my hands and say
>my
>fighter jets/gunboats/laser sattelites/whatever have ultra-high energy
>density and
>power density power supplies.
And so would the defender. Zap, no more close. You have to have a reach
farther than the detection capabilities. We already have over the horizon
weapons and "shoot and forget" weapondry.
>Chemical lasers are powered directly
>from reactive chemicals, which have higher specific energies than chemical
>batteries. It would not be unreasonable to have high powered lasers fueled
>by
>relatively compact tanks of chemicals
Witho those sensitive (flamable, explosive?) tanks within range and easily
targetted from the ship. Nope.
>Hmmm. I wonder if you could effectively blind everyone on deck or with a
>veiw of
>the deck by just shooting the laser into the cloud of water droplets. You
>could
>have eneryone wear laser-proof safety goggles, I suppose.
In every case I've heard of , there isn't anyone on deck (outside) under
conditions when the washdown system would be deployed....
>Anyway, it would be a nice defense - the problem is that to protect against
>lasers
>you wouldn't be able to see out of it. As long as you are fighting by radar
>or
>sonar this might not be too much of a problem, except that you will be bait
>for
>HARM missiles and the like, and with the water spray defense up, you couldn't
>use
>your own antimissile lasers against them. If part of the ship is not covered
>by
>the spray, or if the system is turned off, then the ship is vulnerable.
Problem is that it takes much, much lower power levels to detect through than
pass destruction through. I can see through heavy sun goggles and welders
goggles using MUCH lower light levels than it would take to kill me. And ships
are already moblel power systems. LASERS or such would not make good antiship
weapons. Maybe antitroop, but it would be much easier to take out a tank with
a spotlight. Use rocks.
Jim Meritt, CISSP, CISA
JWMeritt
>JW, you are simply not understanding physical reality here
hahahahahehehehehehehe. You are SO silly. Excuse the Surface Warface Officer
that retired from the US Navy a couple of years ago after serving twenty years
for commenting upon ship warfare. Go back to your FICTIONAL system, and quit
pretending "physical reality" has a thing to do with it.
>It doesn't matter how little confinement is on the other side.
>The pressure will be applied for at least:
> thickness of vaporized layer / sonic velocity in the layer
>...as the release wave propogates through the vaporized layer from
>the uncontained side.
Maybe you should learn a little about the physical reality of explosives and
water washdown systems, too.
>This is reality
Nope, it isn't.
> It's well understood by anyone
>working or seriously hobbying in the field. Why do you have such a
>hard time understanding it?
No problem at all. And understanding better is even easier for someone who
spent decades doing that for a job. Why does a hobbiest have such a hard time
understanding it?
Jim Meritt, CISSP, CISA
George William Herbert
>>JW, you are simply not understanding physical reality here
>
>hahahahahehehehehehehe. You are SO silly. Excuse the Surface Warface Officer
>that retired from the US Navy a couple of years ago after serving twenty years
>for commenting upon ship warfare. Go back to your FICTIONAL system, and quit
>pretending "physical reality" has a thing to do with it.
I'm a naval architect, have worked both practically and on explosives
theory, and have enough understanding of laser weapons to be a professional
in that field as well, JWM.
>>It doesn't matter how little confinement is on the other side.
>>The pressure will be applied for at least:
>> thickness of vaporized layer / sonic velocity in the layer
>>...as the release wave propogates through the vaporized layer from
>>the uncontained side.
>
>Maybe you should learn a little about the physical reality of explosives and
>water washdown systems, too.
What about them did you have in mind?
I know how explosives work. I know how water washdown systems work.
I know how pulse laser damage dynamics work, too. I think it's obvious
by now you don't.
>>This is reality
>
>Nope, it isn't.
>> It's well understood by anyone
>>working or seriously hobbying in the field. Why do you have such a
>>hard time understanding it?
>
>No problem at all. And understanding better is even easier for someone who
>spent decades doing that for a job. Why does a hobbiest have such a hard time
>understanding it?
Your mistake is assuming I'm a hobbyist. I am in some subsets of what
we're talking about; I have never designed a water washdown system, though I
know how they work and have seen them work and specs for them. I have designed
naval vessels and have a degree in Naval Architecture. I've worked laser
damage studies before. I've blown things up, and have a fairly well grounded
understanding of explosives theory as well.
Again, this is not theory. People have blown up test structures in this
manner with pulse lasers. Most weapons lasers being developed right now
are continuous wave, but again, pulse lasers exist which are big enough to
blow up ICBMs in one shot with impulsive damage as described, which is
also enough energy to blow a hole in a ship in a similar explosive manner.
-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com
JWMeritt
>
>JWMeritt <jwme...@aol.com> wrote:
>>>JW, you are simply not understanding physical reality here
>>
>>hahahahahehehehehehehe. You are SO silly. Excuse the Surface Warface
>Officer
>>that retired from the US Navy a couple of years ago after serving twenty
>years
>>for commenting upon ship warfare. Go back to your FICTIONAL system, and
>quit
>>pretending "physical reality" has a thing to do with it.
>
>I'm a naval architect, have worked both practically and on explosives
>theory, and have enough understanding of laser weapons to be a professional
>in that field as well, JWM
Oh goody. I'm so glad for you. Maybe I met you at the Military Operations
Research Society meeting in Monterey?
Here is a piece of reality: Hitting someone in the throat (front, square) with
a baseball bat can kill them. That has VERY little to do with personal
man-to-man combat. Spend a few years on those thing under combat conditions
(in GQ, in CiC) THEN comment on how well they will perform under combat
conditions.
>I know how explosives work. I know how water washdown systems work.
>I know how pulse laser damage dynamics work, too. I think it's obvious
>by now you don't.
Do you know that the target doesn't sit there, but has this tendency to shoot
back? Do you know the survival time of a line of sight weapon at sea in
combat?
>>> It's well understood by anyone
>>>working or seriously hobbying in the field. Why do you have such a
>>>hard time understanding it?
>>
>>No problem at all. And understanding better is even easier for someone who
>>spent decades doing that for a job. Why does a hobbiest have such a hard
>time
>>understanding it?
>
>Your mistake is assuming I'm a hobbyist.
You drug the line in, I didn't.
>I have designed
>naval vessels and have a degree in Naval Architecture.
Rah. I've lived in naval vessels. I have a degree (MS) in Operations Research
from the Naval Postgraduate School and we were concerned about this specific
weapon threat. If you wish to impress me, try harder.
> I've blown things up, and have a fairly well grounded
>understanding of explosives theory as well.
So? I've blown things up, and so of that was with over-the-horizon missles
using passive acoustic targetting, some "ordinary" five-inch gunfire, some
antiaircraft missles. Try harder, if you are trying to impress.
>Again, this is not theory. People have blown up test structures in this
>manner with pulse lasers
And baseballs have been hit by baseball bats. That doesn't make baseball bats
excellent aitipersonal weapons systems.
Go back to science FICTION and quit pretending reality has anything to do with
your discussion. Your insults are inadequate, as is your knowledge in this
specific arena.
Jim Meritt, CISSP, CISA
George William Herbert
>Here is a piece of reality: Hitting someone in the throat (front, square) with
>a baseball bat can kill them. That has VERY little to do with personal
>man-to-man combat. Spend a few years on those thing under combat conditions
>(in GQ, in CiC) THEN comment on how well they will perform under combat
>conditions.
What does that have to do with lasers, JWM?
>>I know how explosives work. I know how water washdown systems work.
>>I know how pulse laser damage dynamics work, too. I think it's obvious
>>by now you don't.
>
>Do you know that the target doesn't sit there, but has this tendency to shoot
>back? Do you know the survival time of a line of sight weapon at sea in
>combat?
Mounted on a ship? Not long, if someone can get a missile to it.
On an aircraft? About the same as aircraft do in general.
>>I have designed
>>naval vessels and have a degree in Naval Architecture.
>
>Rah. I've lived in naval vessels. I have a degree (MS) in Operations Research
>from the Naval Postgraduate School and we were concerned about this specific
>weapon threat. If you wish to impress me, try harder.
Ah, so you are a professional with experience in the field.
So you should have seen, during your professional experience in the field
investegating this specific threat, the various test films the Army made of
one of their pulse lasers blowing large holes in (1/4"?) steel plate which
was being hosed down with water on the frontside prior to and during the
laser pulse. That water hosedown seemed to me to be a pretty good
simulation of an at-sea water washdown, though it was fresh not salt
water and there might be minor absorbivity changes as a result.
I have not done but have heard analysies indicating those are second
order effects and wouldn't have a significant change in the results.
Now, I'll freely admit that even professionals don't know everything
about every corner of their field. I don't know a lot about a lot of
things, including a lot about laser weapons and ships and explosives.
But I do know that the above tests happened and demonstrate what I've
been telling you.
>> I've blown things up, and have a fairly well grounded
>>understanding of explosives theory as well.
>
>So? I've blown things up, and so of that was with over-the-horizon missles
>using passive acoustic targetting, some "ordinary" five-inch gunfire, some
>antiaircraft missles. Try harder, if you are trying to impress.
I'm not trying to impress. I am establishing my competence in the
area in question. I have done so. I believe I know what I am talking about.
You so far are not posting competent technical rebuttal, only insult.
Firing a weapon, while useful and fun, is not necessarily an understanding
of how it works at the physics level. Can you describe the detonation
process chemistry and physics in detail? The theory of shock waves in
condensed matter? Pulse laser damage dynamics?
If you do, why are you not responding at those levels rather than
continuing with the ad homoneim attacks?
>>Again, this is not theory. People have blown up test structures in this
>>manner with pulse lasers
>
>And baseballs have been hit by baseball bats. That doesn't make baseball bats
>excellent aitipersonal weapons systems.
>
>Go back to science FICTION and quit pretending reality has anything to do with
>your discussion. Your insults are inadequate, as is your knowledge in this
>specific arena.
JWM, this is about the third or fourth time I've seen you come along in
some conversation and do this. You are claiming to be an authority but
are by all appearances completely ignorant of major areas of the fields
you are claiming you understand. You accuse others of personal insult
and then turn around and make comments like the above.
For all I know you may be a retired US Naval officer with the MS from NPS
and experience you quote. That doesn't make you automatically right on
everything remotely associated with fields you have experience in.
If you showed any inclination to acknowledge the gaps in your own knowledge
then you might salvage credibility anyways. But as is, all you're doing is
giving yourself a black eye. You can keep this up if you want, but you're
giving the Navy and your own credibility a black eye.
And no, that doesn't mean I know everything or even more than you do
about many things. But I think I know more about the effects of high
power pulse lasers on targets.
-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com
JWMeritt
>JWMeritt <jwme...@aol.com> wrote:
>>Here is a piece of reality: Hitting someone in the throat (front, square)
>with
>>a baseball bat can kill them. That has VERY little to do with personal
>>man-to-man combat. Spend a few years on those thing under combat conditions
>>(in GQ, in CiC) THEN comment on how well they will perform under combat
>>conditions.
>
>What does that have to do with lasers, JWM?
Nothing. But it has a LOT to do with differentiating between theory and
reality.
>>>I know how explosives work. I know how water washdown systems work.
>>>I know how pulse laser damage dynamics work, too. I think it's obvious
>>>by now you don't.
>>
>>Do you know that the target doesn't sit there, but has this tendency to
>shoot
>>back? Do you know the survival time of a line of sight weapon at sea in
>>combat?
>
>Mounted on a ship? Not long, if someone can get a missile to it.
Very good. You managed to figure that one out.
>On an aircraft? About the same as aircraft do in general.
Almost. It would have to be on a BIG aircraft (aka "target")
>>>I have designed
>>>naval vessels and have a degree in Naval Architecture.
>>
>>Rah. I've lived in naval vessels. I have a degree (MS) in Operations
>Research
>>from the Naval Postgraduate School and we were concerned about this specific
>>weapon threat. If you wish to impress me, try harder.
>
>Ah, so you are a professional with experience in the field.
With ships, yes.
>So you should have seen, during your professional experience in the field
>investegating this specific threat, the various test films the Army made of
>one of their pulse lasers blowing large holes in (1/4"?) steel plate which
>was being hosed down with water on the frontside prior to and during the
>laser pulse.
And you think the Army wouldn't? If the army could figure out how to, they
would show how to get rid of ALL ships and aircraft.
BTW: Notice the range to the target? check. A carbide drill could do pretty
well at that range.
>That water hosedown seemed to me to be a pretty good
>simulation of an at-sea water washdown, though it was fresh not salt
>water and there might be minor absorbivity changes as a result.
>I have not done but have heard analysies indicating those are second
>order effects and wouldn't have a significant change in the results.
And at what range was this "powerful" weapon (defensive weapons range? yup),
how large was the power supply (good RADAR cross section for targetting), how
long was the platform in place (plenty of targetting time), and how much do you
think a 1/4 inch hole (insignificant) would do?
REALITY, as your opening blast espoused.
>Now, I'll freely admit that even professionals don't know everything
>about every corner of their field. I don't know a lot about a lot of
>things, including a lot about laser weapons and ships and explosives.
>But I do know that the above tests happened and demonstrate what I've
>been telling you.
Goody. And I happen to know more aboutantiship weapons systems.
That ain't one.
REALITY intrudes.
>>> I've blown things up, and have a fairly well grounded
>>>understanding of explosives theory as well.
>>
>>So? I've blown things up, and so of that was with over-the-horizon missles
>>using passive acoustic targetting, some "ordinary" five-inch gunfire, some
>>antiaircraft missles. Try harder, if you are trying to impress.
>
>I'm not trying to impress. I am establishing my competence in the
>area in question. I have done so. I believe I know what I am talking about.
So? Shall I whip out my Masters degree in military operations research from
the Naval Postgraduate School (during which we focused on that specific
issue?)? How about the Surface Warfare qualifications? The Tactical Action
Officer? The decades of hands-on experience?
REALITY.
>You so far are not posting competent technical rebuttal, only insult.
Have you looked at your opening blast?
>Firing a weapon, while useful and fun, is not necessarily an understanding
>of how it works at the physics level. Can you describe the detonation
>process chemistry and physics in detail? The theory of shock waves in
>condensed matter? Pulse laser damage dynamics?
I quote your earlier post: "you are simply not understanding physical reality
here." Get to REALITY.
>If you do, why are you not responding at those levels rather than
>continuing with the ad homoneim attacks?
Let's see, you opened with: "JW, you are simply not understanding physical
reality here.". This is a compliment? Get a grip.
>>>Again, this is not theory. People have blown up test structures in this
>>>manner with pulse lasers
>>
>>And baseballs have been hit by baseball bats. That doesn't make baseball
>bats
>>excellent aitipersonal weapons systems.
>>
>>Go back to science FICTION and quit pretending reality has anything to do
>with
>>your discussion. Your insults are inadequate, as is your knowledge in this
>>specific arena.
>
>JWM, this is about the third or fourth time I've seen you come along in
>some conversation and do this. You are claiming to be an authority but
>are by all appearances completely ignorant of major areas of the fields
>you are claiming you understand. You accuse others of personal insult
>and then turn around and make comments like the above.
So clean up your act. Simple, yes? If you don't want to be called something,
don't act like one. Q.E.D.
>For all I know you may be a retired US Naval officer with the MS from NPS
>and experience you quote. That doesn't make you automatically right on
>everything remotely associated with fields you have experience in.
Look at what you wrote, then think about what you CLAIMED.
>If you showed any inclination to acknowledge the gaps in your own knowledge
>then you might salvage credibility anyways.
Look at what you wrote, then look at what you CLAIMED.
>But as is, all you're doing is
>giving yourself a black eye. You can keep this up if you want, but you're
>giving the Navy and your own credibility a black eye.
Look at what you wrote, then look at what you CLAIMED.
>And no, that doesn't mean I know everything or even more than you do
>about many things. But I think I know more about the effects of high
>power pulse lasers on targets.
GWH, you are simply not understanding physical reality here.
Jim Meritt, CISSP, CISA
katm...@yahoo.ca
>
> Let's see, you opened with: "JW, you are simply not understanding physical
> reality here.". This is a compliment? Get a grip.
>
IMO you are the one who needs a grip here. Telling someone they
don't get something, or don't understand something is _not_ an ad
hominen attack. So, either you are over reacting, or you are throwing
a strawman here to attack him.
--
Marc el Kato
JWMeritt
Offhand, I'd guess you simply don't understand. Stupid or ignorant?
Jim Meritt, CISSP, CISA
katm...@yahoo.ca
Nice try, well, actually, not. Thank you for proving my
point. Since you had no actual point to make, you just attack
me. Plus, you do it by posting both here and in eMail, showing just
what you are, a stupid troll.
--
Marc el Kato
katm...@yahoo.ca
> >>
> >> Offhand, I'd guess you simply don't understand. Stupid or ignorant?
> >
> > Nice try, well, actually, not. Thank you for proving my
> >point. Since you had no actual point to make, you just attack
> >me
>
> See? YOU consider it an attack. I carefully chose the SAME words,
> followed by a question. Thank you for the separate opinion showing
> that it is not just the way I look at it, but others as well.
>
> Guess you are just another obnoxious troll. Nice try, but your "true colors"
> came out too quickly.
>
Once again you screw up. BTW, stop sending me eMail you
troll. You will come to regret it if you continue. In your attempt to
prove your point, you added an insult, calling me Stupid or ignorant,
which wasn't part of the original post. But then, what do you care,
you are just a troll.
>
--
Marc el Kato
Chuck Stewart
<re: eye protection for troops wielding combat lasers>
>... Alternately, you could
>use some sort of instant-darkening material that would go black
>for a split second when the light gets too bright, but this
>option remains in the provence of science fiction, not reality,
>as far as I know.
SAC pilots still on the ground wore a large goggles-like affair to
shield their eyes in case a nuke attack occured before they were
airborne.
While the eyepieces fit your criteria and then some they were far
too bulky for infantry use.
>Luke
--
Chuck Stewart
"Anime-style catgirls: Threat? Menace? Or just studying algebra?"
JWMeritt
>jwme...@aol.com (JWMeritt) writes:
>
>> Da Katt wrote:
>> >jwme...@aol.com (JWMeritt) writes:
>> >> Let's see, you opened with: "JW, you are simply not understanding
>physical
>> >> reality here.". This is a compliment? Get a grip.
>> >>
>> >
>> > IMO you are the one who needs a grip here. Telling someone they
>> >don't get something, or don't understand something is _not_ an ad
>> >hominen attack. So, either you are over reacting, or you are throwing
>> >a strawman here to attack him.
>>
>> Offhand, I'd guess you simply don't understand. Stupid or ignorant?
>
> Nice try, well, actually, not. Thank you for proving my
>point. Since you had no actual point to make, you just attack
>me
See? YOU consider it an attack. I carefully chose the SAME words, followed by
a question. Thank you for the separate opinion showing that it is not just the
way I look at it, but others as well.
Guess you are just another obnoxious troll. Nice try, but your "true colors"
came out too quickly.
Jim Meritt, CISSP, CISA
George William Herbert
>George William Herber wrote:
>>So you should have seen, during your professional experience in the field
>>investegating this specific threat, the various test films the Army made of
>>one of their pulse lasers blowing large holes in (1/4"?) steel plate which
>>was being hosed down with water on the frontside prior to and during the
>>laser pulse.
>
>And you think the Army wouldn't? If the army could figure out how to, they
>would show how to get rid of ALL ships and aircraft.
>BTW: Notice the range to the target? check. A carbide drill could do pretty
>well at that range.
This thread is rapidly mutating as you try to scoot away from what was
origionally said.
The origional question was whether ships were vulnerable to attacks
at a distance from high power laser weapons. You asserted not, based
apparently on physics associated with CW lasers and the utility of water
washdown systems and normal ship movement in mitigating terminal effects
of such CW lasers (arguably correctly WRT CW lasers, I have seen similar
proposals and analysies). I, and John Schilling, explained the physics
of pulse lasers and how that differs. You are now retreating back to a
different position from what was origionally held and the question which
started this all.
Let me repeat myself: while ships are intrinsically harder targets
when subjected to CW laser attack due to water washdown among other
reasons, they are not effectively protected from high power pulse
lasers due to the different physics involved in the damage. That's
all we've been saying. You just acknowledged that you know that what
we were saying was correct.
That does not mean that the packaging problems associated with pulse
lasers are magically solved, that the line of sight problems keeping
them from being useful in ship-to-ship offensive roles go away, or that
targeting at a distance magically becomes trivially easy. The packaging
problems for an airborne platform are significant. LOS means that you
can't use them for Ship to Ship, this being a curved spherical planet
and all, and that's not going to change. It's no easier to target a
pulse laser at a hundred km than a CW laser (and inversely not much harder).
But your assertion was that ships, due to water washdown or other
unspecified effects, were not vulnerable to theoretical future pulse
lasers which solved the packaging problems and targeting problems.
You have now admitted that the physics involved, a high energy laser
pulse through a water curtain into a steel shell, don't in fact protect
the ship, as the Army laser experiments demonstrated. The difference
between "no pulse laser weapon can ever damage a ship" and "no near
future practical pulse laser weapon can damage a ship" is subtle but
significant. The other issues will remain, of course, but the physics
does not support the statement that ships are effectively invulnerable
to such attack due to water washdown systems or other factors.
The practical details of making it work in a real combat weapon are
some large number of years in the future in real life or fictional.
I never claimed otherwise. Claiming I did and then arguing against
that claim is putting words in my mouth.
-george william herbert
gher...@retro.com
JWMeritt
>jwme...@aol.com (JWMeritt) writes:
>> >> Offhand, I'd guess you simply don't understand. Stupid or ignorant?
>> >
>> > Nice try, well, actually, not. Thank you for proving my
>> >point. Since you had no actual point to make, you just attack
>> >me
>>
>> See? YOU consider it an attack. I carefully chose the SAME words,
>> followed by a question. Thank you for the separate opinion showing
>> that it is not just the way I look at it, but others as well.
>>
>> Guess you are just another obnoxious troll. Nice try, but your "true
>colors"
>> came out too quickly.
>>
> Once again you screw up. BTW, stop sending me eMail you
>troll. You will come to regret it if you continue.
Oh goody! Public threats!
>In your attempt to
>prove your point, you added an insult, calling me Stupid or ignorant,
>which wasn't part of the original post.
Someone should introduce you to question marks. They seem to be beyond you.
Ask someone around what they are. Almost anyone that has pased first grade
should be able to help you. BTW: Thanks for answering the question.
>But then, what do you care,
>you are just a troll.
YOU seem to care!
Jim Meritt, CISSP, CISA
JWMeritt
>This thread is rapidly mutating as you try to scoot away from what was
>origionally said.
What YOU originally said was:"JW, you are simply not understanding physical
reality here" (At
http://x56.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=630443672&CONTEXT=960234542.1421606921&hi
tnum=9 for any who care to check. Notice it is his FIRST line)
You then follow with marvelous, but irrelevant, theoretic rantings. If you
care to actually come out with something, ANYTHING, that has to do with
physical reality, please feel free to post it.
>Let me repeat myself: while ships are intrinsically harder targets
>when subjected to CW laser attack due to water washdown among other
>reasons, they are not effectively protected from high power pulse
>lasers due to the different physics involved in the damage
Duh. Try for "physical reality" Targets don't sit there and let you mount
your useless-unless-at-VERY-close-range-and-then-only-marginally-useful weapons
systems against them.
>The practical details of making it work in a real combat weapon are
>some large number of years in the future in real life or fictional.
If ever. Which is unlikely for MANY reasons, some of which I've given. Try
for "physical reality here".
Jim Meritt, CISSP, CISA
JWMeritt
><re: eye protection for troops wielding combat lasers>
>
>>... Alternately, you could
>>use some sort of instant-darkening material that would go black
>>for a split second when the light gets too bright, but this
>>option remains in the provence of science fiction, not reality,
>>as far as I know.
>
>SAC pilots still on the ground wore a large goggles-like affair to
>shield their eyes in case a nuke attack occured before they were
>airborne.
Pilots in antiaircraft roles had "eyepatches" with them for use in nuclear
engagements. Cover one eye so if the exposed one is blinded, you could get
away.
A nuc blast is VERY bright.....
Jim Meritt, CISSP, CISA
pervect
<katm...@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:87em6c9...@smtp.mail.yahoo.com...
> jwme...@aol.com (JWMeritt) writes:
>
>
> >
> > Let's see, you opened with: "JW, you are simply not understanding
physical
> > reality here.". This is a compliment? Get a grip.
> >
>
> don't get something, or don't understand something is _not_ an ad
> hominen attack. So, either you are over reacting, or you are throwing
> a strawman here to attack him.
I don't think GWH is overreacting at all.
katm...@yahoo.ca
> Pilots in antiaircraft roles had "eyepatches" with them for use in nuclear
> engagements. Cover one eye so if the exposed one is blinded, you could get
> away.
>
> A nuc blast is VERY bright.....
True, well, I don't know from personal experience, never
having been anywhere near the site of a nuclear explosion, but all
evidence indicates that this is true. I wonder about the usefulness of
using an eyepatch to cover one eye. Would not the "burn" on the
exposed eye still leave a white spot in the visual cortex for some
time?
--
Marc el Kato