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| Raytheon Portable Laser |
Raytheon has made a couple of these 10 kilowatt lasers. They have been testing them against drones and seem to work. Lasers are not 100% efficient, the efficiency varies depending on the technology used and the power output. If we figure 10%, just because ten is a nice round number, they're going to need a hundred horsepower generator to drive this thing, which might explain the big box on the bottom.
P. S.
Trim Trees with a Laser
P. P. S. If we figure we need a one hundred horsepower engine to drive this thing, and only 10% of the power finds its way into the actual laser beam, then we can figure the other 90% is being turned into heat, which means we are going to need a radiator dang near as big as the one on the engine to get rid of that heat.
Going on in this vein, if we are generating that much heat, this thing is going to be a big, fat infra-red target. It's also big and heavy, you need a truck to carry it around. A single small drone can be carried by a man, and a swarm of drones can be carried by a swarm of men. Yeah, I don't want to be there when it happens.
I wonder what color that laser is, the green ones seem to be the most dangerous. Also does it fire bursts like artillery rounds or a solid beam like a giant light saber?
ReplyDeleteEither way, I want one.
Decades ago I built a pulsed Magnetron whose duty cycle still averaged 1.4 kW. It killed the seagulls thst were perched on the transmitter horn feed when it turned on.
ReplyDeleteThey're smaller than they used to be. When my dad was working on one of the original laser weapons projects, sans the power source, the laser itself filled a 48' container.
ReplyDeleteI found three other old posts about military laser weapons, so I added another label.
ReplyDelete