Israel's New Iron Beam Laser Interceptor

Jawdropping moment Israel's new Iron Beam laser interceptor blasts drones out of the sky
The Sun

Via The Village Hemorrhoid

Point Defence in Space Combat

Point Defence in Space Combat
Spacedock

I usually post stuff I when I have something to say on the subject. I don't know if I've got anything to say about the subject here. We'll see, maybe something later. But right now I'm just kind of blown away. This guy is mixing Science Fiction space battles and real life, cutting-edge military weapons. If I heard him right, there is a chat group somewhere devoted to figuring out just what the next generation of weapons might be capable of. Such a discussion might be pointless, but then talking politics is equally pointless, but we still do it. And every once in a while a thought from one of these discussions might weasel its way out of the chat group, slither along the streets and avenues of society and into the ear of someone who can do something about it. I mean it has happened, hasn't it? Unfortunately, the one incident that pops into my head is one where the warning was not heeded. It was the idea of using an airliner to attack New York City. I read a story about that probably thirty years before it actually happened. 

Now that I think about it, I realize the guys in charge of airline security were probably thinking about it, but we never heard from them. All I heard about the airliners crashing into the Twin Towers was the idiotic "who'd-a-thunk-it?" Anybody who had a brain would-a-thunk it. But realizing you have a potential problem is only the first step. Next you need a solution. That's easy, you just dream up your perfect security apparatus. But now you have to sell it, and all the players have to agree on your solution. I'll bet that's what happened, nobody liked the idea of a perfect security apparatus so we did nothing. We worked on the honor system, and it worked for, what? 50 years?

I do wonder just what kind of airline security we should be using. Seems there ought to be a better way. Our current method of having a legion of TSA agents inspecting individual passengers is cumbersome and of dubious efficacy. One one hand it's annoying and time consuming, and number of actual terrorists they've stopped is near zero*. On the other hand, no airliners have been commandeered by terrorists lately.

* I have no idea how many terrorists the TSA has arrested. Of course, you can always fudge the numbers. If you were asking how many terrorists, to the nearest thousand, then anything less than 500 would round to zero. And that was the question you were asking, right? So I feel pretty safe about saying zero.

Back on the video. I really enjoy watching those test flights of maneuvering rockets. I'm gonna have to watch this again.

Portable Death Ray

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.

Death Ray Stryker

Stryker with Death Ray

It carries a 50 kilowatt laser that makes drones fall out of the sky. It is certainly going to be cheaper to operate than the big C-RAM anti-aircraft guns we're using now. Defence Blog has the story.

Artist's concept of Northrop Grumman 300 kilowatt laser weapon

Here's a bigger one though it hasn't left the drawing board yet.

Ukraine’s Anti-Drone Rifle

The Ukrainians have a radio-frequency weapon about the size of a rifle that they can use to interfere with a radio-controlled drone's signals. It runs on a battery so it has a limited firing time but it should be enough to confuse several drones.

Ray Guns

Laser-Equipped Stryker (Photo by Jim Kendall)

Turkey's NAZAR , a ground-based laser system

Evidently making ray-guns is hard. The USA has been working on them for years and now they have one small enough to mount on a vehicle. The Stryker laser is rated at 50 kilowatts which is enough to do some actual damage. The Turkish system is supposed to deliver 'soft-kill' capability against guided missiles. If you can confuse the missile, it won't be able to hit its target, which is what you are trying to prevent. So, if it works, that is good enough.

And since we are talking about power, here's a thousand watts for you.

1000 Watts (feat. Christopher Ellis)
quanticmusic

Navy Laser Weapon

The Navy has installed a prototype laser weapon on the USS Ponce which is currently in the Persian Gulf.

Bloomberg has the story (beware: video autoplay).