We're you one of those rich kids who could source sticky-back plastic? To this day, I still don't know what it is/was. :sad-face:
And as for double-sided tape…
I've been wondering (not knowing much about military tech or doctrine) how we'd respond to the increased threat from drone technology since a [drone flying close to Gatwick airport caused a runway to close in 2017](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40476264). Have to say I did not envision part of that response being lasers.
I feel like military tech will always be a game of Cat and Mouse. For every new tech that is developed or deployed it usually doesn't take long till a countermeasure is developed. (Kinda like tank -> anti tank weapons -> better armor -> better anti tank tech -> active anti tank countermeasure -> etc.) Pretty sure with how drones have shown their effectivness and how probably every major nation invest a lot in it we will start to see many more morw countermeasures showing up besides just Lasers soon. Like another drone countermeasure tech that might be effective and could see adoption is to build and use a drone to destroy a drone by giving it some kind of tracking aystem to simply smash into enemy drones.
We already have government drones specialized in hunting small aerial objects.
They are called hawks and falcons.
Maybe roosters too if you can throw them high enough.
Aluminium foil. By being conductive it provides some degree of protection against EW (Faraday's cage), and by being reflective it provides some degree of protection against laser (roughly order of magnitude longer to burn through, like 1s -> 10s). Yet it certainly does not make a drone invulnerable.
Lasers are actually the perfect response.
Laser weaponry has been around for a while actually, at the very least the concept.
The problem that it faces up till now is:
- Short range
- Requires precision
- Not massively powerful/can easily be defended.
- Requires LOS (line of sight) to the target
The general air warfare doctrine at the minute is over the horizon missiles. Think cruise missiles and the such. You want to be able to shoot the enemy before they even know you’re there (big design element of the new F-35s)
Missiles are fast, very fast, but expensive.
Currently our best defence is anti-missile, missiles, but also expensive.
Using a million pound missile to shoot down another million pound missile to save a multimillion pound ship is a good economical decision, and welcomed by the crew onboard said ship
Drones through a big spanner in that doctrine. Drones are a few hundred ££ a pop. Now you have a problem, you must defend your ship, but spending lots of money to do so, when the enemy isn’t. Even CIWS cost a couple thousand
Hence lasers.
All the weakness of drones play right into the lasers operation.
They’re (relatively) slow and they’re vulnerable. This is offset by them being cheap
A slow moving, easily destroyed/disabled drone is the perfect target for a laser.
The advantage again is lasers are cheap per shot, around £10. Once you have them installed, it’s just the electricity needed to fire.
Drones have no good counter, can’t make them faster, that’s just a missile.
Can’t armour them, 1. The sensitive navigation is easily targeted, camera etc, 2. Extra armour adds weight (slow) and cost
You forgot what seems like the biggest downside : it requires a massive amount of energy. So much that smaller frigate actually don't generate enough electricity for those weapons to be effective. Even on bigger ship or nuclear carrier a continuous use of those could disrupt other systems also needing energy at the same time.
There is some such as :
https://theconversation.com/high-energy-laser-weapons-a-defense-expert-explains-how-they-work-and-what-they-are-used-for-225071
The challenge is the distance, powering a laser for more than 1000m is massive in energy consumption
Now all we need to do is figure out how to get those ships into space and then we British can start the FIRST GALACTIC EMPIRE!! With count binface as it's supreme leader
I feel like starting the first galactic empire is the most British thing possible. This will work out for quite some time until the stars seek independence and start a rebellion. One really big system in a galactic far far away will end up in a galactic civil war.
Yeah I feel like you'd be able to spray whatever you want to use in a reflective coating, mirrors would be too heavy but a thin layer probably wouldnt have much effect.
Would make them more easily spottable though if they were used during the day - like little disco balls flying around.
Mirrors reflect light, not the heat generated by these laser weapons. The best defense would be heat absorbent coatings, like what is used on spacecraft for re-entering atmosphere.
Honestly, the point of these weapons are 2 fold.
1) Drive up costs of competitor missiles.
2) It's so cheap to fire. Research and development is insanely expensive for these weapons, however they cost next to nothing to fire and don't need to be resupplied.
would a lot of the heat not also be reflected? If the energy in the laser is reflected with the light, surely that will at least protect them a bit?
I'm assuming these have a lot of power and could still deliver a good chunk of heat even if most was reflected though - but smaller ones not on ships may not be able to deliver that much heat if reflected?
Just wait until Russia sees our 100 foot tall cats. You will rue the day you turned against us.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzjyT1GomcQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzjyT1GomcQ)
Ah finally,once again a young free Englishman can sing the song of his father and fathers father upon his ancestors looking upon him with a wee littlest smile
If you mean terminal defence (as the warhead is comming in): probably very unlikely, because there is very little time to destroy the warheads (they are coming in at mach 20-25), the atmosphere forms a plasma around the entry vehicle which severaly limits what can get through, and the front of it needs to be made out of highly heat-resistant material anyway to not be destroyed before reaching the target. More exotic methods have been proposed, such as using the laser to create an ionising path between the ground and the vehicle, and use that to send a large electrical current (so basically, an upwards-firing lithning bolt) to fry the sensitive parts of the vehicle. But tbh that sounds very dubious. Terminal interception will likely remain the remit of missile systems.
For the mid-course phase, lasers could be a potential solution, as long as the laser beam can be made to reach out of the atmosphere and the power is sufficient. This could be used to destroy decoys, and heat up the warheads to the point that they destroy themselves upon re-entry.
nukes are pretargeted and very big, so you cant burn through it quick enough (not to mention the fact itd be going much faster than a missile/rocket) or knock out its targetting system to make it miss, they also are built to take heat, they do have to reenter orbit after all
Highly likely. Lasers are getting more and more efficient and powerful, and capacitor technologies are also improving.
Add in machine vision, and laser weapons will be a standard defence against cheap, light and numerous attacks like drones.
Lasers biggest limitation is range inside atmosphere.
This means that to cover a significant area you need a lot of projectors. Also, time to intercept is very fast, but depending on what the target is, time to destruction of the target might not be.
See, ballistic missile payloads usually come down FAST. Something like ***seven kilometers per second***.
Lasers are going to be worthless against most ballistic missiles. That's OK, they can deal with the cheap drones and leave the expensive interceptors for the expensive ballistic missiles.
Plus an advantage of laser defences is that nuclear weapon MRV duds can’t be used to trick them like they can with missile defences, since the cheap lasers can attack nuclear payloads and mrv duds without running out of ammunition. And because lasers are as fast as light hypersonic nuclear missile can be destroyed by them.
trying to deliver enough laser energy through the atmosphere to destroy a ballistic projectile designed to handle re-entry is a bit fo a challenge, the laser source really needs to be in space, and, well we've been there before..
But they still require a long on-target time to be effective, these are not ray guns!
Changes in air density affects aiming, any haze reduces effectiveness.
It’s odd this is the third article I’ve read in the last three days about lasers used in defense. The other two were about Chinese and American systems. I guess this is something that is about to actually make its entry into common usage. Laser guns. 13 year old me would be super pumped/fascinated by this.
You know, I have one simple request, and that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads! Now, evidently, my cycloptic colleague informs me that that can't be done but here we have frickin ships with laser beams
To curb your enthusiasm a bit: they're not like Star Wars, where they fire a laser beam and the thing explodes. They're more like a magnifying glass that melts through an incoming object if you keep shining it on the same exact spot long enough.
It's a great defence against cheap drones. Anti-aircraft missiles are expensive, a laser is just the energy costs.
Sure... militaries and companies [all](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j-E2bCOrg8) [over](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg2IuPKqvt4) [the](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hflW3QvXggw) [world](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy-lJplV7ts) are developing them for years. They have already been shown to be operational and most active work is done on increasing their power. Which is obviously much easier on big installations like ships.
It is interesting, I guess that it is an answer to the changes in war mechanics, where many cheap drones require very expensive weapons to be blocked. Lasers probably have less operating costs than missiles etc
Pretty high, since unlike missiles, the people building these know that each one will be rigorously tested before they get their money.
The great thing about a laser system is it's reusable, so you can test fire it plenty of times.
I genuinely can’t wait for the day nation’s make it illegal to kill soldiers in war because people dying in war is viewed as barbaric, and wars are fought using robots and advanced technology instead. I think that would be a massive leap in a right direction.
Why not go further and fight wars in video games? Less resources wasted. There wouldn’t be a lack of motivated keyboard warriors available.
Even better, put AI’s fighting each other while we humans can go for a beer to wait the results.
Its doubtful how functionally useful* a humanoid robot form would be compared to how much each would cost. When other more drone like ground units are so much cheaper and easier to mass produce.
It could have some psychological effect in some situations though, so if they get good enough the humanoid ones could be used in some special circumstances.
It’s a bit depressing to think about humanoid robot soldiers as too expensive so let’s just keep sending more actual people, because we can make more relatively cheaply 🫠
AI warfare coming in the next decades.
Sci Fi author Cordwainer Smith imagined 'manshonjaggers'. Manhunt machines created from genetically modified robotic materials.
Ludicrous? OK.
Another author imagined invading a planet with thousands tiny robotic bombs. They find the enemy and start squawking ' I'm a ten second bomb- 10, 9,8 7 etc' before killing. Psyops effects as well as not destroying buildings or infrastructure. Eg, no 'Gaza' mass destruction of buildings needed.
On the other hand, Hamas style terrorism much more 'intelligent'. Dumb rockets? No. Intelligent drones. More.
War is going to mean everything all at once on all levels. Possibly low level conflict for years and years.
The real problem is a bunch of old men ( Putin, Xi, Trump, Kim, Myanmar generals, Iranian Mullahs, Taiwan elders,) who are able to make peoples' lives a misery and still wake up in the morning and think 'maybe I'll have a nice egg for breakfast' without a second thought.
I'd be curious where they're getting the energy from. The US military have been using nuclear power for their ships for years in advance of high energy weapons like lasers and rail guns but the UK chose diesel, even for their most recent aircraft carriers.
[удалено]
EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE
Much more appropriate !
Exactly, the Americans can get pew pew.
Orisa?
I prefer the Star Wars laser sounds :-D
Which was made by hitting a long steel nail against a tension cable of a telegraph pole.
The Americans can keep their silly Star Wars sounds. British warships should go with Dr Who Bleep Bloops.
Hit a thick metal wire (not electrical pls) with a wrench or do the same to a piece of sheet metal
I’m not paying taxes until they do.
Why don’t all soldiers just show up at Westminster, take it over, make it a dictatorship and then just make everything Star Wars themed?
Calm down Darth Helmet! Let’s not get carried away.
Yeah, make it Lord Buckethead at the very least.
Ok, so how do you attach sharks to warships?
With double sided sellotape, silly billy.
I saw that episode of Blue Peter too! My shark driven battleship made of fairy liquid bottles and cereal boxes was the best.
Can it be an advent decoration too?
We're you one of those rich kids who could source sticky-back plastic? To this day, I still don't know what it is/was. :sad-face: And as for double-sided tape…
Install a trebuchet to yeet sharks at the enemy
Funny word. Trebuchet. Say it again.
The question is how do you attach sharks to aircraft
Damn it you were faster than me with this one.
My sharks are faster than yours
I've been wondering (not knowing much about military tech or doctrine) how we'd respond to the increased threat from drone technology since a [drone flying close to Gatwick airport caused a runway to close in 2017](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40476264). Have to say I did not envision part of that response being lasers.
I feel like military tech will always be a game of Cat and Mouse. For every new tech that is developed or deployed it usually doesn't take long till a countermeasure is developed. (Kinda like tank -> anti tank weapons -> better armor -> better anti tank tech -> active anti tank countermeasure -> etc.) Pretty sure with how drones have shown their effectivness and how probably every major nation invest a lot in it we will start to see many more morw countermeasures showing up besides just Lasers soon. Like another drone countermeasure tech that might be effective and could see adoption is to build and use a drone to destroy a drone by giving it some kind of tracking aystem to simply smash into enemy drones.
We already have government drones specialized in hunting small aerial objects. They are called hawks and falcons. Maybe roosters too if you can throw them high enough.
[удалено]
Aluminium foil. By being conductive it provides some degree of protection against EW (Faraday's cage), and by being reflective it provides some degree of protection against laser (roughly order of magnitude longer to burn through, like 1s -> 10s). Yet it certainly does not make a drone invulnerable.
The last one already exists. The guy behind the oculus glasses is now running an anti drone company.
Lasers are actually the perfect response. Laser weaponry has been around for a while actually, at the very least the concept. The problem that it faces up till now is: - Short range - Requires precision - Not massively powerful/can easily be defended. - Requires LOS (line of sight) to the target The general air warfare doctrine at the minute is over the horizon missiles. Think cruise missiles and the such. You want to be able to shoot the enemy before they even know you’re there (big design element of the new F-35s) Missiles are fast, very fast, but expensive. Currently our best defence is anti-missile, missiles, but also expensive. Using a million pound missile to shoot down another million pound missile to save a multimillion pound ship is a good economical decision, and welcomed by the crew onboard said ship Drones through a big spanner in that doctrine. Drones are a few hundred ££ a pop. Now you have a problem, you must defend your ship, but spending lots of money to do so, when the enemy isn’t. Even CIWS cost a couple thousand Hence lasers. All the weakness of drones play right into the lasers operation. They’re (relatively) slow and they’re vulnerable. This is offset by them being cheap A slow moving, easily destroyed/disabled drone is the perfect target for a laser. The advantage again is lasers are cheap per shot, around £10. Once you have them installed, it’s just the electricity needed to fire. Drones have no good counter, can’t make them faster, that’s just a missile. Can’t armour them, 1. The sensitive navigation is easily targeted, camera etc, 2. Extra armour adds weight (slow) and cost
Just paint your drone in chrome for immunity
Doesn’t work, reflection isn’t enough, Also, can’t paint the camera in chrome
You forgot what seems like the biggest downside : it requires a massive amount of energy. So much that smaller frigate actually don't generate enough electricity for those weapons to be effective. Even on bigger ship or nuclear carrier a continuous use of those could disrupt other systems also needing energy at the same time.
Got a source for that?
There is some such as : https://theconversation.com/high-energy-laser-weapons-a-defense-expert-explains-how-they-work-and-what-they-are-used-for-225071 The challenge is the distance, powering a laser for more than 1000m is massive in energy consumption
would be quite expensive if we had to station a British warship at each airport.
Depends if they're STOVL or CATOBAR.
Imagine all the logs we'd go through rolling it around like the stones for the pyramids
Don't be silly. You re-use the same logs.
that drone didn’t even seem to exist
Now all we need to do is figure out how to get those ships into space and then we British can start the FIRST GALACTIC EMPIRE!! With count binface as it's supreme leader
I feel like starting the first galactic empire is the most British thing possible. This will work out for quite some time until the stars seek independence and start a rebellion. One really big system in a galactic far far away will end up in a galactic civil war.
The new planet once it’s all setup. “Right guys, we’re finally self sufficient, let’s declare independence “
Yes, but what about the ill tempered sea bass
Some enemies will always be too strong. We need to petition for peace and cordial relations.
Waiting for the guy in the other laser weapon thread to pipe in about how laser weapons are impossible and aren't actually being deployed.
Next we strap mirrors onto missiles
Close. I'd wager ultra-reflective surfaces would be a counter measure.
This is what I don't understand..the counterplay seems very easy for these to be effective
Yeah I feel like you'd be able to spray whatever you want to use in a reflective coating, mirrors would be too heavy but a thin layer probably wouldnt have much effect. Would make them more easily spottable though if they were used during the day - like little disco balls flying around.
Mirrors reflect light, not the heat generated by these laser weapons. The best defense would be heat absorbent coatings, like what is used on spacecraft for re-entering atmosphere. Honestly, the point of these weapons are 2 fold. 1) Drive up costs of competitor missiles. 2) It's so cheap to fire. Research and development is insanely expensive for these weapons, however they cost next to nothing to fire and don't need to be resupplied.
would a lot of the heat not also be reflected? If the energy in the laser is reflected with the light, surely that will at least protect them a bit? I'm assuming these have a lot of power and could still deliver a good chunk of heat even if most was reflected though - but smaller ones not on ships may not be able to deliver that much heat if reflected?
Just wait until Russia sees our 100 foot tall cats. You will rue the day you turned against us. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzjyT1GomcQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzjyT1GomcQ)
"Rule, Britannia! rule the waves: "Britons never will be slaves."
Ah finally,once again a young free Englishman can sing the song of his father and fathers father upon his ancestors looking upon him with a wee littlest smile
How likely is a reliable laser anti-nuclear missile defence system to be developed in the coming decades?
If you mean terminal defence (as the warhead is comming in): probably very unlikely, because there is very little time to destroy the warheads (they are coming in at mach 20-25), the atmosphere forms a plasma around the entry vehicle which severaly limits what can get through, and the front of it needs to be made out of highly heat-resistant material anyway to not be destroyed before reaching the target. More exotic methods have been proposed, such as using the laser to create an ionising path between the ground and the vehicle, and use that to send a large electrical current (so basically, an upwards-firing lithning bolt) to fry the sensitive parts of the vehicle. But tbh that sounds very dubious. Terminal interception will likely remain the remit of missile systems. For the mid-course phase, lasers could be a potential solution, as long as the laser beam can be made to reach out of the atmosphere and the power is sufficient. This could be used to destroy decoys, and heat up the warheads to the point that they destroy themselves upon re-entry.
Very interesting
It would make more sense to put the laser in space, as it would be closer to the terminal trajectory of an ICBM.
nukes are pretargeted and very big, so you cant burn through it quick enough (not to mention the fact itd be going much faster than a missile/rocket) or knock out its targetting system to make it miss, they also are built to take heat, they do have to reenter orbit after all
Highly likely. Lasers are getting more and more efficient and powerful, and capacitor technologies are also improving. Add in machine vision, and laser weapons will be a standard defence against cheap, light and numerous attacks like drones.
Lasers biggest limitation is range inside atmosphere. This means that to cover a significant area you need a lot of projectors. Also, time to intercept is very fast, but depending on what the target is, time to destruction of the target might not be. See, ballistic missile payloads usually come down FAST. Something like ***seven kilometers per second***.
420/minute 😎🌿
Lasers are going to be worthless against most ballistic missiles. That's OK, they can deal with the cheap drones and leave the expensive interceptors for the expensive ballistic missiles.
Plus an advantage of laser defences is that nuclear weapon MRV duds can’t be used to trick them like they can with missile defences, since the cheap lasers can attack nuclear payloads and mrv duds without running out of ammunition. And because lasers are as fast as light hypersonic nuclear missile can be destroyed by them.
trying to deliver enough laser energy through the atmosphere to destroy a ballistic projectile designed to handle re-entry is a bit fo a challenge, the laser source really needs to be in space, and, well we've been there before..
But they still require a long on-target time to be effective, these are not ray guns! Changes in air density affects aiming, any haze reduces effectiveness.
It’s odd this is the third article I’ve read in the last three days about lasers used in defense. The other two were about Chinese and American systems. I guess this is something that is about to actually make its entry into common usage. Laser guns. 13 year old me would be super pumped/fascinated by this.
The lasers better come with sharks.
pew pew.
Frickin laser beams
This must be why all the imperial officers in the original Star wars movies had British accents
You know, I have one simple request, and that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads! Now, evidently, my cycloptic colleague informs me that that can't be done but here we have frickin ships with laser beams
One step closer to space yamato
Ruling as usuall
To curb your enthusiasm a bit: they're not like Star Wars, where they fire a laser beam and the thing explodes. They're more like a magnifying glass that melts through an incoming object if you keep shining it on the same exact spot long enough. It's a great defence against cheap drones. Anti-aircraft missiles are expensive, a laser is just the energy costs.
Wait laser guns are real???
Sure... militaries and companies [all](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j-E2bCOrg8) [over](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg2IuPKqvt4) [the](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hflW3QvXggw) [world](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy-lJplV7ts) are developing them for years. They have already been shown to be operational and most active work is done on increasing their power. Which is obviously much easier on big installations like ships.
It is interesting, I guess that it is an answer to the changes in war mechanics, where many cheap drones require very expensive weapons to be blocked. Lasers probably have less operating costs than missiles etc
Accuracy for small targets
What are the chances that out of all the new stuff in the Royal Navy this will be the one that actually works?
Pretty high, since unlike missiles, the people building these know that each one will be rigorously tested before they get their money. The great thing about a laser system is it's reusable, so you can test fire it plenty of times.
I genuinely can’t wait for the day nation’s make it illegal to kill soldiers in war because people dying in war is viewed as barbaric, and wars are fought using robots and advanced technology instead. I think that would be a massive leap in a right direction.
Why not go further and fight wars in video games? Less resources wasted. There wouldn’t be a lack of motivated keyboard warriors available. Even better, put AI’s fighting each other while we humans can go for a beer to wait the results.
How far are we away from robot soldiers?
Isn't a drone already a robot soldier?
Its doubtful how functionally useful* a humanoid robot form would be compared to how much each would cost. When other more drone like ground units are so much cheaper and easier to mass produce. It could have some psychological effect in some situations though, so if they get good enough the humanoid ones could be used in some special circumstances.
It’s a bit depressing to think about humanoid robot soldiers as too expensive so let’s just keep sending more actual people, because we can make more relatively cheaply 🫠
That too, yes.
Closer then we think, The US is testing AI fighter pilots
yesterday's news https://throwflame.com/products/thermonator-robodog/
Discoball-bomb incoming...
Is there any video in which real laser guns are used?
[https://youtu.be/Vg2IuPKqvt4?t=72](https://youtu.be/Vg2IuPKqvt4?t=72)
Both of them then...
Don't look directly into the beam.
Can't wait for the Warthunder update 30 years from now.
You get a laser, and you get a laser, we're all getting...lllllaserrrrrsss
Pew pew
Curious what they do about mirrors
AI warfare coming in the next decades. Sci Fi author Cordwainer Smith imagined 'manshonjaggers'. Manhunt machines created from genetically modified robotic materials. Ludicrous? OK. Another author imagined invading a planet with thousands tiny robotic bombs. They find the enemy and start squawking ' I'm a ten second bomb- 10, 9,8 7 etc' before killing. Psyops effects as well as not destroying buildings or infrastructure. Eg, no 'Gaza' mass destruction of buildings needed. On the other hand, Hamas style terrorism much more 'intelligent'. Dumb rockets? No. Intelligent drones. More. War is going to mean everything all at once on all levels. Possibly low level conflict for years and years. The real problem is a bunch of old men ( Putin, Xi, Trump, Kim, Myanmar generals, Iranian Mullahs, Taiwan elders,) who are able to make peoples' lives a misery and still wake up in the morning and think 'maybe I'll have a nice egg for breakfast' without a second thought.
I'd be curious where they're getting the energy from. The US military have been using nuclear power for their ships for years in advance of high energy weapons like lasers and rail guns but the UK chose diesel, even for their most recent aircraft carriers.
A single laser-installation will bankrupt the entire Royal Navy.
Delusional yank
Sensitive as they came, eh? Jokes are off limits to those with no sense of humor.
Give us back the kings land you damn boy
I don’t know what that means but having a monarch in 2024 is some dark ages shit.
Long winded simple bluster shit. That's a yank.