USN successfully tests AAL.

[LadyTevar]

I am so tempted to ask what it would do to Archangel Uriel.... *ducks*


More Seriously, the questions I have is how fast was the drone going? 15sec is a long time to hold a target, and most modern planes are engaging at Mach speeds.

[SilverHawk]

I am so tempted to ask what it would do to Archangel Uriel.... *ducks*


More Seriously, the questions I have is how fast was the drone going? 15sec is a long time to hold a target, and most modern planes are engaging at Mach speeds.

The LASER would be used more to destroy sea-skimming missiles or other weapons, which just have a thin casing between their explosives and the outside world. Speed doesn't really matter to the AAL since it's mounted in the same manner as the Phalanx.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

At high enough intensity a laser can and will start drilling holes in anything. However, the human eye can be blinded at intensities much lower than those needed to burn through solid materials, because it is designed to focus light on the back of the retina. Even direct sunlight can blind you if it is focused through the lens of the eye onto the retina- whereas it presents no threat at all to your exposed skin.

Erm duh?

Laser blinding weapons can be shielded against easily enough; the technology to do that already exists. The technology to shield against a cutting laser, one with a continuous power in the kW or MW range and a spot size small enough to bring the intensity up into the megawatts per square meter range? That you can't do.

Isn't that the point I am making? Laser goggles for eye protection and low powers have existed for a while. But if you actually focus the light onto the goggle itself, you are going to burn through the goggle. Most glasses/crystals have a laser intensity tolerance as well. Pass a certain point, you are just going to burn through them.

Now, correct me if I am mistaken, but in real life targeting lasers do not perform as cutting lasers. Thus, they may well be bright enough to blind, but not bright enough to drill holes in materials... at which point you don't get little bright spots of plasma that chew through the goggles as merrily as they'd chew through anything else.

Put a damn telescope in front and focus the beam, and there, a cutting laser. If the power isn't enough, throw in an additional Nd:YAG crystal (or in some cases, they use Nd doped glass and use light bulbs to pump the glass) to amplify the beam, or shorten the pulse or do both. Most targeting lasers are only limited by the established repetition rate because laser guided bombs work on only certain repetition rates (under some NATO established standard).

There's an intermediate range, I'm sure, of lasers bright enough not to cause significant damage to ordinary surfaces but bright enough to damage the eye even through protective goggles. But the mere fact that a laser is in the kilowatt range does not mean it can be used for this purpose.

You can even use a 100W CW laser, and then use ns pulses and get 100MW peak power pulse.

[Simon_Jester]

Laser blinding weapons can be shielded against easily enough; the technology to do that already exists. The technology to shield against a cutting laser, one with a continuous power in the kW or MW range and a spot size small enough to bring the intensity up into the megawatts per square meter range? That you can't do.

Isn't that the point I am making? Laser goggles for eye protection and low powers have existed for a while. But if you actually focus the light onto the goggle itself, you are going to burn through the goggle. Most glasses/crystals have a laser intensity tolerance as well. Pass a certain point, you are just going to burn through them.

Yes, but at that point you'd burn through other things just as well. The point of the exercise isn't to make the Amazing Laser-Proof Plane; it's to reduce the relative vulnerability of the pilot to laser blinding by putting a laser-opaque barrier in the way. Sure, the laser can still kill him, but only in the same ways it could kill the rest of the plane- by pouring overwhelming power onto a point target and physically burning through layers of opaque material.

Suddenly this requires advanced laser weapons less like a targeting laser and more like the AAL, with overall beam power in the megawatts (because good luck keeping a kilowatt laser focused on a single spot a few centimeters across on a moving aircraft). Suddenly laser blinding is no longer a very effective tactic, because it cannot be done on the cheap.

Like most passive defenses, laser protective eyewear won't make you invincible. It just forces the enemy to increase the amount of force they'd need in order to overwhelm your defense, to the point where the attack mode becomes impractical. In this case, to make lasers bright enough and focused enough to blind the pilot reliably, you need to make them bright and focused enough to be useful as ordinary AA weapons for shooting down the entire plane. Sure, a hit on the pilot will disable him, but that's equally true of missile shrapnel and 20mm gun rounds.

There's an intermediate range, I'm sure, of lasers bright enough not to cause significant damage to ordinary surfaces but bright enough to damage the eye even through protective goggles. But the mere fact that a laser is in the kilowatt range does not mean it can be used for this purpose.

You can even use a 100W CW laser, and then use ns pulses and get 100MW peak power pulse.

Though when you're talking about that kind of trick, it stops working so well for achieving burnthrough. A hundred megawatts of peak power sounds impressive, but for weapon applications sustained power becomes a lot more important- you can't burn through a sheet of opaque material at 100W.

[LaCroix]

The point of my argument is that this AAL would bring a manned plane down faster than a drone because the CUTTING laser it employs would disable the pilot in his transparent canopy rather fast. Ok, he _might_ not go blind from the stray light surrounding the focused beam (I still say the wattage is sufficient to do so even with protection goggles), but one swipe across the canopy would leave a smoldering line on his body or the canopy half molten and non-transparent, at least.

The laser was able to target the same spot for 15 seconds. It would have no problem to target the same spot on a canopy.

Given the laser power available, even if the canopy does turn opaque from laser exposure, it won't take long to burn through it. I think it would be less than a second.

[adam_grif]

Wouldn't the ideal solution be to have no glass canopy at all, and instead have it all metal, with external optics providing the pilot with a 360 degree view of the battlefield as though the canopy isn't there, provided for by the HUD in his helmet? Sure, they can still be blinded as easily as normal, but at least the pilot doesn't get his eyeballs fried. It also means that firing a laser at the point where the canopy normally would be doesn't knock out ALL of your optics, just the ones facing in a certain direction.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Yes, but at that point you'd burn through other things just as well. The point of the exercise isn't to make the Amazing Laser-Proof Plane; it's to reduce the relative vulnerability of the pilot to laser blinding by putting a laser-opaque barrier in the way. Sure, the laser can still kill him, but only in the same ways it could kill the rest of the plane- by pouring overwhelming power onto a point target and physically burning through layers of opaque material.

Obviously we aren't looking to destroy the plane with a juiced up laser designator.

Suddenly this requires advanced laser weapons less like a targeting laser and more like the AAL, with overall beam power in the megawatts (because good luck keeping a kilowatt laser focused on a single spot a few centimeters across on a moving aircraft). Suddenly laser blinding is no longer a very effective tactic, because it cannot be done on the cheap.

Actually, focusing onto an object has already been done. They did test using a gas laser and shooting down mortar rounds if I recall.

Though when you're talking about that kind of trick, it stops working so well for achieving burnthrough. A hundred megawatts of peak power sounds impressive, but for weapon applications sustained power becomes a lot more important- you can't burn through a sheet of opaque material at 100W.

Erm no. There are in fact uses for pulsed lasers and CW lasers in the industry when it comes to cutting material. Pulsed lasers are particularly ideal for cutting small holes through which in general is more than enough to down a small plane.

CW lasers are great for laser welding and so forth, but getting to high power levels with beam quality of M^2 ~ 1 is a very very very challenging task and the current record holder for solid state lasers is 100KW by Northrop Grumman and that required the phase locking of 8 or so MOPA chains with possibly at best M^2 ~ 1.5 thereabouts.

[LaCroix]

Wouldn't the ideal solution be to have no glass canopy at all, and instead have it all metal, with external optics providing the pilot with a 360 degree view of the battlefield as though the canopy isn't there, provided for by the HUD in his helmet? Sure, they can still be blinded as easily as normal, but at least the pilot doesn't get his eyeballs fried. It also means that firing a laser at the point where the canopy normally would be doesn't knock out ALL of your optics, just the ones facing in a certain direction.

I don't think so. If you were doing this, the logical step would be to eliminate the pilot from the plane and make the plane a combat drone with the pilot on ground. Smaller and more maneuverable because of no pesky brain blacking out due high g forces.

Question: Are the canopys of F22 and F35 already made of "transparent Aluminum", and thus metal? I know they were working on that stuff in 2008, is this already in use?

[SilverHawk]

Actually, focusing onto an object has already been done. They did test using a gas laser and shooting down mortar rounds if I recall.

IDF and the USMC made them, great stuff, basically makes a base impervious to insurgent level mortar strikes.

I don't think so. If you were doing this, the logical step would be to eliminate the pilot from the plane and make the plane a combat drone with the pilot on ground. Smaller and more maneuverable because of no pesky brain blacking out due high g forces.

Yeah...no. You don't replace high performance aircraft with a command-link drone, you lose not only perspective and situation awareness, but your reponse time is horrible compared to a manned fighter. You're nothing but scrap to him. The proper response is to improve his G-Suit (Libelle G-Multiplus), his support systems and in the future, gene therapy and armored cockpits (or to a lesser extent, armored helmets.).

Also, you mean AION, Transparent Aluminum is impossible to have in anything but a lab setting.

[LaCroix]

Also, you mean AION, Transparent Aluminum is impossible to have in anything but a lab setting.

I know, that's why I used quote marks. You know, humor...

I don't know if human reaction time is so much of an issue nowadays. After all, they're not dogfighting with machine-guns blazing anymore. Most aerial combat is so far beyond VR, the fraction of a second lag due to communication between the pilot on ground to the plane shouldn't matter that much. But I could be wrong.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes, but at that point you'd burn through other things just as well. The point of the exercise isn't to make the Amazing Laser-Proof Plane; it's to reduce the relative vulnerability of the pilot to laser blinding by putting a laser-opaque barrier in the way. Sure, the laser can still kill him, but only in the same ways it could kill the rest of the plane- by pouring overwhelming power onto a point target and physically burning through layers of opaque material.

Obviously we aren't looking to destroy the plane with a juiced up laser designator.

Originally, we were:

Laser Pointers pose a threat to manned aricrafts. One swipe with that thing across the canopy and the pilot is blind - probably permanent!

Well... a laser designator would do a permanent job. A KW level pulse at 1064nm will definitely fry the eyeball.

Permanently blinding the pilot of a plane in the air is a fairly reliable way of shooting down the plane, I'd expect. Forcing someone to use a high-kilowatt laser to burn holes in the aircraft instead of a watt-range laser to blind the pilot is progress, as far as the state of defenses goes.

Actually, focusing onto an object has already been done. They did test using a gas laser and shooting down mortar rounds if I recall.

A point, though I'm not entirely certain that keeping a laser focused onto a 10 cm ballistic target confers the ability to keep a laser focused onto a 10 cm patch of a moving non-ballistic target. I simply do not know enough about the problem of aiming a weapon by the radar return off its surface.

Though when you're talking about that kind of trick, it stops working so well for achieving burnthrough. A hundred megawatts of peak power sounds impressive, but for weapon applications sustained power becomes a lot more important- you can't burn through a sheet of opaque material at 100W.

Erm no. There are in fact uses for pulsed lasers and CW lasers in the industry when it comes to cutting material. Pulsed lasers are particularly ideal for cutting small holes through which in general is more than enough to down a small plane.

I stand corrected; sorry. Though I still have to ask: why is burning a small hole through an aircraft fuselage more effective than putting a bullet through it? Aircraft are normally resilient enough to withstand quite a few bullet holes before crashing.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I stand corrected; sorry. Though I still have to ask: why is burning a small hole through an aircraft fuselage more effective than putting a bullet through it? Aircraft are normally resilient enough to withstand quite a few bullet holes before crashing.

Well, you could have several pulses in one second right in the middle of the aircraft... Admittedly, there is a targeting issue, though laser pulses are fairly energetic. There are quite a few issues that are being discussed right now with regard to lethality of a laser, and one issue discussed is whether a pulse, with a laser operated at saturated pump/seed level, which distorts the Gaussian beam into a flat top, and operated at CW, might have more lethality.

And, if say they ever get around to get the 100KW laser Northrop Grumman is building to become a pulse laser, I would imagine it would be a hail of bullets, and with a high repetition rate, I say we have one hell of a machine gun shooting rather large bullets too.

[Simon_Jester]

I stand corrected; sorry. Though I still have to ask: why is burning a small hole through an aircraft fuselage more effective than putting a bullet through it? Aircraft are normally resilient enough to withstand quite a few bullet holes before crashing.

Well, you could have several pulses in one second right in the middle of the aircraft... Admittedly, there is a targeting issue, though laser pulses are fairly energetic. There are quite a few issues that are being discussed right now with regard to lethality of a laser, and one issue discussed is whether a pulse, with a laser operated at saturated pump/seed level, which distorts the Gaussian beam into a flat top, and operated at CW, might have more lethality.

And, if say they ever get around to get the 100KW laser Northrop Grumman is building to become a pulse laser, I would imagine it would be a hail of bullets, and with a high repetition rate, I say we have one hell of a machine gun shooting rather large bullets too.

Oh, to be sure. But, again, at this point we're talking about laser weapons that are large, sophisticated, expensive, and quite capable of killing the plane by brute force. The strategy of doing it on the cheap by blinding the pilot can be countered quite a bit more effectively with protective eyewear (and possibly canopy liners); the strategy of doing it the expensive way cannot, but is limited to a much shorter list of possible enemies.

[Sea Skimmer]

I don't think so. If you were doing this, the logical step would be to eliminate the pilot from the plane and make the plane a combat drone with the pilot on ground. Smaller and more maneuverable because of no pesky brain blacking out due high g forces.

We’d love to do that, but technology problems with building highly capable drones aside, you need a way to securely control the drone once you built it. That creates a whole new set of problems, and many of the solutions like satellites and airborne relays would be vulnerable to lasers and enemy aircraft themselves.

As for canopy material, using metal to block the windows on a bomber type of aircraft is entirely feasible, because we already did it. Nuclear bombers had metal shutters to block nuclear flash. I’m not sure they are still around since PLTZ technology has improved so much and upgraded to full masks. A future high speed fighter wouldn’t be able to have bubble canopies; they melt at speeds much over mach 2.5, so visibility may become less important in general.

IDF and the USMC made them, great stuff, basically makes a base impervious to insurgent level mortar strikes.

Its hardly impervious, the current kill rate is around 60% against mortar rounds and 70% against free flight rockets for the US C-RAM, and while the Israeli missile based Iron Dome System remains untested in combat. C-RAM can only defend a couple hundred meter radius too, so we even when deploy several on a major base coverage is not good. It just beats nothing by a long shot.

[SilverHawk]

Its hardly impervious, the current kill rate is around 60% against mortar rounds and 70% against free flight rockets for the US C-RAM, and while the Israeli missile based Iron Dome System remains untested in combat. C-RAM can only defend a couple hundred meter radius too, so we even when deploy several on a major base coverage is not good. It just beats nothing by a long shot.

Oh...I thought it had a 100% (Or close there of) one to one kill rate. (That is, if the mortars are launched one at a time into the LASER's protective zone, the LASER will always get it.)

[Sea Skimmer]

A laser should have a much better kill rate, but no laser system is even close to being deployed let alone proving anything in combat. The performance of the modified 20mm Phalanx is as above, though deploying multiple C-RAM firing units helps. The Euros are working on a 35mm C-RAM system firing AHEAD ammunition, which is bound to have a higher kill rate and larger defended footprint, IIRC two firing units have been ordered by the Germans or the Dutch for Afghanistan. 20mm is a pretty crappy caliber for any AA purpose anyway; the USN was kind of nuts bringing it back but weight had to be LOW to make Phalanx able to bolt on.