Energy Weapons

[Arrow]

After reading several threads here about energy weapons (lasers and particle) and reading about them on the net, I've believe energy weapons in the future will be in one of three cataglories.

1) Laser - your stand laser, either optical or FEL.
2) Particle Beam - either NPB or CPB, using your standard magnetic coils for keeping the particles on track will using electric fields or
3) Particle Beam/Laser combo - uses lasers to energize and accelerate particles.

Defense against energy weapons includes:

1) Electromagnetic 'shields' that could alter the velocity of particles.
2) Superconducting armor that could absorb/disipate/radiate laser energy.

Now to the questions:

1) What type of problems, in general, would have to be over come to create these systems? ie temperature, efficiency and materials. Assume that you have a 50 megawatts, 500 megawatts and 1 gigawatt to work with.

2) Which one could you see being employed by a space military force sometime in the future?

I know these are very broad questions about technologies that don't yet exist (except for the emerging military lasers), so please make any assumptions you need to answer them. Just please list those assumptions.

[kojikun]

i like the particle beams that use large numbers of multiparticle groups propelled at supersonic speed by rapid combustion of various materials including Cordite.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

i like the particle beams that use large numbers of multiparticle groups propelled at supersonic speed by rapid combustion of various materials including Cordite.

D00d, did you just Technobabble GUNS?!!

[SyntaxVorlon]

lol
Well you forget electromag weapons, I mean a good directional magnetic field can destroy electronics on an opposing space craft if enough power is put into the solenoid(I hope that's the right term) Of course it would only work at close range, so perhaps a mine with a reactor or good solar battery and a good sensor disruptor/stealth ability.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Kool!

Hey SV where'd your sig go?

[SyntaxVorlon]

Takes up a lot of space so I tend to use it marginally.
But since it seems like a request...

[kojikun]

Technobabbilated guns. Great, aint it?

[aerius]

1) What type of problems, in general, would have to be over come to create these systems? ie temperature, efficiency and materials. Assume that you have a 50 megawatts, 500 megawatts and 1 gigawatt to work with.

2) Which one could you see being employed by a space military force sometime in the future?

I know these are very broad questions about technologies that don't yet exist (except for the emerging military lasers), so please make any assumptions you need to answer them. Just please list those assumptions.

Particle beams have horrible energy efficiency so they won't be a viable weapon unless you have 100's of megawatts to throw around. Also, with current technology you need huge mile long or bigger accelerators to get anything close to a high power beam. These things are incredibly complex and finicky, and you literally need a room full of PhD's to troubleshoot and keep them running. Unless they can be shrunken down by a couple orders of magnitude and greatly simplified at the same time, I doubt they'll see much use other than in orbital defense stations. And unless neutral particle beams are used, there's gonna be a big problem with beam spread once the particles leave the "gun". Without a field to confine them, the charged particles will repel each other and spread the beam out. And NPB are harder to create and work with than charged ones.

With lasers the problem is getting mirrors that won't get fried and keeping the lasing medium stable as you pump all that energy into it. Beam focus and quality also becomes a problem at longer ranges, but that can be fixed with optics systems. Right now we already have 20kW cutting lasers that will slice through a stack of 2" thick steel plates with ease, these are used by shipyards to cut all the plates for the hulls on cargo ships and oil tankers. Assuming that we can't increase them in power that much, we can group them in arrays and have 10 lasers all aimed at the same spot to cause more damage.

On the other hand if we do make breakthroughs in laser power, things get pretty interesting. Given 1GW and the 20% efficiency of a decent modern laser we're talking 200MW of power, that will burn through pretty much anything. Things get even more fun at the PW power levels, at that intensity a laser will cause particle beam effects such as blowing apart nuclear bonds and creating anti-particle streams in the target. Problem is unless there's a real breakthru in power generation and optics among other things you won't be able to fire it in anything other than extremely short pulses which won't do much damage.

I'm putting my money on the laser. To make it into a viable space weapon only requires a refinement of current technology, while particle beams will require huge leaps and breakthrus of what we have now.

[Arrow]

Cool. So, if you had a couple of fusion reactors and a FEL, you could cause some serious havoc? Sounds nice.

Speaking of FELs, what challenges remain before they replace/compliment optical lasers?

[SyntaxVorlon]

Heavy energy/particle weapons, the kind seen in B5 would be useful too to an extent but only on fighters, and really if you have good capships, fighters are going to die fast. My idea, get battlespheres with quarkplasma engines zipping along at 8g blasting away.

[Arrow]

Also, on the defensive side of things, would superconducting material or some type of other material be able to disapate high power (PW) laser energy?

[aerius]

Speaking of FELs, what challenges remain before they replace/compliment optical lasers?

You need a particle beam for a FEL. FEL's are very efficient at converting the energy in a particle beam into a laser, but you still need to generate a particle beam in the first place so all the disadvantages of a particle beam still apply. There's 2 versions of a FEL, one uses mirrors to bounce the light back & forth to amplify it like a conventional laser, the other one doesn't. The first design will have the same issues as a normal laser with regards to melting mirrors, while the 2nd design has to be huge, as in something like a mile long to get decent power levels.

FEL's are great because you can tune the wavelength of the laser over a great range is is good for research purposes, and may prove useful for defeating reflective coatings on targets. Unfortunately they're limited in power, IIRC they're only at about 1.7kW for a FEL compared to 20kW for industrial cutting lasers and multi TW and even PW pulses in lasers used for fusion research.

[SyntaxVorlon]

Also, on the defensive side of things, would superconducting material or some type of other material be able to disapate high power (PW) laser energy?

Wong's uber steel lecture is coming, I can feel it.
RUN RUN!!!!!!

[Arrow]

Hey, bring on the lecture! I'm willing to learn something. Why do you think I'm asking these laser questions?

Back to the FEL. I was under the impression that a FEL used electrons riding on an electromagnetic field, and that the field was used to energize the electrons, which then create the laser beam. Is this similar to what you're talking about or is it something else (that possibly won't work)?

[Admiral Valdemar]

The FEL, from what I recall, uses no mirrors and can theoretically produce any wavelength, but it is still inefficient since it is part particle accelerator (those weapons still have advantages over lasers though).

What about sonic weapons too though and railguns?

[aerius]

Back to the FEL. I was under the impression that a FEL used electrons riding on an electromagnetic field, and that the field was used to energize the electrons, which then create the laser beam. Is this similar to what you're talking about or is it something else (that possibly won't work)?

A FEL works by generating a beam of electrons which is then accelerated and put through a wiggler. The wiggler bends the beam back & forth rapidly which causes it to give off photons which are then collected and focused into a laser beam. One version uses mirrors to lock the photons in step with each other and further amplify the intensity of the beam while the other uses a separate low power laser as a guidebeam to do the same thing.

[SyntaxVorlon]

The FEL, from what I recall, uses no mirrors and can theoretically produce any wavelength, but it is still inefficient since it is part particle accelerator (those weapons still have advantages over lasers though).

What about sonic weapons too though and railguns?

Oh sonic weapons there's an idea, let's make a really loud noise and because sound goes in only one direction there is no chance we'll be harmed.
Rail gun is projectile, it just exudes a far lower amount of heat and can through slugs faster. If I remember correctly there was an antitank railgun once, that was supposed to fire slugs at something like .02c or higher, in the works.

[Arrow]

Vald, what would be advantages of a particle beam over a laser?

I can see a railgun being used as a tank and artillery weapon, and possibly mounted on aircraft (not infantry because of recoil). But in space you'll want something moving at c or near c, just to quickly cover the distances involved.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The FEL, from what I recall, uses no mirrors and can theoretically produce any wavelength, but it is still inefficient since it is part particle accelerator (those weapons still have advantages over lasers though).

What about sonic weapons too though and railguns?

Oh sonic weapons there's an idea, let's make a really loud noise and because sound goes in only one direction there is no chance we'll be harmed.
Rail gun is projectile, it just exudes a far lower amount of heat and can through slugs faster. If I remember correctly there was an antitank railgun once, that was supposed to fire slugs at something like .02c or higher, in the works.

I see ultrasonics is a concept you haven't touched upon before.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Vald, what would be advantages of a particle beam over a laser?

I can see a railgun being used as a tank and artillery weapon, and possibly mounted on aircraft (not infantry because of recoil). But in space you'll want something moving at c or near c, just to quickly cover the distances involved.

The way the energy is transmitted into the target, there's an article the USAF had I posted ages ago about laser and PBC differences. I'll dig it up, just the way the PBC works is different to lasers typically used today.

Best laser for now would be a MASER since atmosphere hinders it not.

[Arrow]

You mean the 2025 report? I've actually downloaded a copy of it (specifically the parts dealing with lasers and NPBs). I didn't even think about it until you mentioned the airforce.

From the report, the main advantage of the NPB over a laser is that the NPB is harder to defend against - ie it dumps its energy right into the target where as the laser has to burn through it, with the vapor generated by the burning disrupting the laser.

Other than that, the laser can do everything the NPB can do, plus some other things like battlefield illumination. And the laser use less power and materials while being easier to aim.

Still, at the moment, I'm more interested in the far future possibilities than what's coming down the road in the next 50 years.

[Kuroneko]

I can see a railgun being used as a tank and artillery weapon, and possibly mounted on aircraft (not infantry because of recoil). But in space you'll want something moving at c or near c, just to quickly cover the distances involved.

Speed shouldn't bee too much of a problem. A proton with 500MeV kinetic energy moves at about 75.8% of lightspeed, or 87.5% for 1GeV. In comparison, Fermilab accelerates protons to over 1TeV, at which point it's less than 0.00005% below lightspeed. While you probably won't be able to pull off Fermilab's feat, a half-GeV to 1GeV should be fairly reasonable to be used in a weapon. Although, the speed of a 500MeV electron would be comparable to a 1TeV proton, but with protons you get less problems with acceleration and beam focus.

[Kuroneko]

From the report, the main advantage of the NPB over a laser is that the NPB is harder to defend against - ie it dumps its energy right into the target where as the laser has to burn through it, with the vapor generated by the burning disrupting the laser.

You could just get a higher-frequency laser. A neutron gun would still have the advantage of its penetration being adjustable (disregarding possible advancements in free-electron lasers), but there is no reason why a high-frequency laser can't match a neutron beam (or, indeed, surpass it) in penetration.

[Kuroneko]

If I remember correctly there was an antitank railgun once, that was supposed to fire slugs at something like .02c or higher, in the works.

That's about 6000km/s, or 1000 times than typical high-end large railguns, and 600 times of any railgun I've ever heard of. That's too insane, unless you plan to be using a 10mg slug (which is itself plenty insane).

It should be noted that at a speed somewhere between 3 and 4 km/s, the air will start to turn to plasma around the projectile, so you get a tracer round--rarely a good thing in combat. If you have the power to increase velocity, increase the mass of the projectile instead.

[Admiral Valdemar]

If I remember correctly there was an antitank railgun once, that was supposed to fire slugs at something like .02c or higher, in the works.

That's about 6000km/s, or 1000 times than typical high-end large railguns, and 600 times of any railgun I've ever heard of. That's too insane, unless you plan to be using a 10mg slug (which is itself plenty insane).

It should be noted that at a speed somewhere between 3 and 4 km/s, the air will start to turn to plasma around the projectile, so you get a tracer round--rarely a good thing in combat. If you have the power to increase velocity, increase the mass of the projectile instead.

Yeah, that is an insane speed. .02c?! Christ, the slug would be vapour long before it hit any target at that velocity. A few dozen klicks is ample for any anti-something round (80mm for instance).

Incidentally, how do you make a neutron beam since they're neutral?