A U.S. Pentagon invention could make air combat resemble a battle scene from the movie 'Star Wars' with a laser so small it can fit on a fighter jet, yet powerful enough to knock down an enemy missile in flight.
The High Energy Laser Area Defense System (HELLADS), being designed by the Pentagon's central research and development agency, will weigh just 750 kg (1,650 lb) and measures the size of a large fridge.
To date, such lasers have been so bulky because of the need for huge cooling systems to stop them overheating, that they had to be fitted to large aircraft such as jumbo jets, New Scientist magazine reported on Wednesday.
But the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency reckons it has solved the problem by merging liquid and solid state lasers to cut the size and weight by "an order of magnitude", according to its Web site.
Liquid lasers can fire a continuous beam but need large cooling systems, while solid state laser beams are more intense but have to be fired in pulses to stop them overheating.
"We've combined the high energy density of the solid state laser with the thermal management of the liquid laser," New Scientist quoted project manager Don Woodbury as saying.
Dubbed the "HEL weapon" by its developers, a prototype capable of firing a mild one kilowatt (kW) beam has already been produced and there are plans to build a stronger 15-kW version by the end of the year.
If everything goes according to plan, an even more powerful weapon producing a 150-kW beam and capable of knocking down a missile will be ready by 2007 for fitting onto aircraft.
Haha! That's pretty neat!! But wouldn't it be hard to target a missile in flight? Especially when on a moving plane..
The laser might serve a more useful purpose targetting missile still attached to enemy aircraft! That way, we can use there own missiles against them, and save ours!! Target and destroy a missile attached to the wing of an enemy fighter, and bye-bye enemy fighter!! lol
(When I first read the topic title, I thought maybe they had come close to making a laser light saber! that woulda been neat!)
Haha! That's pretty neat!! But wouldn't it be hard to target a missile in flight? Especially when on a moving plane..
No, it's not (I mean, it's hard to hit the plane, the problem is to take it down). I saw videos - Northrop Grumman's Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL) shooting down mortar rounds, rockets and etc.
It's impressive. You can fry missiles because they explode "easily", it would be a little harder to hit a plane.
QUOTE
The laser might serve a more useful purpose targetting missile still attached to enemy aircraft! That way, we can use there own missiles against them, and save ours!! Target and destroy a missile attached to the wing of an enemy fighter, and bye-bye enemy fighter!! lol
This is too "Hollywoodian"
You may not know, but todays most advanced laser weapons belong to China. For example, some targeting system used by the Iraqis were supplied by China. There is also a Chinese tank (Type98) that will shoot a laser on enemy tanks aming at it; which blinds the enemy, laser cannons, and other laser weapons.
This would be very cool if it was implimented within the next decade. I like the idea of terrorists trying to bomb the U.S. with some kind of dirty missile like they have in the movies, and it gets shot down by a laser pointer Anyway, like everyone else has said, this will be the starting point for a whole bunch of laser implimentations.
I saw this on Discovery or something. They were planning on building a 747 size aircraft w/ on in it. The cone of the plane would have the focusing mirror attached, and the internals would spread throughout the plane. They figured it would work great for countries w/ potential WMD's. We could patrol their air space w/ a few of these, and if they launched, we could shoot them down from a couple of hundred miles away. Essentially making unstable (more like uncontrollable) countries like N. Korea, and their Nuclear arsenal less of a threat.
This would be very cool if it was implimented within the next decade. I like the idea of terrorists trying to bomb the U.S. with some kind of dirty missile like they have in the movies, and it gets shot down by a laser pointer Anyway, like everyone else has said, this will be the starting point for a whole bunch of laser implimentations.
yeah that would be great but what if the terrorists are the ones who have the lasers, we cannot count that out with the fundings these people are getting - scary isn't it?
Yeah lol... targeting a movie object it hard unless the lazer its self has a math equation runnin with how fast the missle is moving and what direction so that the lazer is sent out before the rocket/missle reaches that point...
thats really t he only way unelss the missle was dead in front of them...
These unit could also work directly w/ a satellite link that would inable gps tracking and coordinating shots fired. Plus the scud missiles used in Iraq in the past had programs built into them to calculate trajectory and speed. They weren't 100% effective initially but I think they've improved the software since they were initally introduced in the initial Golf War.
well, here is the picture and a short article I found: here, here! it is said to have wi-fi
capabilities, so that you can download music without having a computer... you can download it right
from the device! it is set to launch sometime before christmas of this year. it is called the
'iPod killer', but, you never know, they may fail... i suppose you can use that term to any
mp3 player/company trying to be as successful as apple. the new iPod nano will also be debuting
sometime before christmas, sometime in the fourth quarter it is believed. This ...
Virutal Reality Either you want to take part in Hannibals' invasion on Italy, or bath in the
suns of tatooine, or even just sit with your dream girl in the Bahamas. In the end you can't
really do it ( well, MOST of it /wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0"
alt="wink.gif" /> ) without virtual reality, basically, virtually is 2 things. 1. a Unit that
changes all you see into a virtual world, event, or place. 2. Turns emptiness into "Virtual
Surroundings" or even connects similarities with these objects with real ones ( like they turn a b...
I was roaming around the internet, and I suddenly found everybody selling the expensive notebook
macs for around $500 to $700 (used), I am currently tempted to buy one. So I went around
the internet looking for info and found in one forum, someone advising not to buy macs until mid
january because something big was coming, and I searched more and found it. The Intel based macs
are finally coming, I thought that they werent going to be a reality until mid 2006 or more, but it
is here and it will have a very low price tag. Read along on the following link. ht...
There's a very interesting article that says that scientists have approached to programm robots
with routines that are self-aware and can interact in complex and arbitrary environments using
wireless technologies to cooperate with each others(as machines) and with other wireless networks.
Here's the link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/200...r-fpa111005.php Enjoy:)...
Now we have blue laser pointers, before you know it we will have all the colours of the rainbow.
But enough about that i have found information on blue laser pointers, they are supposably brighter
than green lasers which usually have a wave length of 543nm but these blue lasers have a wave length
of 488nm. But visually our eyes are more sensitive to green pigments. i dont know if the blue
lasers are brighter but if anyone here has seen one and can compare to green lasers than please
share your knowledge....
Well i have only used it for a total of at least 15 minutes and now it doesn't work i dont know
if it is the batteries (iam pretty sure two AAAs last for more than just 15mins) or what but before
it stopped it flickered for a couple of seconds and now its just dead. Any help would be
appreciated BTW it cost me $140 at the time i purchased it....
Behind the scenes, painstaking effort and computing power has gone into cleaning up George
Lucas's original Star Wars trilogy for its DVD release.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/clic...ine/3945149.stm -- "600 Apple G5s, each a dual
processor 2GHz machine." WOW! imagine if you can have that processing power in your hands.
/tongue.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tongue.gif' /> ...
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Anyway, like everyone else has said, this will be the starting point for a whole bunch of laser implimentations.
