Laser weaponry?

several already exist. i knew someone who ran a security echelon for darpa, and he said thet they have been developing a handheld laser/particle weapon for some time. by now im assuming it is near completion, if not already in use. without revealing any info, he said that it worked through transporting particles via light waves, thus using a laser for destructive purposes.

Lots of '"interesting" things are under development by DARPA. Unfortunately, few come to fruition. The expression "DARPA-hard", used by many researchers in the govt conveys the sense that many DARPA programs aren't really hard science at all, but rather incredibly expensive fishing expeditions.

Here's two sources about the Navy's uses of lasers. These are targeted for the DD(x) hull, the first of which is supposed to be commisioned in 2011.

Capt. Roger D. McGinnis, director of the Navy’s directed energy and electric weapons program office, said that while the “lethality mechanisms” of high energy weapons are classified, “Our bottom line is that if we can put millions of joules of energy onto a target, something will happen.”

In an interview with Sea Power, McGinnis described a variety of effects from these weapons, including “the burning and blinding of an optical system, or cutting an [airplane’s] wing off, or causing a fire that results in an explosion.”

Source

The use of lasers in military operations include missile detection and tracking, anti-missile defense, and targeting of small, fast-moving air, ground or sea-based targets.

Source


[edit on 25-4-2005 by PeanutButterJellyTime]

The most compact high energy laser that I know of is the Solid State Heat Capacity Laser (SSHCL). It can be fitted onto the back of a hybrid-electric Humvee or FCS. And a demonstration is slated for 2007.

Where did you get this information? A link would be helpful.

SSHCL

And of course there is that possible laser for JSF. But they haven't started working on it. They are trying to determine if they actually need it.

Also there are several solid state laser in use by the US for military purposes, such as the THEL and ABL laser system.

[edit on 27-4-2005 by WestPoint23]

West Point: THEL uses a DF (deuterium fluoride) laser. ABL uses COIL (chemical oxygen iodine laser). Both are chemical lasers, not solid state.

NWGuy: The link you provided contains the following statement: "The prototype requires 1 megawatt of input power to produce a 13-kilowatt laser beam" Hard to believe that a hummer could provide that kind of juice. I could be wrong. The goal is 10% wall plug efficiency.
Also, 13kW/1MW = 1% wall-plug efficiency. The remaining 987 kW goes into heat. Not going to be a truck for very long if it has to deal with 987 kW of heat.
Also, the picture in the link is a model. The SSHCL does not (yet) fit into a truck.

A couple of points to mention:

Stingray - You're getting this confused with the Dazer program from several years back. Stingray is mounted on a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and is intended as an anti-optics platform. It scans for the retroreflection from optical sights pointed at it and is then capable of firing its laser to disable them. Two units were quickly prepped and sent to the Gulf, but action was over so quickly they didn't participate. We had some integration tasks at work and I think they were shipped out from there.

Dazer was the man-portable device with the backpack power supply, also intended as an anti-optics system. Quite a few were actually made, and I believe there was another one, I want to say called Cobra, that was a bit smaller. These were presumably scrapped due to the high possibility of them being used as anti-personnel devices.

I seem to recall most of the pain-beam type devices are microwave and cause discomfort through thermal action. There was a laser device designed for the HMMWV known as Outrider, which was a smaller version of Stingray and to be used for anti-sensor applications.

www.afrl.af.mil...

Laser equipped F-35 drawing.

can someone tell me what is a 'ttl timing trigger ' and would say a 100w pulsed laser be as effective at burning as a cw 100w laser,

Originally posted by Anonymous ATS
can someone tell me what is a 'ttl timing trigger ' and would say a 100w pulsed laser be as effective at burning as a cw 100w laser,

TTL means "transistor-transistor logic".
Pulsed lasers generally have a better burn rate in weapon applications.