Tesla's Death Ray: Now A Reality?

I don't know what else can be added to define the excerpt below. I could say I thought destructive high energy weapons systems were so large they basically needed to be run from a ship. I could say I thought such systems were limited to use against relatively large, soft targets. But ... I'd have been wrong.

The Army's 8-Wheeled Laser Truck Can Burn Mortars, Drones Right Out Of The Sky By Amanda Macias, Business Insider, December 12, 2013

For the first time, the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defence Command used a vehicle mounted high-energy laser to successfully engage more than 90 enemy mortar rounds and flying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL MD) contracted by Boeing, was tested at White Sands Missile Range and confirms the capability of a mobile laser weapon system to counter rockets, artillery, mortars, UAVs, and reconnaissance sensors mounted on UAVs.

The beam control system (BCS) is a dome-shaped turret that extends above the roof of a 500-horsepower Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (HEMTT). The beam director rotates 360-degrees and uses mirrors to point and focus the beam on a target.

"These tests were the first in which HEL MD repeatedly destroyed consecutive rounds of mortars and aerial threats with speed-of-light precision and a high degree of accuracy," Mike Rinn, vice president, Boeing Directed Energy Systems. The recent testing utilized a 10 kW class laser which will be upgraded to an 100 kW class laser in subsequent demonstrations.

Not sure if this is the exact Source

Stupid question...but one that came right to mind. What is the range on these things? Specifically...if they miss ... does the laser energy dissipate and disperse into the atmosphere or is that loud screech someone gets on their satellite call the sound of the miss connecting with a comm-satellite which just happened to pass through the line of fire, downrange?

Wrabbit2000
Stupid question...but one that came right to mind. What is the range on these things? Specifically...if they miss ... does the laser energy dissipate and disperse into the atmosphere or is that loud screech someone gets on their satellite call the sound of the miss connecting with a comm-satellite which just happened to pass through the line of fire, downrange?

what happens with a pen laser?
and there you go
(they have an optimal focal point if youre closer or further away the light becomes more dispersed this thing can undoubtedly change its focus so yeah it could do damage if it misses but youre not going to be blasting any satellites out of orbit.... i would be flabbergasted if this thing had that kind of output)

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


You ever wonder though how the other side of Tesla tech would be used? The one that can manipulate the atmosphere in such a way to create a force field?

Don't forget that the easiest way to hide your true purpose is by releasing information on the non-purpose.

While they are "allowing" us sight of these magazine worthy pictures of the death ray mobiles, there is a much bigger problem of the ones that exist on a large scale.

Just sayin'.

reply to post by sirhumperdink


A pen laser? That's a totally ridiculous comparison. It's like comparing a 155mm Artillery Piece to a BB gun. Two RADICALLY different levels of power and impact with, I'm sure, two VERY different levels of potential harm to overshoots.

Now, a man can stand here on Earth and bounce a laser off the reflectors on the moon. You don't have to be NASA and you don't need billion dollar equipment to do that. You also don't need a 100kw Laser as this mentioned as being part of the future packages. A little goes quite a way with a laser.

To give an idea of the level of comparison here..one of the most powerful consumer lasers in the world today is the Spyder 3 (AKA The Lightsaber, as coined in the press) and it's related products, found Here. It's $300 and set records not that long ago when it first hit the market. It first released with 1 Watt effective power. As you can see, what is there now is up to 2 Watts.

What they fired for this story was 10,000 watts and what they intend to have the production model mounting, according to the story, is 100,000 watts. So..I do think a question about range is relevant, as it so happens.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000

That's a totally ridiculous comparison. It's like comparing a 155mm Artillery Piece to a BB gun

I thing you are being too hard. Conceptually it the example served well, and I presume anyone can extrapolate the obvious differences from the example, like from your BB gun one...

If every person on Earth aimed a laser pointer at the Moon at the same time, would it change color?

Wrabbit2000
reply to post by sirhumperdink

 

A pen laser? That's a totally ridiculous comparison. It's like comparing a 155mm Artillery Piece to a BB gun. Two RADICALLY different levels of power and impact with, I'm sure, two VERY different levels of potential harm to overshoots.

Now, a man can stand here on Earth and bounce a laser off the reflectors on the moon. You don't have to be NASA and you don't need billion dollar equipment to do that. You also don't need a 100kw Laser as this mentioned as being part of the future packages. A little goes quite a way with a laser.

To give an idea of the level of comparison here..one of the most powerful consumer lasers in the world today is the Spyder 3 (AKA The Lightsaber, as coined in the press) and it's related products, found Here. It's $300 and set records not that long ago when it first hit the market. It first released with 1 Watt effective power. As you can see, what is there now is up to 2 Watts.

What they fired for this story was 10,000 watts and what they intend to have the production model mounting, according to the story, is 100,000 watts. So..I do think a question about range is relevant, as it so happens.

edit on 13-12-2013 by Wrabbit2000 because: (no reason given)

it most certainly is relevant however you have an exponential decrease in power the further you get from the focal point
and despite the fact that the output is massively different between a pen laser and this behemoth they still function on the same principals so this is more like comparing one artillery piece with a much much larger one...... you would certainly be able to calculate the effects of the larger piece by using the smaller one

and also a heads up spyder lasers are beyond over priced you can build your own (and more powerful if you wanted) for a fraction of the price with minimal work or know how

reply to post by sirhumperdink


As a matter of fact, you can calculate it, and I have, while I was off checking some things about how people currently bounce lasers off those lunar reflectors left by the Apollo Missions.

It's interesting to see...and confirms what I was worried about. This most definitely CAN tag something higher ...although I wonder if they'll mention that or if the capability will be on it's 'Classified' spec sheet? Anyway.. I have a college math final late this afternoon, so this was something to get in the mood.. kinda.. lol

Anyway, first the reference for it to make sense on the OP story and OP test unit.

The Laser Ranging Retroreflector experiment was deployed on Apollo 11, 14, and 15. It consists of a series of corner-cube reflectors, which are a special type of mirror with the property of always reflecting an incoming light beam back in the direction it came from. A similar device was also included on the Soviet Union's Lunakhod 2 spacecraft. These reflectors can be illuminated by laser beams aimed through large telescopes on Earth. The reflected laser beam is also observed with the telescope, providing a measurement of the round-trip distance between Earth and the Moon.

and..

Laser beams are used because they remain tightly focused for large distances. Nevertheless, there is enough dispersion of the beam that it is about 7 kilometers in diameter when it reaches the Moon and 20 kilometers in diameter when it returns to Earth.

Source

Now, average distance to the moon is 382,000 Kilometers. It varies by nearly 45,000 kilometers, so the average will have to do. 7 Kilometers at the surface makes for about 55,000 Kilometers distant for every Kilometer in diameter. Geosync Orbit is 36,000 Kilometers, so you're not quite a full Km in diameter to light up something at that altitude.

On the other hand.... ISS is orbiting at a tree skimming altitude (by comparison) of 370 Kilometers. So... if 55,000 km is a km wide ...26,500 would be a half kilometer...13,250 would be a 1/4 of a kilometer... (sounds of pencil scribbling and number punching)

If the numbers for lasing the Apollo reflector targets on the moon are accurate, and you turned that toward the ISS as an example, you'd hit the Station with a source laser of 100,000 watts at roughly 22 feet in diameter. (If I didn't make some big boo boo somewhere, anyway)

I'm not sure what exactly that may do...but I know I wouldn't want to be within line of sight through an Earth facing window when it pulsed. The stuff below ISS might get downright crispy for sensors or whatever else, depending on specifics.

Hey OP.. I think you're onto something. That little gizmo could be downright nasty and other nations may even be a little offended by it's potential. This is one to watch, I think.

Wrabbit2000
reply to post by sirhumperdink

 

As a matter of fact, you can calculate it, and I have, while I was off checking some things about how people currently bounce lasers off those lunar reflectors left by the Apollo Missions.

It's interesting to see...and confirms what I was worried about. This most definitely CAN tag something higher ...although I wonder if they'll mention that or if the capability will be on it's 'Classified' spec sheet? Anyway.. I have a college math final late this afternoon, so this was something to get in the mood.. kinda.. lol

Anyway, first the reference for it to make sense on the OP story and OP test unit.

The Laser Ranging Retroreflector experiment was deployed on Apollo 11, 14, and 15. It consists of a series of corner-cube reflectors, which are a special type of mirror with the property of always reflecting an incoming light beam back in the direction it came from. A similar device was also included on the Soviet Union's Lunakhod 2 spacecraft. These reflectors can be illuminated by laser beams aimed through large telescopes on Earth. The reflected laser beam is also observed with the telescope, providing a measurement of the round-trip distance between Earth and the Moon.

and..

Laser beams are used because they remain tightly focused for large distances. Nevertheless, there is enough dispersion of the beam that it is about 7 kilometers in diameter when it reaches the Moon and 20 kilometers in diameter when it returns to Earth.

Source

Now, average distance to the moon is 382,000 Kilometers. It varies by nearly 45,000 kilometers, so the average will have to do. 7 Kilometers at the surface makes for about 55,000 Kilometers distant for every Kilometer in diameter. Geosync Orbit is 36,000 Kilometers, so you're not quite a full Km in diameter to light up something at that altitude.

On the other hand.... ISS is orbiting at a tree skimming altitude (by comparison) of 370 Kilometers. So... if 55,000 km is a km wide ...26,500 would be a half kilometer...13,250 would be a 1/4 of a kilometer... (sounds of pencil scribbling and number punching)

If the numbers for lasing the Apollo reflector targets on the moon are accurate, and you turned that toward the ISS as an example, you'd hit the Station with a source laser of 100,000 watts at roughly 22 feet in diameter. (If I didn't make some big boo boo somewhere, anyway)

you made a booboo in not accounting for the fact that the beam is not going to be nearly as focused
i have a 100watt light over my head producing about 242 lumens per watt right now but i wouldnt be sitting here if all of that energy was focused into a small point
there is also going to be a lot of loss from traveling through the atmosphere of the earth
so you would be correct if this was all done in a complete vacuum and the laser somehow had an absolutely perfect beam and as far as i know neither of those things exists
you also made the mistake of using the Laser Ranging Retroreflector experiment in your calculations rather than the device in question

it all depends on how the laser is calibrated and where it is being fired from if its calibrated for taking out artillery fire/a rocket/ low altitude missile etc. then no then its very doubtful its going to be pewing any satellites if the beams focal point is farther out then yeah you could have some problems

but it seems that based on what its role will be there shouldnt be any serious issues

reply to post by sirhumperdink


How do you figure I am missing anything? The ACTUAL measured beam as currently being fired by much weaker, non-destructive lasers is 7 kilometers across on the moon's surface. Everything else was just working numbers backwards for scale.

The point is, there isn't anything to account for when I'm starting with a known and measured constant that is already being measured from passing through the same atmosphere you're talking about.

We're also talking about civilian lasers for survey and distance measurements, not military/weapons grade with power orders of magnitude beyond what is being used in a telescope. That is something I did not account for because it would have skewed the numbers to a more destructive beam at low altitude, not less so.

It's very reasonable to presume that a Military weapons system, designed for the purpose, will have tighter tolerances and control than a scientific laser where they really don't care about the diameter, but simply the measurement of time in transit.

** To be honest, I was asking a serious question on this thread. I know we have ATS members who can rattle off what it took me effort to look up and calculate without having to go through that. I was hoping for a reply from one of our science based folk..tho now that I've done the work anyway, I guess it's not as important now.

Wrabbit2000
reply to post by sirhumperdink

 

How do you figure I am missing anything? The ACTUAL measured beam as currently being fired by much weaker, non-destructive lasers is 7 kilometers across on the moon's surface. Everything else was just working numbers backwards for scale.

The point is, there isn't anything to account for when I'm starting with a known and measured constant that is already being measured from passing through the same atmosphere you're talking about.

We're also talking about civilian lasers for survey and distance measurements, not military/weapons grade with power orders of magnitude beyond what is being used in a telescope. That is something I did not account for because it would have skewed the numbers to a more destructive beam at low altitude, not less so.

It's very reasonable to presume that a Military weapons system, designed for the purpose, will have tighter tolerances and control than a scientific laser where they really don't care about the diameter, but simply the measurement of time in transit.

** To be honest, I was asking a serious question on this thread. I know we have ATS members who can rattle off what it took me effort to look up and calculate without having to go through that. I was hoping for a reply from one of our science based folk..tho now that I've done the work anyway, I guess it's not as important now.

except there is because you are talking about a different device calibrated for different purposes
so your calculations are based on this laser producing a beam of the same size with the same focal point just being more powerful
but that is not the case one is designed to focus at extreme distance and the other is designed to focus at a much shorter range (and almost certainly producing a different size beam in the first place)

you can not even make the calculations because there is not enough information provided on this specific laser
and as far as tight tolerances go yes military equipment has very tight tolerances so theres no way that something designed to be taking out artillery fire is going to be be so sloppily designed that a miss means a downed satellite or damaged power plant

reply to post by sirhumperdink


Well, I'll put it this way, because I'm not going to debate your opinion. If you can give a little support in how what your explaining works to differ, I'll be happy to look at it. It really does sound interesting....and again, I asked what I did here for a SERIOUS REPLY...not for an endless debate to everything said, and every reply made.

I'm interested in that as a weapons system I would like to estimate capability for...in a serious effort. Hence, the request for research based data on your points ..which I would find useful today ...vs. opinion, which, at the moment, is about the last thing I'd been seeking.

Sorry for that misunderstanding... I'm not accustomed to this forum necessarily being an aggressive debate one. I should have noted that it wasn't the goal.

reply to post by Snarl


They've been testing this for at least 3 years in Israel. The earlier version wasn't mounted on a truck. It was called the MTHEL and it's some piece of tech. Youtube vids are available.

Wrabbit2000
reply to post by sirhumperdink

 

Well, I'll put it this way, because I'm not going to debate your opinion. If you can give a little support in how what your explaining works to differ, I'll be happy to look at it. It really does sound interesting....and again, I asked what I did here for a SERIOUS REPLY...not for an endless debate to everything said, and every reply made.

I'm interested in that as a weapons system I would like to estimate capability for...in a serious effort. Hence, the request for research based data on your points ..which I would find useful today ...vs. opinion, which, at the moment, is about the last thing I'd been seeking.

Sorry for that misunderstanding... I'm not accustomed to this forum necessarily being an aggressive debate one. I should have noted that it wasn't the goal.

research base data for what?
to show that lasers have a specific focal point and that it can be changed with lenses or mirrors?
that two lasers calibrated for very different tasks arent going to perform in the same way?
that your calculations are bunk because they are based on a different laser and we have no specifics for the one in question?
those are facts

which part was opinion?
the only opinion was at the end where i made the assertion that the military would not be so stupid as to design a weapon to take out artillery fire that could accidentally destroy a satellite or nuclear power plant

Wrabbit2000
To give an idea of the level of comparison here..one of the most powerful consumer lasers in the world today is the Spyder 3 (AKA The Lightsaber, as coined in the press) and it's related products, found Here. It's $300 and set records not that long ago when it first hit the market. It first released with 1 Watt effective power.

Good comparison ... let me add. My son bought one of these. It would instantly burn your skin close up ... say 6 inches to a foot away. At five feet distant, it might take two or three seconds to notice you're skin being burnt. We're talking one watt and we're talking non-military grade focal point.

I can't imagine what would happen point blank at 10,000 times the power. At a minimum, I would expect penetration through bone.

The source article lacks a description of how an artillery round is destroyed in-flight ... but it can be assumed destruction occurs abruptly (at 10,000 watts). As far as a drone is concerned, destruction may be classified as all sensors destroyed ... who knows? What I do know, is that I would not expose my skin to this weapon voluntarily. I cannot imagine 10,000 times the power of my son's laser on my skin ... let alone 100k ... along with what is implied by military grade focus.

-Cheers

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


No offense Wabbit, but you entered this thread asking a question, followed by basically answering it yourself, then arguing with anyone who had a different idea or opinion on the subject. I don't see the point.

reply to post by parad0x122

Wrabbit went about making his point his way. I see where you are coming from, but I take no offense to anyone's input to one of my threads. I don't tend to keep score.

I honestly appreciate your input, and I respectfully request you let it slide this time. FWIW, Wrabbit and I had a PM exchange (which he initiated) specific to your concern, and there were no hard feelings expressed.

-Cheers

You know...I think the gov't has a LOT of Tesla's inventions and ideas a reality today.I also believe that they have a type of "free energy" that they don't want to release.That would put every big oil and energy company out of business.Can't control the masses that way.

reply to post by Snarl


It's seriously refreshing when people can settle things in a civilized manner, glad to hear it worked out. FWIW, both of you seem to have a pretty good understanding of laser tech. Now if we could only find a shark expert....

crazyeddie68
You know...I think the gov't has a LOT of Tesla's inventions and ideas a reality today.I also believe that they have a type of "free energy" that they don't want to release.That would put every big oil and energy company out of business.Can't control the masses that way.

Uh, that's a lot of B.S.

The US DOD is a huge consumer of fossil fuels. They hate, hate hate hate hate it. Fuel logistics is the central problem in all military operations.

If you could make a tank or aircraft or rocket(!) that doesn't need it and can still do its shooting and bombing, you'd be a billionaire.

Tesla never made a laser. He didn't understand quantum mechanics at all. Albert Einstein figured out the theory of the laser (Neils Bohr of all people didn't think stimulated emission would work!).