https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/us-military-freaked-lasers-are-no-secret-weapon-against-hypersonic-missiles-207436
Despite the allure of lasers as a solution to the challenges posed by modern hypersonic weapons, current laser technology falls short.
US sowing imperialism: Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!!
US reaping blowback: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.
The solution is shotguns with a rate of fire akin to a minigun. If you saturate the air and everything around it in a wall of bullets it's not getting through that.
But it's gonna cost ya.
Outspending China on maglev, but its only for terrorizing minority urban populations, ultimately going unused because they're less reliable than 150 year old handgun designs.
hear me out. a mountain. on rails. so you can quickly yank it in front of you when the missile is coming.
Against hypersonics, this isn't really a solution.
The missiles are designed to force their way through thousands of pounds of air per second. Adding a few ounces of lead and/or hardened steel in the last few milliseconds before impact won't do much.
How to defend against hypersonic missiles:
I will need 600 billion dollars to maybe possibly build this.
Didn't they basically try that already with the Metalstorm project for naval CIWS trials? I thought that got dropped for some reason
I thought that got retooled into a fire suppressant system that never made the news again
Ngl, a version of Metalstorm that shoots those firefighting grenades that Thailand developed would be sick. Or convert old A-10s and load up their rotary cannons with them and use them to strafe forest fires and give them some sick red firetruck livery and call it Operation Extinguisher or something. In conclusion, government give me money for my cool ideas.
It looks like the company went into administrative bankruptcy and all they've done in 10 years is sell exploding drones to Australia, who sent them to Ukraine
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Is that header picture even one if thr US systems? I could swear I've seen that exact image before and it was the UK hyping their DragonFire tests.
Edit: yup, they pictured the wrong system
yea turns out lasers aren't magical lightsaber blades that immediately cut through anything, and actually need time to heat the surface of their target while having issues with penetrating thick or dense materials.
still less penetration less quick than if u used the nuke to propel a solid projectile real fast. photons have like negligible/arguably nonexistent mass, the real fun with lasers (as weapons) is using them to target enemy optics (mechanical or biological). one relatively weak but rapidly spinning laser array could permanently blind an entire unit or crowd of people nearly instantly if they don't have specialized protective equipment like high-quality mirror goggles (implausible) or camera/sensor helmets with replaceable/redundant sensors (likely doable in the future but impractical currently).
photons have like negligible/arguably nonexistent mass
funny enough they actually do have zero mass, but non-zero momentum.
like many other war crimes, it only counts if you do it to a 'uniformed combatant' of a country recognized by NATO
Hey at least something did came out of it: The most used weapon in the sci-fi Honorverse series.
Why don't they just use the Death Star laser? George Lucas built it in 1977. Are they stupid?
Wait, they were seriously looking into lasers for this? Because I, a non-technical person could've told you it's way cheaper to make missiles that spin, not to mention the ratio of power consumption per interception/number of cheap missiles to intercept
Yeah, you don't have to be an expert to realize this was never going to work. Just another grift by the US military industrial complex.
My non-expert opinion is there's no way you could keep a laser painted on a target manuevering at mach 13 long enough to actually melt it. How long do they even have between detection and impact? DEWs are appealing because they travel at light speed and don't need to carry ammo. ___ but you have to hold your flash light on the target until it heats up enough to fail. That's fine if you've got a cruise missile puttering along at a stately pace, but not a terminally manueverable hypersonic vehicle.
How long do they even have between detection and impact?
Depends!
Carrier groups usually have an AWACS plane on standby, and wikipedia suggests modern systems have a 400km detection range. Assuming the missile has a steady speed of Mach 13, that's about 90 seconds of warning.
It's more complicated than this, though, because (afaik) these missiles cruise at a much lower speed and only reach maximum velocity when accelerating in their terminal guidance phase.
There's also the issue of laser range, which would probably be not very far, closer to the hypersonic missile last phase of attack range.
Yep! Line of sight alone would limit laser countermeasures to the horizon, to say nothing of the air scattering the beam's energy for the whole distance.
But interceptors (anti-missile missiles) have no such limitation and would remain the only effective countermeasure for hypersonics.
Why doesn’t the US military simply excavate the Ark of Covenant buried deep beneath Antarctica? Are they stupid?
It can, however, reliably pop balloons, which renders Xi's cutting-edge attack balloons useless!
Remember: when the usa accuses you of something it's actually confessing to that very thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Genetrix
Hey now, they worked great as a tool for getting a bunch of taxes allocated to research the fact that they can't work as a weapon. :)
But they can absolutely free an entry-level consumer DJI drone operated by a local anarchist cell!...at least until they mount mirrors on the bottom.
Things that survive a red hot plasma envelope aren't cooked by "laser"
send the Mother of All Balloons
pictured: secret Chinese superweapon