DragonFire was able to destroy incoming drones from several positions miles away, The Times has reported.
Sounds like it. A laser that can cut through metal and plastic at those distances is going to vaporise anything else that gets in its way. Normally you’d have an issue with the surface of the target ablating and vaporising into a dense cloud that does a much better job of stopping photons than the atmosphere (see some Styropyro videos for examples of this in action), but it sounds like it’s strong enough to punch through that as well to finish the job. And quickly enough that it takes out an aerial target, which typically have to move pretty fast to stay airborne. There’s power behind that beam.
Drones don’t necessarily move that fast, I can’t imagine this would be all that effective against fast moving targets that vary their speed. So it might catch a drone hovering, but it probably won’t catch a 200mph racing drone going through its paces.
I could be wrong, but I don’t suspect that a laser powerful enough to physically destroy stuff at a distance is going to be meaningfully stopped by regular mirrors, because mirrors don’t reflect all the light pointed at them, and as soon as the mirror gets damaged enough to not properly reflect light in the spot the beam hits, it might as well not be there anyway.
Super mirrors would enable better lasers technology. This cat and mouse game will never end. I’m just glad the UK, Europe and USA are ahead, because they generally support liberty and value human life. If China gets ahead the world will become much darker.
A good mirror reflects more than 99% of incident light, effectively increasing the amount of power the laser needs to destroy the target by a factor of 100.
This isn't the real concern, however. Fog, dust, clouds, and rain are quite common on the damp and dusty sphere we live on, and they would all strongly attenuate the beam power and greatly reduce the effective range.
You're not wrong, but at that power level anything longer than a short pulse is going to vaporize the stuff in the way.
They probably take that into consideration and pulse the lazer before giving a more consistent shot.
Clearing out the path before shooting the shot.
Maybe they have a ring around the primary shot as well. Vaporizing the stuff that could get in the way of the primary attack.
These people are smart. It's easier to assume they've taken that into consideration
Off the cuff idea, but thermally ablative coatings that dissolve into light blocking smoke might buy drone operators time to evade - assuming their rotors don’t thin out the smoke screen too much.
The pointing system on a laser based weapon is going to be very fast. It’s unlikely to be carrying much weight and will have big high performance motors.
The time of flight is practically instances relative to the spend of drones. So their is no evasion happening like top gun or star wars.
Tricking the section system is the only way a vehicle will avoid this.
If it’s electro-optic sensors (cameras) smoke helps, but the laser weapon will be tracking the target prior to engagement and have a good estimate in the few seconds after smoke. A laser this powerful can burn through the smoke and hit the target in a much shorter time. It can also fire in a spiral in the last known location and hit the drone before it could get away.
If it’s radar based, then the drone will need to have anti-radar coatings and profile. This avoids detection, but once detected it doesn’t stand a chance.
If you want to avoid this system, you need to avoid detection. Or detect and destroy it first. Any adversary going up against this system will have to fly it’s drone low and towards the ground. This makes the drones harder to detect and target. However, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown drone operators like to fly high above. Flying high gets them outside of human detection range, which allows for observation and targeting. Drones avoiding this type of laser system will be subject to small arms fire from hostile soldiers on the ground. They will also be less capable of carrying out their missions like they do in the current Ukraine conflict.
You can build lasers that can change thier wavelength (such as an electron wiggler). With a wide enough bandwidth most materials won’t be reflective at some frequency. It’s easy to find this frequency by sweeping the vehicle and detecting reflections. This could be done prior to destruction levels of laser power.
This technology is for use against small and cheap drones. If you fire costly missiles at a 2k drone. The people sending the 2k drones will eventually win out as the defending country can no longer economically support the war. These laser weapons bring the cost down to pounds not 10/100s thousands of pounds per missile. As the target is small drones their ability to carry large deflectors with cooling is limited (payload and range will be diminished).
These small drones couldn’t carry such a weapon. The best they could manage is a one shoot retro reflector. This is a mirror that reflect in the same direction as the source light. Most would burn out in a very short time with this type of weapon.
The instantaneous power would be hard for many aircraft to generate. So this type of systems would be limited to ground based, large ships and possibly well configured jet engines aircraft.
This of weapon will inspire very creative counter measures. If it’s deployed in Ukraine I think we would see another big leap in how small drones are used. Lots of innovations happened with drones there, whilst exciting from an engineering point of view the human cost is scary.
Well I’m basing this off what I’ve seen the Chinese get up to, they have these mounted on trucks so if there is some kind of effective counter like super smoke, idk, inclement weather conditions (lmao), they just don’t roll it out.
Also if these ever get mounted on fighter jets it might be wise to make them part of the automated drone fleets that are gonna be flying in locked formation like Blue Angels. Just don’t send out the laser drones unless necessary idk.
I’m just speculating. You’re stuck buying our shitty F-35s or whatever lol
It’s one of the most financialized and ineffective projects in the entire US military, and that’s really saying something. It’s billed as a hypothetical way for our close allies to use nukes, We would use ICBMs in real nuclear warfare which everyone knows is being stashed actoss Europe and Israel not-so-secretly the F35 shit is LARPing, but anyways conveniently nobody really plans on it since it would result in us getting property damage lol.
Anyways that’s a red herring the real issues is the expense and the production of the parts for it + the amount of time it has to spend being babied by mechanics!
That shit is so unreliable even when it’s not damn near killing the pilots with shitty ejects or weird landings, you want to see a video? It’s Fed up. Guy’s head clearly gets SMASHED against the Fing plane.
It’s way less reliable based on inclement weather than these prototype direct energy weapons.
We have effective weapons programs I don’t feel the need to talk about F35 when it’s so well covered. I can get you democrat, republican, bloodless investor, or communist takes on it
Well the power limitations and cooling issues that were previously considered to be insurmountable have been, so you may be right. I guess the question is can it effectively dispatch missiles headed to jets.
Taking out drones with a tank mounted direct energy weapon seems very feasible or having other shit around that can do that
Chinese tech is considered to be pretty good but honestly most of their tech has amounted to “paper dragons” so I’d love to see verified reports of whatever it is you’re referring to.
yes I know it’s paper tigers, paper dragons makes more sense for china IMO
They already showed off their directed energy weapons for use against drones. It’s just nothing new to me, sorry that hurts your pride across the pond.
Mao was right, we are a paper tiger. The nukes were bluffs. We will overmilitarize and collapse like the USSR did.
Some people on lemmy have this weird idea that China is some super high tech future society where they’re using fusion for all their power, have the fastest most complex computers in the world, medicine that cures all cancers and a fully functioning space program with a moon base.
Instead of, you know… About the same as every other developed nation.
And of course if you ask for any sources, it’s either “I don’t have to do your work for you” or “here’s a source directly from the government from a state-sponsored lab and has only been corroborated by other state-sponsored labs and not a single person outside their team has access of any of the produced things”
And if you question a source, you’re racist because clearly if they were white you would have believed it.
I have seen videos of them using the directed energy weapons on drones out in the field. The Australians have complained about them using this stuff. Try to stay on top of current events if you’re going to try to write about it
When the reality is that it’s mostly stolen western tech that’s then been iterated on from a position of disadvantage.
It takes generations to create the engineering and scientific foundation that allows the tech that the USA and other nations are capable of producing.
Not that china isn’t getting there or even there now but the reality is they’re still playing catch up. It will likely take a fundamental technological shift for them to leapfrog, or ANYONE to leapfrog the capabilities of “the west”
Just so I am clear I do believe it is absolutely possible for China to catch up and achieve that fundamental technological developmental shift I am referring to but I believe that it will be a lot “louder” when and if that happens, and as long as the USA is doing their thing it will be a back and forth if anything.
Sulk and downvote me all you want it’s just another expression of our imperial decline. Online reddit escapism. You probably still think Ukraine is winning.
Your country is becoming like Senegal used to be to us, a source of crude oil to import and a place to export fuel at once. We are DRINKING your MILKSHAKE. 😂😂😂
China is pioneering entire new forms of laser cooling systems. The UK is quite literally catching up.
As proven by China’s ability to build regular coal power plants at a high standards, nuclear reactors, mass manufacture solar to bring costs down and invent new technologies with batteries outside lithium ion such as zinc-hydrogen, flow batteries, even kinetic batteries. They will be the leaders in the modern next gen battlefield control techniques. Look at their new aircraft carrier designs. We can’t even build new aircraft carriers at an acceptable rate.
They created a wave-based power system that will surely be useful throughout Indonesia, where they are also building the world’s fastest high speed rail.
Tell me, what has the left in the UK done for the world lately other than join hands with the right and send money to nazis?
By the way, you’re really stupid if you’re taking any article that has a big red laser seriously. You should know what a freaking laser looks like man. Grow the FUCK up
You genuinely have poor reading comprehension. Okay let me walk you through this, laser weapons require extremely high grade manufacturing and electronics to produce. China is a leader in this.
Chinese metallurgy is top tier and they have all the rare earth production there as a result. This is very important for battery technology, which is critical for lasers. They will have plasma batteries for aircraft eventually, but that’s not important for this stuff right now. The energy density requirements for aircraft are ridiculous. They may need parallel anti aircraft drones to fly along with next gen fighters that carry directed energy weapons in appropriate conditions.
I’m not debating you point by point your overall view of their military and tech capabilties seems to be from the 90s
You’re just talking to an American who has investment experience, sorry that we care about actual facts instead of Reddit karma. Karma doesn’t depreciate because it’s completely worthless, like you.
I am an American, that’s what I mean about oil refinement silly pants.
The battery stuff is important for understanding China’s going to be the leader in directed energy weapons use in actual warfare. They already have truck-mounted platforms that swivel like pan tilt and zoom cameras.
They are not “stealing tech” lmao we don’t have their metallurgy or automation capabiities now. It’s no longer just a scale issue
Most of those stories are guys whining about agreements they signed, but now regret. Tough shit. Tech transfers happen. Soon China will be the leader in sub 5 nanometer chip foundries, give it a few decades
Anyways expect lots of sodium ion batteries and others to augment the considerable production shift to green tech they’re already in power tools. Lithium ion is also getting much better with lithium sulfur & some cellulise mesh i saw that can triple battery recharges in its lifetime
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