Chinese lasers already have impact
They can't actually take down a fast-moving fighter yet, but Chinese lasers are already inhibiting US aeriel movement:
Chinese company Poly Technologies showed off its new bit of next-age tech at a military exhibition in Kazakhstan this week. The “Silent Killer” laser is able to obliterate unmanned drones from about 328 yards away. It is, however, only able to target slow-moving, low-flying, and small-sized targets.As I have repeatedly pointed out since we published Riding the Red Horse, US air supremacy probably has less than a decade left. This will have considerable implications for US foreign policy, and likely explains the push for obtaining military superiority in space on the part of both the US and the Chinese militaries.
Silent killer’s lasers are also able to jam incoming electronic attacks, effectively making an hack attempt impossible. The weapon is capable of being mounted onto mobile vehicles as well as warships, according to its developers.
The advancement in laser technology comes just weeks after US military chiefs warned fighter jet pilots to “use extreme caution” near a Chinese base. It later emerged high-powered lasers were in operation at the facility.
Labels: technology, war
78 Comments:
"US air supremacy probably has less than a decade left"
What if the USA dropped attempts to police the world and went into a defensive posture while ejecting the foreign invaders here in the homeland?
What if we dropped the idea of Empire, and concentrated on ... dare I say it ... making America great again? Once upon a time, a powerful USA worried mainly about the western hemisphere and mainly about the lower 48 states.
Toss those who don't belong here out and defend the homeland. No welfare, we all work hard. Could it work even at this very late date?
Oh, and to hell with foreign aid too.
"...the push for obtaining military superiority in space on the part of both the US and the Chinese militaries."
Ha!
How I pity the Chinese! For they lack America's superlative diversity™, and its access to all those unmatched sharp minds imported from the Third World! Before they know it, some new-American(my bet's on a Somali) will have a space station fully designed and built, with laser guns and everything.
Just watch that new documentary, Black Panther, and you'll know the type of tech I'm talking about.
No. DEW are line of sight only - ignoring remote reflectors. The earth is curved. Aircraft can fly nap of earth underneath the angles DEW can reach. So we peel the onion by attacking the DEW first and then we can pile on from any altitude. DEW are a complication for sure but we can still own the sky if we want it.
So we peel the onion by attacking the DEW first and then we can pile on from any altitude. DEW are a complication for sure but we can still own the sky if we want it.
A strike fighter (or for that matter a drone or cruise missile) will be several orders of magnitude more expensive than a laser. And a laser AA battery will have a far higher kill probability than a SAM or AAA. The risk is simply not worth it.
DEW are a complication for sure but we can still own the sky if we want it.
For now....
That's one thing made in China that many survivalist types in the U.S. would be willing to buy.
Fortunately, they’re made in China.
And the Navy just put the brakes on their rail gun, for some reason.
4.
A strike fighter (or for that matter a drone or cruise missile) will be several orders of magnitude more expensive than a laser.
Demonstrably false. We have glide bomb kits, GBU-53 and progeny, which cost less than 50k usd. Ground-based DEW cost substantially more by your "order of magnitude." A single UAV flying nap of earth could easily dispense ten or more -53s beneath detection range let alone engagement range with the ordnance converging from 3/4 compass rose. Only one needs to get through and the expensive offensive platform would be shielded by the earth.
And a laser AA battery will have a far higher kill probability than a SAM or AAA.
Not exactly. DEW can have somewhat superior pk over AAA but insofar as both types are line of sight their respective pk is actually pretty close. A modern SAM with its own AESA/visible wavelength seeker can be vastly superior to a earthbound DEW in terms of pk given it's beyond LOS and can maneuver.
Lasers need precise ranging and azimuth information on the target, in realtime. This can be denied or obfuscated through speed or stealth. The lasers themselves can be defeated by some coatings or obscurants. Like SAMs, lasers have limitations and will only change air power not defeat it.
How, exactly can a laser inhibit incoming electronic warfare attacks?
Sorry to post OT: This meme popped into my mind this morning (if someone would like to make use of it):
"Diversity is (((Our))) Strength"
I didn't see it on a Google search.
US air supremacy probably has less than a decade left.
Mebbe time to get those tanks out of mothballs?
We probably won't see a railgun-toting, semi-autonomous tank powered by a miniature nuclear reactor anytime soon, but a man can dream.
11.
How, exactly can a laser inhibit incoming electronic warfare attacks?
Depends upon wavelength and peak but a laser could be applied to "lens" i.e., heat up a patch of atmosphere creating a bubble which attenuates EW inbound. Kinda like a shield, although this would tend to work in both directions thus potentially interfering with the lasing side. A MASER could be utilized to shift phase and otherwise negate EW attacks incoming by directly interfering with the attacking wavelenghts and algorithms.
I can't figure out what it has to do with The Little Mermaid, though: https://infogalactic.com/info/The_Little_Mermaid_(1989_film)
And you even used the British spelling: Aeriel!
...
One thing that people miss about the Russia Russia Russia narrative is how much it actually benefits the Chinese, who also have many in the Western media and establishment in their pockets.
The Chinese will work with Russia just enough to keep the US off their back, but they're still historic rivals that share a 4,000+ mile border at the end of day. They couldn't even get along during the height of the Cold War.
A non-interventionist US is going to need Russia, India, Japan, and Southeast Asian nations all to provide the necessary balance in the region.
*yawn*
Wake me up when the Chicoms mount the LASERs on effing sharks.
While laser development will continue to be extremely important, hypersonic missiles look like the main problem for anything that flies or floats. The kinetic energy alone is devastating.
Lasers and other use of light as a weapon can be a game changer for military operations. The US is trying hard to integrate them into use. This begs the question of how does modern military advances (railguns, lasers, huge computing power) affect our "super-weapon" strategy where we need very high kill ratios and little loss of life? Is anything like this even remotely possible against a modern and equipped foe instead of a third world pretender?
We have enjoyed a superiority over the Chinese military remembering how the Vietnamese handled them in their conflict. Now that they are modernized-- hopefully we have changed our thinking and so have the politicians above the military. As we saw from the Arab-Israeli wars- modern combat is tremendously destructive with large losses of life and equipment. Something we haven't seen in many, many generations.
Curious what the batteries for a laser weapon weigh and take up in room. Also, once you start using them, cooling them off must be a challenge too, I imagine thermal satellites would pick them up pretty easy.
@20
Most solid state laser systems I know of use capacitors for storing the energy for each laser shot. Those capacitors are in turn charged by conventional generators.
A complication, not a game changer.
Unknown wrote:@20
Most solid state laser systems I know of use capacitors for storing the energy for each laser shot. Those capacitors are in turn charged by conventional generators.
What about turbo lasers? What kind of power source do they use?
I wonder if your average Minnesota man even knows what a laser is, even in a basic sense.
"Silent killer’s lasers are also able to jam incoming electronic attacks, effectively making an hack attempt impossible."
I'm wondering how a laser could possibly stop an electronic attack originating from, say, the Navy's SEWIP Block III upgrade of the AN/SLQ-32(V) which is radar based. Apart from burning out the aparatus itself, but that doesn't appear to be what they are referencing. Does anyone here have any in-depth expertise in radar and/or electronic warfare that could explain how this could be?
The other issue with lasers based on my understanding is their unreliability in the face of adverse atmospheric conditions, smoke, and as mentioned, the requirement for line-of-sight engagement. Perhaps a viable strategy to neutralize or severely reduce the effectiveness of Chinese lasers prior to an attack will be to blanket the area in smoke.
@9 Demonstrably false.
Operative term: "will be".
Stg58/Animal Mother wrote:Unknown wrote:@20
Most solid state laser systems I know of use capacitors for storing the energy for each laser shot. Those capacitors are in turn charged by conventional generators.
What about turbo lasers? What kind of power source do they use?
Usually Pass through convertors and batteries from the Ship engines. Since the Imperials are the only ones that really use original manufactured Turbo lasers, it's a safe bet they are manufactured or sourced from Kuat Drive Yards.
Was it a serious nerd question or were you just being facetious?
In garrison, cleanliness is next to Godliness.
In the field, cleanliness is next to impossible.
But laser optics have to be kept spotlessly clean, or else they tend to fail rather spectacularly.
@27 turbo lasers are a space based weapon and banned for use inside the atmosphere. Except for pest eradication like whomp rats.
The other issue with lasers based on my understanding is their unreliability in the face of adverse atmospheric conditions...
Working on it. They have one that can go through clouds as of five years ago. Developer pulled together a team of technicians at the Jersey shore; got the power beyond the required threshold; he moved to Lexington, VA five or six years ago; the work is now being done at VMI. On top of that he is a rock musician; he Founded and is lead singer in a band in Lexington called the Funhopper Family Band.
Proof you can never have too many cruise missiles.
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I wouldn't be so sure about the effectiveness of defensive lasers.
First, there are is the matter of atmospheric attenuation. This is a complex calculation that must factor in the frequency of the laser, humidity, altitude, cloud cover, turbulence, and pressure changes over an air column. The short version of that story is that it requires an exponential growth in laser power (and, thus, size, portability, and cost) to achieve linear gains in effective distance. 300 meters is nothing in modern aviation terms. Even assuming a 20x increase in the next decade, this still barely gives ground operators 20 seconds to detect, acquire, and fire the weapon before a present-day air to surface missile will reach them. The person (or drone) in the air will still have the advantage since any such system will necessarily be using radar tracking of some kind. This tracking is detectable by ESM sensors on attack aircraft. A manned aircraft, by contrast, need not broadcast anything and can rely entirely on passive sensors alone.
Thus, any such engagement will be decided in favor of who detects who first with the edge going to the aircraft.
Second, the aircraft must first be detectable. Aircraft such as the F-35 are designed to have a low radar cross section. How well this works in an actual shooting war remains to be seen, but regardless it still diminishes the maximum response time that ground defenders have to acquire it. Drones will be even harder to detect due to their smaller size and, in the future, will be able to be surreptitiously deployed via submarine. While carriers are certainly very large and easy to spot targets, modern submarines are nigh on impossible to reliably intercept.
Frankly, the weapon currently sounds like a commercial product to protect stadiums and elite meetings from drone attacks.
By now this has probably been overcome, but in the past, very powerful tank-destroying laser development was scrapped because the lasers turned the air immediately in front of them into plasma. That resulted, more or less, in the laser blowing itself up. So I've been told.
We'd have to name it Bun-Bun to keep John Ringo happy. I'm in.
Stg58/Animal Mother wrote:What about turbo lasers? What kind of power source do they use?
They require flux capacitors.
ace wrote:I wonder if your average Minnesota man even knows what a laser is, even in a basic sense.
I'm sure the Minnesotans we sourced from Somalia are entirely conversant with lasers.
@36 Ominous Cowherd
I think they are currently sold out, but flux capacitors are available through O'Reilly Auto Parts:
https://www.oreillyauto.com/flux-capacitor
Don't kid your self, China has been advancing and their quality has gotten much better. They are at near parity with some tech-companies thanks to us farming manufacturing there. They have been smart and learning while we pay them to learn, all while we shoot our selves in the foot.
But China doesn't have to worry about us. They just need to be patient. We are killing our selves and by the time we right the ship they will be half a decade or more ahead. We'll catch up but you not talking 50 to 100 years.
My question is how is Russia taking all this? Russian and China have played the US off of each other ever since WWII. If the US goes down then Russian has China to contend with and they are not necessarily as friendly to each other as some would think.
Short answer is the "Third Offset" strategy of networked UAV's, drones and other robotic vehicles.
Somewhat longer answer is there will need to be a very big change in the way the United States procures their weapons, small and cheap drones like the Perdix (delivered from the flare launchers of high speed jets) are going to be the way to go, rather than expensive and bespoke systems.
As usual, it is going to be a dance of measures and countermeasures, rather than an "all or nothing" situation.
Al K. Annossow wrote:https://www.oreillyauto.com/flux-capacitor I shall have to get one for my DeLorean.
Thucydides wrote:As usual, it is going to be a dance of measures and countermeasures, rather than an "all or nothing" situation.
Everyone knows that firearms made armor obsolete. Today armor is in wide use on the battlefield, but it's nothing like the plate armor from days of old when knights were bold.
Effective anti-aircraft systems will make warplanes obsolete. They will still be used on the battlefield, but they will be nothing like the warplanes from days of old when pilots were bold.
@35 Walking thru Carolina Con tonight I noticed they forgot to ban vendors from carrying John Ringos books. Hopefully someone will be triggered.
The United States will lose its next major war and badly. I say that with no joy but rather with great frustration.
The chances of this are 100% if a major war breaks out in this generation. With luck one won’t happen.
But our enemies are not idiots and they are watching. With great interest.
Can't have air supremacy with a welfare state.
The Chinese overlords will be so cruel to the welfare class they'll make slavery look like affirmative action.
1) tune a laser targeted missiles/bomb to the same frequency as the Chinese weapon.
2) fire missile/bomb
3) profit
or Dr. Jerry Pournelles crowbars from space. 3 feet of iron with primitive guidence, and terminal velocity to wreck expensive flash light.
@23
"What about turbo lasers? What kind of power source do they use? "
DeLoreans
Put all your resources into fighting low-end guerrillas instead of preparing for high-end combat and the end of air supremacy comes that much sooner.
@25
" Perhaps a viable strategy to neutralize or severely reduce the effectiveness of Chinese lasers prior to an attack will be to blanket the area in smoke."
The use of smoke is one of the absolutely most under-appreciated offensive measures in war. It allows a great deal of concealed maneuvering against a fixed target, without the target having any ability to know exactly when or where (to within a second or so, and to within less than a degree of arc) to fire their weapon, whereas the assaulting forces have a very good idea where their targets to be fired on are located.
If the USAF and USN don't use heavy smoke to seriously degrade laser AA, they deserve to lose. Especially the USN. Nearly anything under ownership of USN has smoke-discharge capability precisely for the purpose of disrupting visible-wavelength targeting.
8. Unknown June 01, 2018 7:11 PM
And the Navy just put the brakes on their rail gun, for some reason.
I can't tell you exactly why, but available info tells a lot. The launch rails require close tolerances. A tremendous amount of energy goes in to the rails for each shot. Which heats up the rails. Which changes the clearances... The launch rails undergo a tremendous amount of mechanical force and torsion and twisting forces during each shot due to the tremendous amount of EMF generated by the tremendous amount of energy needed for each launch. The launch rails need to be reliable for a few hundred shots. The weight of the guns kept going up to make it more robust, but making the parts bigger meant heating changed clearances faster...
But I suspect the final straw was a simple question. Someone asked "What happens if salt water spray enters the barrel during the firing sequence?" and someone honestly answered "Bad things. Very bad things.
It's possible that I'm totally and completely wrong. But looking at the other EM system the Navy thought would be easy, the EM carrier catapults, the Navy can't get them working reliably on their new carrier. And there are 2 more carriers with keel laid with EM launch specified...
"Space?" You mean NAZI/NASA? LOL! Wake your ass up. We never went to space. The ISS is great theater for gullible minds. Pull your head of your book and look up and notice a host of obvious anomalies. Let's talk about Flat Earth and piss on NASA's grave.
Im pretty sure America already has laser based weapons that trump these lame as weapon systems being developed by the fish heads. You know, like anything launched from naval or airborne platform.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2yuHMDDA68
This is from 2013.
Silent killer’s lasers are also able to jam incoming electronic attacks, effectively making an hack attempt impossible.
Eh... what? This makes no sense.
The advancement in laser technology comes just weeks after US military chiefs warned fighter jet pilots to “use extreme caution” near a Chinese base. It later emerged high-powered lasers were in operation at the facility.
Because they were afraid the Chinese were using lasers to blind US pilots (which would technically be a war crime, assuming they did it). Nobody's worried about Chinese lasers downing manned aircraft. The US military has been trying to deploy a practical battlefield laser for decades. An effective land-based laser is possible, but it would be 1) huge, 2) fragile, 3) expensive to build, maintain, and operate, and 4) require unholy great gobs of power.
For all that you get... a weapon that's a bit worse than a mobile SAM battery.
what a waste of time.
what good is it going to do China to build a bunch of AA lasers when we're not going to be able to put anything in the air for them to shoot down?
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/06/some-f-35s-gathering-dust-waiting-for-repair-parts/
@12 ""Diversity is (((Our))) Strength"
I didn't see it on a Google search."
With several pictures of the israeli walls?
Ooh, that means they could be jammed by actual jam, like in Spaceballs.
You NASA shill. The earth is not you brain washed moron. That would be the dome that God placed over us. Wake up from your dogmatic slumbers you left behind the curb scientistic dolt
Really? You are brilliant! WtF!! Santa Rosa DEW attack on Coffee Patk and FountainGrave Donoma County Oct '17. FWI, Fountaingrove is 13 miles from Bohemian Grove and the home of military industrial complex laser companies that are now working on 5G tech to exterminate your family.
In war, tolerance is king.
superadvanced Laser AA isn't going to be very useful the moment a piece of dust or lint gets on the lense or mirror.
You know what the most effective military weapon ever created is? a rock. anyone can maintain it. People are still dying after getting bashed in the head with one.
Most of our 'air superiority' could be maintained just as effectively and far more efficiently with WWII era prop planes. Once you get to the point where normal battlefield conditions can render a weapon ineffective, more advanced technology is just a terror weapon... it won't last past the first exchange.
The AK-47 is still an incredibly popular choice because it works, and even if it gets filled with mud you can just clean it our and it works again. No matter how great a laser system you create, it can still be taken out with a rock to the optics or a bit of drifting dust.
No, Chinese laser AA exists only to give them something to brag about.
Freddy wrote:You NASA shill. The earth is not you brain washed moron. That would be the dome that God placed over us. Wake up from your dogmatic slumbers you left behind the curb scientistic dolt
Dumb fscker. I have seen satellites and the mirror on the moon with my own eyes.
Conspiracy theories are wonderful things, as long as you don't let the dumb shits play with them.
Im pretty sure America already has laser based weapons that trump these lame as weapon systems being developed by the fish heads."
Or by anybody else.
You can bet the farm on it.
I bet the Chinese are thanking the last few decades of U.S governments for letting them steal intellectual property from American companies to make this happen. At least we get cheap consumer goods in return. Yeah free trade!
Best defense against air power is to whack the airfields and carriers.
I'm not even sure what exactly the US military is defending? It's certainly not the "nation" because there no longer is one. Certainly not the Constitution, since that is pretty much dead. They might say they are defending "our way of life" whatever the hell that is. So what is the US military even fighting for? (Or planning to fight for?)
@Tontobubbagoldstein
Lasers on sharks.
I heard they've perfected the land based variant mounted on a Cheetah.
For some reason Vox assumes we do not or will not have a counter for this. He consistently downplays how good our military is, and overstates how good the Chinese military and to a lesser extent the Russian military is. Yeah, so the Chinese can shine a "laser" in our pilots eyes, big deal, I can walk out my fucking door and do the same thing. Except I won't because it is illegal and I do not want to go to jail.
Surely, those Somali Minnesotans, being angelic beings of light would know everything about lasers.
@IAM Spartacus.
Yes. The Russians fear China turning on them in the far East. During the collapse of Soviet Union the Russians were dumping arms on the world to secured foreign currency. Jane's Intelligence Digest reported many Russian generals were seriously miffed that they were selling top of the range kit to China.
It appears to me that Russia would like a strategic partnership with Germany to counter any perceived China threat. And they are quietly expanding the Eurasian Economic Union as a means of linking into the failing EU with this in mind. Also would mean Germany leaving NATO.
The USE of smoke in war.
I guess any day now we'll hear about a massive DOD purchase of ecigs.
I don't often "laugh out load" reading these comments, but that one pulled one from me.
I bought the book "Riding the Red Horse" yesterday after reading this. Its quite good. That, and from what I know about laser technology, I agree that air power has maybe 10 years of life left in it. Same for large surface ships. Subs will be a dominant form of naval power in the future, however. And yes, the development of high energy lasers, along with 3-D printing in general, does favor defense over offense.
If dip juice was an effective weapon, we'd be unstoppable.
When Diversity and Equality are more important than combat effectiveness, loss is inevitable.
Cooking a toy at 100 meters is NOT the same as presenting a serious threat at many nautical miles. Refractive and differactive errors are a PITA. I knew a couple of people who worked on the ABL-1 (747 with a big anti-missile laser in the nose). The problems are significant and not to be underestimated.
Ummm,? What dome?
This is why some of us ignore Alex Jones.
This is why some of us ignore Alex Jones.
I’d give this comment a big upvote or thumbs-up if I could. Well said.
To return to the era before the U.S. found herself involved in the Great War would be best for our country, imho.
You have brought back a long dormant memory from twenty years ago. Working tech support when I had a caller whose fax machine had broken because he was being bombarded by MASER rays. This was vital to be fixed because he was expecting a fax from Interpol at any moment, this all despite his best efforts to white wash his windows and wallpaper his house with tin foil. The then prime minister , Tony Bliar, was in league with space aliens. What a trippy phone call that was. Sadly I was not the person who booked the contemporaneous instore engineer repair for a laptop for Paul Gadd, better known as Gary Glitter, that resulted in his arrest. His advice to the engineer not to look at his files was thankfully disregarded and the rest is history
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