Thread 64236069

I've not really seen this discussed before, and it seems like it might be an interesting topic. With the advent of laser weapons/directed energy weapons (DEWs) entering service around the world over the next few years, primarily in point defense applications, it seems inevitable that there will be both technical and tactical development in the area of trying to harden munitions, drones, aircraft, etc. against DEW interception.

How would you harden drones, missiles, aircraft, etc. against these big boi lasers?
Do you make everything shiny and chrome and hope to reflect enough of the energy?
Ablative heat shields that last long enough to let your munition hit the target?
Lasers of your own to fuck their targeting systems in return?

Every single DEW system is going to be accompanied with at least one hard kill kinetic system for layered defense.

>>64236069 (OP)
Reflective and armored missiles, yes
Make them fly directly at the laser (nose extra armored)
Make them rotate (always hit a different spot)
Make them fly extra fast
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Kinetic_Energy_Missile
When all else fails, overwhelm it with targets
>Lasers of your own to fuck their targeting systems in return?
Unless you have direct line of sight, from ground vehicle to ground vehicle, your own ground-based laser won't get to it. Rarely going to happen with future engagement ranges.

>>64236069 (OP)
This is part of the reason why hypersanic cruise missiles are becoming a hot investment. Assuming that your OTH detection has picked it up and you're ready to to start frying it as soon as it pops over your horizon ~35km out, you have 12 seconds before it impacts at mach 8 compared to ~116 seconds for an Exocet.

>>64236069 (OP)
>Do you make everything shiny and chrome and hope to reflect enough of the energy?
buys you a few seconds at most. you know we can cut shiny metal with lasers, right?

>Ablative heat shields that last long enough to let your munition hit the target?
might work a little longer but adds weight and doesn't help with weak spots like sensor packages, propellers etc.


But lasers are expensive and powerhungry. So try saturating them.

>boat
just use a torpedo

>>64236108
The Stryker has always been pretty, but it's downright beautiful with this paintjob and loadout.

Interesting to me that nobody has pointed out one of laser's strongest advantages- scaling.
Making 90000 Patriot systems will make the Treasury cry when it's made and every time it's used. Making 90000 Laser Defense Systems will make the Treasury cry when you first make it, but actually operating them costs pennies and they can fire pretty much as long as there is power for the system, (which in this scenario is included in the price of the LDS, you consider the missiles or ammo for AA part of the system so why not power sources for energy weapons?)
So yeah overwhelming tactics might work for one lone ADS, but there is a 0% chance that there will only be one in a given area once their production ramps up and they start working their way into even small detachments. I unironically think that the idea of dirt cheap drone swarms will be a non-starter unless WWII happens RIGHT NOW simply because the hard counter to cheap drones is right there in the OP.
>But why not make shielded drones?
Then they are no longer cheap.

>>64236923
Of course a PAC-3 interceptor is not going to be used against a drone but your thoughts about scaling do apply.

>>64236174
I was thinking more along the lines of if you had a dazzler or lower powered laser built right into the cruise missile/drone, even if it's only enough stored energy for a quick burst.
Another thought might be if you could cover the missile in retroreflectors? if they're made with accurate enough tolerances and good enough reflective surfaces, they should directly bounce the laser back to the emitter minus whatever minimal amount of energy is absorbed by the mirrors.

>>64236923
> just fight a war long enough so the weapon pays for itself
not a good sales pitch

>>64236069 (OP)
Make the munition fast so there is less time for a laser to deliver energy and spinning so that energy is spread out over a larger area.
I think we'll start to see missiles that spin up in the terminal phase and go ballistic to spread the energy out.

Lasers still don't work IRL because they're not powerful enough, but once we hit the tipping point things will tip FAST. The first megawatt operational laser is going to completely fuck up the status quo because it's going to be impossible to get anything through it.
>le saturation
works in concept until there are five or ten lasers coordinating together to take out hundreds/thousands of incoming drones/missiles across a whole region. We will in the future be able to saturate a theatre with enough lasers to render anything that flies a complete non-entity, at which point it's lasers fighting tanks or squaddies trying to sneak in with anti-material kinetics.

Dronecucks have no idea what's coming for them.

>>64237976
>trip your breaker
nothing personnel kid

>the retard keeps conflating the progress in SSL with lasers in general
Not even surprising.

Daily reminder multi-megawatt class lasers have been a thing during more than 40 years.

>>64237821
>Literally says right there in the post "unless war starts RIGHT NOW"
>Right now the US is not at war
>This would imply that lasers are being stockpiled before a war breaks out
What part of "lasers are being purchased and put in use right now" and "lasers will be scaling up before war unless war starts right now" did you not understand? Are you dense or something? Retarded? Have some extra chromosomes maybe?

>Take torpedo(How God intended ships to be sunk)
>Attach it to a missile
>Shoot it at enemy boat
Lasers dont work in water

>>64236069 (OP)
nothing counters sabot

>>64236923
That's exactly why everyone's racing for drone systems right now, the purchase is expensive but long term it solves the cost asymmetry problem of cheap drones versus modern interception.

>>64236069 (OP)
Why fight at all when you can just fuck with their money and dump niggers and jeets into their population, and have them self destruct.

>>64236069 (OP)
Laser weapons will not reach maturity until fusion reactors can be made and small enough to be carried in a ship or vehicle. Until then, they're optics-blinding at most.
>bbbbut but but muh speed of light
Go out at night and hold a torchlight. Try to keep the beam on a moving target. The further away the target, the bigger the beam deviation due to jitters. Now factor in the target is jinkig around. How fast your arm and wrists can move is a limiting factor too. You need to keep the beam on the target long enough for it to cut through the target because as mentioned, the power output is not enough until we get fusion reactors.
>muh batteries
Sure, for one shot and then hours of recharge. Might as well mount 50 cal machineguns.

>>64238877
Mm. Yeah.

If you use a combination of these websites,
https://www.kvantlasers.sk/pages/laser-mpe-calculator
https://buildlog.net/cnc_laser/laser_calcs.htm

You can see that even at 1 megawatt, a 0.5 mrad laser aperture only provides 40 watt/cm2 at a distance of 4km. While 40 watt is indeed a lot of power, target destroying, that's eight to ten times what most of the current laser systems have.
And at a "mere" 4 kilometer. 10 is out of the question.

>>64238003
>Daily reminder multi-megawatt class lasers have been a thing during more than 40 years.
Yeah, in the lab. Not in any sort of form factor approaching a useful and deployable weapon.
>what about muh YAL-1?
I said useful

>>64236069 (OP)
The answer, gentlemen, is undesirables.
Place undesirables between lasers and thing you do not want lasered.
If it sounds like I'm saying "launch ballistic niggers at the laser" well... what a world full of coincidental facts. Ratchet strapping 3 "people" or indians or something to a big missile isn't much extra weight.

>>64238921
>Who needs concentration camps when you have laser ablation camps

>>64236069 (OP)
Reflective materials don't work against high powered lasers. Better option is materials with a high vaporization energy and low thermal conductivity, like boron.

>>64238877
See the YAL-1, its COIL laser was chemical driven, without the need of external power
plus, many lasers operate in pulsed mode, meaning that the energy is delivered almost instantaneously, you don't have to wait for the target to melt, it vaporizes with such violence that it explodes. yes, the metal explodes.
last, the problem of beam scattering is mitigated by shaping the reflector in realtime
the real limitation of laser is the cost

>>64236174
>When all else fails, overwhelm it with targets
needing to fire dozens, if not hundreds, of projectiles at a single target to ensure a hit is a pretty surefire admission that the defensive capabilities of the laser cannot be overcome

>>64238924
If the core merit to human activity is attracting energy, boy you are fuckin Ghandi if you've become ablative laser armor. It's a favor my man.

>>64238877
>Try to keep the beam on a moving target
its much easier to keep a beam focused on a target than it is to to follow a target with a second projectile and continuously change course
a missile has to keep its eye on the target and continuously move its flaps to keep it on center for however long it takes to catch up to the target
many missiles were laser guided to begin with, so this is pretty tacit acknowledgement that you can keep a beam on target for several seconds

>the power output is not enough until we get fusion reactors
>Sure, for one shot and then hours of recharge
lasers are powered by generators, not batteries
generators are actually quite efficient, a 200kw laser costs less than a dollar per shot

> Might as well mount 50 cal machineguns.
a laser has several advantages over bullets
no noise except for the generator running, pin point accuracy, and the projectile does not need to self-destruct when it misses
for shooting down drones in an urban area, this is actually ideal

but also a bit of a false dichotomy, laser weapons are expected to slot into existing multi-weapon systems >>64236108, so you have both lasers and missiles at your disposal

>>64238918
All of them were cheaper than a shell per shot.
All of them were tested in the lab and in mobile platforms.
The GDI was based on common chemicals more practical to scale up than CO2 lasers.