Laser Weapon Stops Truck in Its Tracks — from a Mile Away

[mick silver]

Laser Weapon Stops Truck in Its Tracks — from a Mile Awayhttp://l.yimg.com/a/i/us/nws/p/livesci_logo_73.jpg (http://www.livescience.com/) By Elizabeth Howell March 7, 2015 9:45 AM




http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/ERcCDiL91zpeud4eUhtUdQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTM3NztweG9mZj01MDtweW 9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz02NzA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_US/News/LiveScience.com/athena-laser-weapon.jpeg1425588008 (http://news.yahoo.com/laser-weapon-stops-truck-tracks-mile-away-144508504.html#)
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Lockheed Martin's ATHENA laser weapon system stopped a truck by disabling the vehicle's engine.









A laser weapon made by Lockheed Martin can stop a small truck dead in its tracks from more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) away, the company announced this week.
The laser (http://www.livescience.com/46288-military-laser-weapons.html) system, called ATHENA (short for Advanced Test High Energy Asset), is designed to protect military forces and key infrastructure, Lockheed Martin representatives said. During a recent field test, the laser managed to burn through and disable a small truck's engine.
The truck was not driving normally; it was on a platform with the engine and drivetrain running, Lockheed Martin representatives said. The milestone is the highest power ever documented by a laser weapon of its type, according to the company. Lockheed is expected to conduct additional tests of ATHENA. [7 Technologies That Transformed Warfare (http://www.livescience.com/41321-military-war-technologies.html)]
"Fiber-optic lasers are revolutionizing directed energy systems," Keoki Jackson, Lockheed Martin's chief technology officer, said in a statement (http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/news/press-releases/2015/march/ssc-space-athena-laser.html). "This test represents the next step to providing lightweight and rugged laser-weapon systems (http://www.livescience.com/49090-pew-pew-navy-laser-blasts-targets-in-air-on-sea-raw-video.html) for military aircraft, helicopters, ships and trucks."
The ATHENA system could be a boon for the military because the laser can stop ground-based adversaries from interfering with operations long before they reach the front lines, company representatives said.
The laser weapon (http://www.livescience.com/49099-laser-weapon-system-ready.html) is based on a similar system called Area Defense Anti-Munitions (also developed by Lockheed Martin), which focuses on airborne threats. The 30-kilowatt Accelerated Laser Demonstration Initiative — the laser in ATHENA itself — was also made by Lockheed.
The recent test was the first time that such a laser was tested in the field, the company said. The Accelerated Laser Demonstration Initiative is a multifiber laser created through a technique called spectral beam combining. Essentially, the system takes multiple lasers and mashes them into one. Lockheed representatives said this beam "provides greater efficiency and lethality than multiple individual 10-kilowatt lasers used in other systems."
Last year, Lockheed also highlighted laser defense capabilities in a demonstration test between two boats that were located about 1 mile apart. The vessels, described as "military-grade," were stopped less than 30 seconds after the laser burned through the boat's rubber hull.
Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace (https://twitter.com/howellspace/), or Live Science on Twitter @livescience (http://twitter.com/#!/LiveScience). We're also on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/livescience) & Google+ (https://plus.google.com/101164570444913213957/posts). Original article on Live Science (http://www.livescience.com/50064-laser-weapon-stops-truck.html).


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Politics & Government
Lockheed Martin
laser weapon


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[skid]

I can see some type of reflective coating dispersing the laser beam or potentially aiming it back to the source...

[7th trump]

I can see some type of reflective coating dispersing the laser beam or potentially aiming it back to the source...

Theres nothing you can put on your vehicle to stop that amount of light.
Most of it, if not all, is in the infrared range.

Even the high reflective mirrors on the laser machines at work that cut steel have to be cooled...and even those have to be replaced with age.
I've seen brand new mirrors go bad after about 2 minutes.....just a finger print on the mirror will destroy the new mirror in seconds.

You don't want to be the target...it'll cook you all the way through in seconds.....hope the cops are good at aiming for the vehicle and not you.

[EE_]

Chrome might get you home?

http://img.diytrade.com/cdimg/1293514/27052315/0/1342775915/Car_Chrome_Mirror_Vinyl_Film_For_Car_Body.jpg

[Horn]

What kind of a guy suggests chromium on a Silver forum?

[monty]

http://gold-silver.us/forum/showthread.php?82391-New-L%E1ser-Melts-Pickup-Engine

[Cebu_4_2]

My kid was just making another video with his big TV lens, forgot what it's called at the moment but he melted a 1/4" chunk of steel stock in less than a minute. I will ask him to burn up a mirror when he gets a chance and link it.

[Cebu_4_2]

http://gold-silver.us/forum/showthread.php?82391-New-L%E1ser-Melts-Pickup-Engine

LOL, sucks that your post got Zero... might be the time you posted it. There are a couple duplicates but I couldn't find the originals. I think the point is the point though.

[7th trump]

My kid was just making another video with his big TV lens, forgot what it's called at the moment but he melted a 1/4" chunk of steel stock in less than a minute. I will ask him to burn up a mirror when he gets a chance and link it.

Yeah...I've seen the video's and was astonished by the amount of power the sun has in that size lens.
A friend is going to incorporate an old big screen tv for smelting aluminum.

It gave me an idea or two for a solar oven and even solar heat for the house.
You can heat up steel tubes and blow air through them to heat the house on sunny days much faster than conventional furnaces.
Theres even someone using granite counter tops to store heat after the sun goes down....apparently granite works very well to store heat.

Fiber optic lasing is some wicked stuff. Here at work they just installed 4 new fiber optic laser cutters and they have to make the beam wider than the fiber before cutting the metal because if you don't you cannot get the metal pieces from the skeleton.
50 micron beam is too small to cut metal so they focus it wider.
Fiber optics lasers can cut 1/2 steel with ease whereas the older style of gas beam is almost as twice as slow.

[Glass]

ok, so far it's burning through some sheet metal, aluminum and rubber. It's a start.

[Glass]

The original testing was on the Ponce. Now they are going to kick it up a notch.


US Navy To Begin Testing Powerful 150-Kilowatt Laser Weapon System

It's always good advice to be preparing for the future, especially in the case of the United States military as the US continuously provokes (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-27/china-warns-world-america-greatest-threat-peace-stability) other nations.
As Popular Science reported (http://www.popsci.com/watch-navy-fire-laser-persian-gulf) back in 2014, the US Navy had developed a 30-kilowatt laser and mounted it on the USS Ponce, which was stationed in the Persian Gulf at the time. The laser was part of the US Navy's new Laser Weapon System (LaWS) program, and with a videogame-like controller it had been successfully tested.


In this video, the laser will engage and destroy multiple targets including a drone in mid-air.

"Laser weapons are powerful, affordable and will play a vital role in the future of naval combat operations. We ran this particular weapon, a prototype, through some extremely tough paces, and it locked on and destroyed the targets we designated with near-instantaneous lethality." Rear Adm. Matthew L. Klunder said at the time.


Can't embed the video. See link.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-27/us-navy-begin-testing-powerful-150-kilowatt-laser-weapon-system

[7th trump]

You can say good-bye to any threat with that laser when its coupled to a super computer for tracking and aiming.
Not even the sun burn super sonic missile from the Russians will get past that thing.

Like I say about modern warfare...its all obsolete when it comes to this type of technology.
USA is number 1...and always will be number 1.
Russia is a fool to think their technology of TOTO dancing in the sky will win a battle. One blast from one of these and out go the lights...threat neutralized.

They admit to tracking UFO's and even these are in danger of this technology. You cant out run light.

[midnight rambler]

You can say good-bye to any threat with that laser when its coupled to a super computer for tracking and aiming.
Not even the sun burn super sonic missile from the Russians will get past that thing.

Like I say about modern warfare...its all obsolete when it comes to this type of technology.
USA is number 1...and always will be number 1.
Russia is a fool to think their technology of TOTO dancing in the sky will win a battle. One blast from one of these and out go the lights...threat neutralized.

They admit to tracking UFO's and even these are in danger of this technology. You cant out run light.

Iran has something like 6,000 subsonic Exocet missiles. No matter *how* 'badass' a weapon system is it CAN be overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of a heavy salvo, indeed even a salvo of subsonic Exocets.


You cant out run light. (sic)

No real need to 'outrun light' if one has extra-dimensional capability (amongst other capabilities). lol

[7th trump]

Hahahaha....like iran or any country will spend their entire inventory in massive salvo's.....................only a fool will think like that.


Thanks for the laugh!
Russia is too poor to develop technology to this magnitude. They are years behind and will be like taking a musket to an M16 fight.

[collector]

LOL - Russia is far behind the US

Anyone thinking Obama or Clinton's military will destroy Putin's progress is delusional at best


http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/11/13/aegis-fail-in-black-sea-ruskies-burn-down-uss-donald-duck/
Russian Sukhoi Su -24 with the newest jamming complex paralyzed in the Black Sea the most modern American combat management system “Aegis” installed on the destroyer “USS Donald Cook”. Pavel Zolotarev, Deputy Director, Institute of USA and Canada, shares details about this version which is being actively discussed in the Russian media and by bloggers.

[midnight rambler]

If I were an adversary of Uncle Satan I'd have no problem using 5% of a 6,000 missile inventory* to take out a flattop. It would be a bargain.

*the Iranians don't have only Exocets they're also got a plentiful inventory of supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles

[7th trump]

LOL - Russia is far behind the US

Anyone thinking Obama or Hillary's military will destroy Putin's progress is delusional at best


http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/11/13/aegis-fail-in-black-sea-ruskies-burn-down-uss-donald-duck/
Russian Sukhoi Su -24 with the newest jamming complex paralyzed in the Black Sea the most modern American combat management system “Aegis” installed on the destroyer “USS Donald Cook”. Pavel Zolotarev, Deputy Director, Institute of USA and Canada, shares details about this version which is being actively discussed in the Russian media and by bloggers.



So they have a jamming device. Who doesnt?
But only one country has the future of weapons....the US. Put one of those in a satellite. It doesnt recoil so its perfect for space taking out enemy satellites. Russia is probably shitting its pants knowing we have this technology...China too!
Knock out russian eyes in the sky and they are blind. Can you imagine the damage caused by one of these in low orbit to ground targets?
Real stupid of dumb fuck russia to show that off now. I bet they wont be able to do that again.
Like russia we have spy's also.

[Glass]

I read an article in the last couple days which was a report or speech given by a head US General. I think it was given at TED but might be wrong.

Basically it was a run down of Russian battlefield defense tech. We've seen some of it here. Things like the vehicle systems that confuse inbound shoulder fired missles, causing them to suddenly spiral off into the sky. Also EM systems that overload electrical fuses.

Can't find the link now.

But basically the US needs this tech, because it could enable them to leapfrog the Russian defense tech. The problem is, they need ir right now. Not in 1 or 2 years time. Now..

If I can track the story down, I'll link it back here. Or anyone else read it, please link.

[mamboni]

No doubt a 100 MegaWatt laser adjusted by digital servos and controlled by a super computer with instantaneous coordinates would be the supreme weapon, both defensive and offensive. But range will need to be at least 100 miles to be of tactical value. And how long does the laser have to train on the target to achieve destruction? If it's more than a second or two then the system will have latency.

[7th trump]

No doubt a 100 MegaWatt laser adjusted by digital servos and controlled by a super computer with instantaneous coordinates would be the supreme weapon, both defensive and offensive. But range will need to be at least 100 miles to be of tactical value. And how long does the laser have to train on the target to achieve destruction? If it's more than a second or two then the system will have latency.

It appears you dont know much about the power of lasers.
By all means explain your why you think 100 miles is necessary and anything more than a second or two is latency?
A repairman for Cincinnati lasers once told me that he had forgotten to put on a mirror on a laser metal cutter he was calibrating and for three short seconds and 60 ft away the laser turned cinder block into molten rock about 3/4 of an inch deep. And this was around 600 watts of power of unfocused light from a CO2 laser that was about 2 inches in diameter.
Now you can easily go from a few hundred watts to kilowatts by means of q-switching the laser. Fiber optics has come a long way also so the light (kilowatts) is and can be all focus done to a few microns in diameter and fired. The light can remain concentrated for long distances using fiber optics. I'd imagine this kind of fiber is single mode fiber vs multimode.

Note:Regarding the resident commy bastard. Isnt it funny how US made weapons are good enough to sink a world class US flat top but are worthless pieces of technology when up against anything russian....and I mean anything russian when it come to midnight
Anybody else see the pathetic nature of midnight's pro communist bullshit?

Midnight rambler.....what a goat roper!
Hey midnight...your moms calling. She wants you to clean her basement. Apparently you're a slob!

[Glass]

Found it.


How The Pentagon Is Preparing For A Tank War With Russia

Reactive armor and cross-domain fire capabilities are just some of the items on the Army’s must-have list.
When Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster briefs, it’s like Gen. Patton giving a TED talk — a domineering physical presence with bristling intellectual intensity.
These days, the charismatic director of the Army’s Capabilities Integration Center is knee-deep in a project called The Russia New Generation Warfare (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/moscow-pentagon-us-secret-study-213811?o=1) study, an analysis of how Russia is re-inventing land warfare in the mud of Eastern Ukraine. Speaking recently at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., McMaster said that the two-year-old conflict had revealed that the Russians have superior artillery firepower, better combat vehicles, and have learned sophisticated use of UAVs for tactical effect. Should U.S. forces find themselves in a land war with Russia, he said, they would be in for a rude, cold awakening.

“We spend a long time talking about winning long-range missile duels,” said McMaster. But long-range missiles only get you through the front door. The question then becomes what will you do when you get there.
“Look at the enemy countermeasures,” he said, noting Russia’s use of nominally semi-professional forces who are capable of “dispersion, concealment, intermingling with civilian populations…the ability to disrupt our network strike capability, precision navigation and timing capabilities.” All of that means “you’re probably going to have a close fight… Increasingly, close combat overmatch is an area we’ve neglected, because we’ve taken it for granted.”
So how do you restore overmatch? The recipe that’s emerging from the battlefield of Ukraine, says McMaster, is more artillery and better artillery, a mix of old and new.

Cross-Domain Fires
“We’re out-ranged by a lot of these systems and they employ improved conventional munitions, which we are going away from. There will be a 40- to 60-percent reduction in lethality in the systems that we have,” he said. “Remember that we already have fewer artillery systems. Now those fewer artillery systems will be less effective relative to the enemy. So we need to do something on that now.”
To remedy that, McMaster is looking into a new area called “cross domain fires,” which would outfit ground units to hit a much wider array of targets. “When an Army fires unit arrives somewhere, it should be able to do surface-to-air, surface-to-surface, and shore-to-ship capabilities. We are developing that now and there are some really promising capabilities,” he said.

While the full report has not been made public, “a lot of this is available open source” said McMaster, “in the work that Phil Karber has done, for example.”
Karber, the president of the Potomac Foundation (http://www.thepotomacfoundation.org/), went on a fact-finding mission to Ukraine last year, and returned with the conclusion that the United States had long overemphasized precision artillery on the battlefield at the expense of mass fires. Since the 1980s, he said last October, at an Association for the United States Army event, the U.S. has given up its qualitative edge, mostly by getting rid of cluster munitions.
(http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/fascam.htm)
Munitions have advanced incredibly since then. One of the most terrifying weapons that the Russians are using on the battlefield are thermobaric warheads, weapons that are composed almost entirely of fuel and burn longer and with more intensity than other types of munitions.

“In a 3-minute period…a Russian fire strike wiped out two mechanized battalions [with] a combination of top-attack munitions and thermobaric warheads,” said Karber. “If you have not experienced or seen the effects of thermobaric warheads, start taking a hard look. They might soon be coming to a theater near you.”

Karber also noted that Russian forces made heavy and integrated use of electronic warfare. It’s used to identify fire sources and command posts and to shut down voice and data communications. In the northern section, he said, “every single tactical radio [the Ukrainian forces] had was taken out by heavy Russian sector-wide EW.” Other EW efforts had taken down Ukrainian quadcopters. Another system was being used to mess with the electrical fuses on Ukrainian artillery shells, ”so when they hit, they’re duds,” he said.
Karber also said the pro-Russian troops in Donbas were using an overlapping mobile radar as well as a new man-portable air defense that’s “integrated into their network and can’t be spoofed by decoys” or flares.

Combat Vehicles and Defenses
The problems aren’t just with rockets and shells, McMaster said. Even American combat vehicles have lost their edge.
“The Bradley [Fighting Vehicle] is great,” he said, but “what we see now is that our enemies have caught up to us. They’ve invested in combat vehicles. They’ve invested in advanced protective systems and active protective systems. We’ve got to get back ahead on combat vehicle development.”
If the war in Eastern Ukraine were a real-world test, the Russian T-90 tank passed with flying colors. The tank had seen action in Dagestan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Dagestan) and Syria, but has been particularly decisive in Ukraine. The Ukrainians, Karber said, “have not been able to record one single kill on a T-90. They have the new French optics on them.[I] The Russians actually designed them to take advantage of low light, foggy, winter conditions.”

What makes the T-90 so tough? For starters, explosive reactive armor. When you fire a missile at the tank, its skin of metal plates and explosives reacts. The explosive charge clamps the plates together so the rocket can’t pierce the hull.

But that’s only if the missile gets close enough. The latest thing in vehicle defense is active protection systems, or APS, which automatically spot incoming shells and target them with electronic jammers or just shoot them down. “It might use electronics to ‘confuse’ an incoming round, or it might use mass (outgoing bullets, rockets) to destroy the incoming round before it gets too close,” Army director for basic research Jeff Singleton told Defense One in an email.

The T-90’s active protective system is the Shtora-1 countermeasures suite. “I’ve interviewed Ukrainian tank gunners,” said Karber. “They’ll say ‘I had my [anti-tank weapon] right on it, it got right up to it and then they had this miraculous shield. An invisible shield. Suddenly, my anti-tank missile just went up to the sky.’”

The Pentagon is well behind some other militaries on this research. Israeli forces declared its Trophy APS operational in 2009, integrated it onto tanks since 2010, and has been using it to protect Israeli tank soldiers (http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/idf-armor-defense-system-foils-attack-on-tank-for-first-time-1.346526) from Hamas rockets ever since.
Singleton said the United States is looking to give its Abrams tank the Trophy, which uses buckshot-like guns to down incoming fire without harming nearby troops.
The Army is also experimenting with the Israeli-made Iron Curtain APS for the Stryker, which works similarly, and one for the Bradley that has yet to be named. Raytheon has a system called the Quick Kill that uses a scanned array radar and a small missile to shoot down incoming projectiles.

Anti-Drone Defenses
One of the defining features (http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2015/03/ukraine-tomorrows-drone-war-alive-today/107085/?oref=search_Drone%20war%20of%20tomorrow) of the war in Eastern Ukraine is the use of drones by both sides, not to target high-value terrorists but to direct fire in the same way forces used the first combat aircraft in World War I.

The past has a funny way of re-inventing itself, says McMaster.
“I never had to look up in my whole career and say, ‘Is it friendly or enemy?’ because of the U.S. Air Force. We have to do that now,” said McMaster. “Our Air Force gave us an unprecedented period of air supremacy…that changed the dynamics of ground combat. Now, you can’t bank on that.”
Pro-Russian forces use as many as 16 types of UAVs for targeting.

Russian forces are known to have “a 90-kilometer [Multiple Launch Rocket System (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_Launch_Rocket_System)] round, that goes out, parachute comes up, a UAV pops out, wings unfold, and they fly it around, it can strike a mobile target” said Karber, who said he wasn’t sure it had yet been used in Ukraine.
Karber’s track record for accuracy is less than perfect, as writer Jeffrey Lewis has pointed out (http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/19/say-it-aint-so-phil-ukraine-russia-open-source-analysis/) in Foreign Policy. At various points, he has inflated estimates of China’s nuclear arsenal from some 300 weapons (based on declassified estimates) to 3,000 squirreled away in mysterious tunnels, a claim that many were able to quickly debunk. In 2014, he helped pass photos to Sen. James Inhofe of the Senate Armed Services Committee that purported to be recent images of Russian forces inside Ukraine. It turned out they were AP photographs from 2008.

“In the haste of running for the airport and trying to respond to a last-minute request with short time fuse,” Karber said by way of explanation, “I made the mistake of believing we were talking about the same photos … and it never occurred to me that the three photos of Russian armor were part of that package or being considered.”

No Foolproof Technological Solution
All of these technologies could shape the future battlefield, but none of them are silver bullets, nor do they, in McMaster’s view, offset the importance of human beings in gaining territory, holding territory, and changing facts on the ground to align with mission objectives.
As the current debate about the authorization for the use of force in Iraq shows, the commitment of large numbers of U.S. ground troops to conflict has become a political nonstarter for both parties. In lieu of a political willingness to put troops in the fight, multi-sectarian, multi-ethnic forces will take the lead, just as they are doing now in Iraq and Syria.

“What’s necessary is political accommodation, is what needs to happen, if we don’t conduct operations and plan campaigns in a way that gets to the political accommodation,” he said. “The most important activity will be to broker political ceasefires and understandings.”

Sometimes that happens at the end of a tank gun...


It was over here: ZH (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-26/how-pentagon-preparing-tank-war-russia)