Economics Drives Ray-Gun Resurgence
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
You can imagine using fancy smoke generators (similar size/weight as the smoke grenade of today) that block all forms of light [2] further pushing smoke out of the surface for a larger protective bubble of scattering - perhaps activated when the ablative armor starts vaporizing and/or even being expelled through the armor's porous surface.
Remember that missiles, jet drones, etc. may only take seconds to close the distance to engage your laser system, so you only need this protection to last that long. Also, energy weapons point both ways, and are very well painted targets - analogous to the "anti-radiation missiles" [3] that home-in on radar emissions to guide them to destroy enemy radars.
In the ship example, a sticky smoke chemical targeted near the laser defense systems could blind or scatter them pretty effectively for hours before they could be cleared to make the systems combat operational again.
Anyway - just some ideas from a non-professional military nerd.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ablative_armor
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_screen (Ctrl+F for"VIRSS")
As for anti radiation missles. The 'directed' part of a directed energy weapon should make that much harder. Besides, a laser like this probably isn't firing constantly, whilst a radar station is emmiting constantly.
The original design target for the military lasers the US has been developing and refining for the last 40+ years is that they could deliver sufficient power on target such that no ordinary molecular material could withstand them as a matter of physics. That is a non-trivial objective but it looks like they’re starting to design practical systems that can approximately achieve that over some range.
Is plasma itself not reflective enough?
It will of course diffuse the energy a little bit.
But against a rocket you need a weapon that's much faster than a rocket. A laser (or a maser) reaches a rocket in negligible time, and may be very fast to retarget.
A rocket can't have ablative armor on the side, it will be blown away instantly. Landing space capsules have an ablative cover on the bottom. Also, landing capsules only decelerate, so they can afford to carry much more mass for evaporation than a rocket that needs to accelerate and maneuver.
The best a rocket can do us to become highly shiny. It's not as easy though to be shiny in a wider spectrum, from optical to deep IR or even sub-millimeter. I can imagine a multi-color ray gun :)
So I think ray guns are going to be more widespread as anti-missile defense systems, to intercept incoming rockets, warheads, and even shells. At least one actually exists (in Israel), and works.
The issue as highlighted by the situation in UA is that the highest-tech weapons cannot be deployed to the front lines where they are needed, as they might fall into the enemy's hands and be reverse engineered.
I am much more interested in hacked low-tech solutions. For example, walls of anti-air racing drone style quadcopters which can seek out an Iranian drone and just ram it. I am a little surprised that we have not seen these yet.
The best idea is to keep your rear echelons free from missile and drone harrassment, so you can focus your attention on the offensive.
Drone swarms are an interesting idea as well.
I am curious if the US defense industry is up to the task of delivering such systems at a cost level which can be implemented in places like UA.
Otherwise the most significant systems may be developed by other sources. This honestly scares me a bit, as given the alternatives, I am a fan of the predictability of Pax Americana.
The only problem is that this project is about 40 years behind in budget and political will in most European countries. It's a travesty which is being paid for in Ukrainian blood as we speak.
Quadcopters can’t carry much, are slow and can easily be stopped by a marksman with a rifle or a fixed SCG. They are a lot more useful for recon than as offensive weapons. Plus drones are a lot more nimble and can fly at height where a quadcopter becomes useless.
A moving quad is really hard to hit by gun, see the yearly DARPA challenges. A racing style quad is way more nimble than any winged aircraft I have ever flown or seen. A quad tasked with knocking out an Iranian winged style drone just needs to foul the propulsion, no need to carry anything aside from some trailing weed trimmer cord or durable plastic sheet. The only practical limit on quad max altitude is the FAA/DJI control limitation which is easily bypassed on my quad. Also, all the cruise missiles style winged drones fly relatively low.
The only real challenge is getting in the flight path of said Iranian drone.
I really hope someone is working on this as we have been told that we can take out freaking airliners with cheap drones, on accident, for a long time now.
A properly trained human with a military rifle can hit a quad easily. A FCS controlling a military gun does mince meat of them.
> A racing style quad is way more nimble than any winged aircraft I have every flown or seen.
That has zero carrying capacity.
Even then, you clearly haven’t flown or seen much if you are impressed by the manoeuvrability of a quad.
A fixed wing drone will just toy with it. Quads, even racing quads, are unbelievably slow. That’s inherent to their design.
> The only practical limit on quad max altitude is the FAA/DJI control limitation which are easily bypassed on my quad.
You are confused about what kind of altitude we are talking about here.
> The only real challenge is getting in the flight path of said Iranian drone.
The only real challenge to going to the Moon is jumping high enough.
There is a reason quads are not used offensively and it’s not because no one thought about it.
But this is usually not a frontline operation. Quads penetrate to the rear where ammo warehouses are, or find small groups preparing an ambush, etc. They are typically not used against moving targets, or heavily armored targets.
With all their shortcomings, quad copters have two advantages: they are much less optically prominent, and they can hover over a target, allowing the operator to hit it exactly at an opportune moment.
> A properly trained human with a military rifle can hit a quad easily. A FCS controlling a military gun does mince meat of them.
I honestly have no idea where you started on this. I was talking about defensive use of quads to foul the propulsion system of another aircraft.
> There is a reason quads are not used offensively and it’s not because no one thought about it.
Again, I am talking about AA, (Anti-Aircraft) weapons to take out incoming cruise missiles or Iranian drones. This is a DEFENSIVE tool.
However, you have to work pretty hard to avoid the fact that there are hundreds of videos of drones being used offensively in UA. Additionally, welcome to 2023 [0].
>You are confused about what kind of altitude we are talking about here.
There are dozens of videos of Iranian drones flying at altitudes where UA soldiers are shooting at them with rifles. It looks like the altitudes are sub 1000m, easily. Any quadcopter can hit an altitude of 1000m with a simple checkbox unchecked. The range is no problem, the air density is no problem. You good sir or madame, are the one who is confused on this topic, or at least thread. If I was previously unclear, I hope to have addressed that in this comment.
You were replying to one of my comment explaining that drones are not good for offensive action because they are vulnerable.
Also there is no point in trying to foul a propulsion system. That’s extremely unlikely to happen and there are simpler way to disable an aircraft (like just having it collide with something).
> There are dozens of videos of Iranian drones flying at altitudes where UA soldiers are shooting at them with rifles. It looks like the altitudes are sub 1000m, easily.
Low flying aircrafts which can be shot at are easy to disable with traditional canons. That’s cheap and effective. Why do you want to use quadcopters for that? That never was the point.
that's also what I thought but it doesn't seem to work that way. For the NLAW at least, all the missile does it to position the explosive charge above the tank. The missile doesn't hit the tank from the side, so the kinetic energy isn't contributing to the destruction.
So from a logical point of view, I assume you could position the same warhead with a slow moving consumer drone and get the same result.
https://www.economist.com/media-assets/image/20220122_WOC909...
That doesn't make sense for aircraft - even slow drones which are still a lot faster than tanks and move in 3 dimensions. Faster weapons means less time for the target to escape, which is always better even when guided missiles.
You ideally need something an order of magnitude faster.
Unlike a rocket, a drone can loiter, stay high enough above to be less detectable. The most successful anti-armor drone so far, the Bayraktar, is a large winged drone that shoots fast rockets downwards.
That’s an extremely wrong take.
The corner stone of missile defence is that the missile already has enough kinetic energy to destroy itself. The way anti-missile system works is by creating a cloud of obstacles close enough to the approaching missile that it can’t avoid some. That can be done with another missile exploding close by, a very large burst of bullets for a CIWS system or even a shell if you are trying to stop something slower.
That’s why efficient laser systems are so hard to actually make. They can’t use the kinetic energy of their target.
Also, for an offensive weapon, the munition should move fast enough to reach a moving target. It should reach the target quickly enough to make evasive maneuvering harder, and to not be destroyed by protective fire en route.
(It might be useful in space, where you'd be creating something like a comet's halo, which separates from the body on a much longer timescale.)
The newbie argument is always to point out how wasteful it is to do that.
But every time people have to point out that Ukraine's power going out for 6hrs or some civilian loss of life or protecting some military deployment zone is way more expensive/valuable in the long run.
Asymmetric warfare always requires a more expensive solution. Until affordable solutions are adapted to the problem.
That's missing the point. The point is that you will run out of $1m missiles much faster than the ennemy will run out of $100k projectiles (I think the iranian drones are even cheaper than that). It's not just money, it's supply.
The whole reason it's called asymmetric is that you're not going blow -for-blow, so you have to optimize for different things like information, allies, and maximizing hitting power per soldier
That depends. Even though there is a 10:1 gap to overcome it is still very well possible that the wealthier country (presumably the one wielding the $1m missiles) is going to be more than 10:1 wealthier and that to them the missiles appear cheaper than the $100k projectiles do to their opponent.
They actually cost $25k apiece. Cheapest Soviet era SAM costs ~$500,000. Any Western counterpart to them costs $1m and above.
Things are how they are now, you can overwhelm your foe entirely by raining cheap Iranian drones on them. And getting your enemy destroy them with SAMs looks much more devastating to your enemy than you actually hitting your targets...
What could you do short of nuclear strikes to get past a wall of lasers taking out all of your missiles and vehicles?
And it’s so cheap to fire them, how could you come up with something that could beat it before you ran out of money?
And how long before we do have MW lasers powerful enough to take out a nuclear RV? Maybe then tungsten rods from orbit finally make sense? But you could probably just destroy the satellite from the ground at that point.
Lasers.
Lots of men on foot and lots of dumb bullets. The laser shots are cheap, but the laser trucks are expensive.
Interesting how that seems to work out.
Mirrors?
Lasers require targeting.
Absent or confusing that, precision weapons start to quickly degrade air defenses.
The same goes for shiny mirrors, smoke, etc. By the time you're finished you've got a million dollar attacker.
I just find it funny that the article contradicts its own headline.
Use lasers whenever possible and resort to expensive AA assets only when necessary (stormy weather, or thick fog).