US military reveals laser can down drones, mortar rounds | Hacker News Reader

US military reveals laser can down drones, mortar rounds

news.yahoo.com

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If this system is actually combat ready any time in the near future, it has very large geopolitical consequences. The Korean peninsula has mutually assured destruction (and thus stability) because the South could destroy the North easily militarily (and with the help of the USA), but not before the North shelled Seoul (the South's capital and largest city) to the ground with artillery rounds.

Because Seoul is so close to the border, it has allowed the North to have a standoff with the south without needing a nuclear deterrence. The North will need to step up their second strike nuclear capabilities, or get strong assurances from China that China will step in in case of invasion if this defense system works and is deployed over Seoul.

No, because this is a low range system that can't stop high speed ballistic rounds. The South is looking at installing a conventional rocket interception system by the 2020 timeframe but it's effectiveness probably isn't enough to eliminate the threat posed by the North's massed artillery.

Wouldn't it change all modern warfare? Aren't mortars a big part of all land battles?

This may be easily countered by making the mortar round rotate faster. At list that has been the concern in the past. I guess that the laser has to heat the mortal shell so it exploded in mid ear. If the shell rotate slow it may be possible to heat a single area, but if it was to rotate fast you would need much more energy.

Such a system will probably not help Seoul much in an all-out war. According to this article [0][1] N.Korean may have as much as 13,000 artillery pieces positioned along that border, capable of delivering 10,000 rounds a minute. Any anti artillery system will be overwhelmed by thus numbers.

0: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/nor...

1: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/weapons/...

Not if you have 10,000 anti-artillery 100KW laser on vehicles. Let's say each one costs 1 million dollars, you would have to spend 10 billion dollars. Lets' say your operating costs are 3 billion a year (2 man crew at total cost of $100,000 each and another $100,000 for support, maintenance, and command, per unit). Over ten years the system would then cost 40 billion dollars, ($10B upfront + $3B/year x 10 years). This averages out to 4 billion a year. Per wikipedia, there are 25 million people in Seoul metropolitan area. This turns out to be $160/per person per year (or 43 cents per day per person).

You can bet the US government and the South Korean government are going to look seriously at that option.

Let's say my numbers are off by a factor of ten, and each unit costs $10M, and the support is $3M, and the total cost is $40B/year over 10 years: that's still completely worth it, at $1600 per person per year, especially if Korea pays $20B and the US pays the other $20B.

I imagine any rotational speed beyond a certain point is indistinguishable from other, higher rotational speeds in that you are basically heating the whole shell. I don't know how fast these shells rotate, but it seems like it would be hast enough that they are probably heating the whole shell anyway.

Additionally, if you are firing from close to the intended target, you may not have to deal with rotation at all.

This could be countered somewhat if you targeted the front end of the mortar.

Counter Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar (C-RAM) systems have been around for a while using guns rather than lasers - often based on CIWS from naval ships:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter_Rocket,_Artillery,_and_...

They don't stop you from getting hit the first time, though.

It's a huge part in terms of being able to demoralize troops, and soften up some dug in targets.

This only gives the South a further advantage right? But SK has no intent on invading/taking over NK. Indeed it seems like it could do nothing but hurt them.

I've been following the laser programs for a long time. It always seems they and the rail gun projects are 'any time now' sorts of technologies when presented by the contractor and 'maybe in a couple of decades' when talked about by the generals.

But its very true that having a working 100kW laser would provide troops with basic immunity from overhead threats, and smart projectiles would provide the ability to engage enemies in bunkers, making pretty much every aspect of 'conventional' warfare moot. And making everyone who can afford it, invulnerable to insurgent attack.

That leaves killing civilians as a proxy, which is the biggest irony of all high tech weaponry, when people want to attack and can't hit the troops, there are always the shopkeepers.

Question about laser weapons: how do they handle heat shielded shells? For example, I make a shell out of depleted uranium, then I coat it with a coating of strong heat insulator, then I coat it with a very reflective surface, then I "spin" it while I fire it. First the laser reflects, but even if enough energy gets to the absorption layer, how does it penetrate through the material? You would need gigawatts at the very least to have a physical force (since light particles have such little mass). Is it because even thermally resistive stuff burns at some temperature and the interface layer smokes off, no matter how thermally insulative?

You don't file kinetic penetrator shells on parabolic trajectories since they don't have explosive payloads. They're near-direct fire weapons.

Your problem is you've invested all this effort into making a heavy, heat-proof shell, but how much explosive and how much range are you going to get from such a thing?

Could a laser system be effective against small arms/sniper fire?

I recall an article in wired from ~2005 which talked about a tracking system that could track all bullets flying in the air over a vast area. Couple this with a laser and could you shoot pistol/rifle/sniper fire out of the air?

They have the tracking system, it's called ShotSpotter. There are domestic and military versions.

As for defense, its all about heat over time. A 100kW delivered into a small, say 10mm spot. Is very difficult to effectively reflect away, even if your mirror reflects 99% of the light energy away you are still getting a kilowatt of energy dumped into your reflector.

As for shooting bullets out of the sky, that might be a bit tougher. It works for mortar shells because they have an explosive you can set off, but turning a lead bullet travelling along into a blob of lead travelling along, not very effective. However, there is a paper from the Army Ballistics Lab that discusses reducing the effectiveness of bullets by putting divots into them. Basically if you can deform a bullet in flight it will begin tumbling and likely hit further from where it was aimed than it would have if it had not become deformed.

Of course an unsophisticated adversary with RPGs isn't going to be buying 'laser proof' RPGs any time soon :-)

Shhh... Not supposed to talk about that.

No reflective coating is going to be 100% effective against a close in range laser. At some point the thermal energy is going to warp any coating and it will lose its effectiveness. This is more of a concern against longer range missiles and mortars that can afford to be coated enough that it becomes difficult to disable the projectile at the longer range particularly with atmospheric interference.

How many targets could these hit at once? I imagine it will take a significantly non-zero length of time to hit and heat each shell with the laser, so to get past the lasers you need to know the average airtime of your shells, the number of lasers, and the amount of time it takes to kill each shell.

I mean, that would dramatically change warfare, but I don't think it is making anything moot.

This has been the single largest problem with the program to date, how often you can fire and how quickly you can acquire a target. Early tests with chemical lasers were basically one shot every 10 to 15 minutes. These lasers are better than that, but they still have duty cycle limits which makes it possible to just overwhelm them.

>"The experimental weapon, dubbed the High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL MD)"

I gotta give it to them for their ability to name projects.

I'd go for Light Ordnance Rapid Deflection High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator. Much scarier that way.

How about Directed Energy Advanced Technical High Barrier Equipped Affixed Machine (DEATHBEAM).

Protective Energy Neutralization Intradiction System

I wonder why they didn't stick another L word at the end... like High Energy Laser Light... to make it HELL MD. :)

I was thinking of Dan Simmon's coining of hellwhip for High Energy Laser WeaPon myself.

Mobile activation demonstrator. HELL MAD

budgetary reasons obviously... they couldn't afford the extra ink

Original source: http://www.army.mil/article/116740/Army_vehicle_mounted_lase...

http://www.army.mil/article/116740/Army_vehicle_mounted_lase...

The image on this link immediately conjures thoughts of unmanned warfare.

Also, if it can hit a mortar shell it should be at least the basis for something effective against snipers and hand grenade throwers.

It's getting too easy to fall into the war as a video game trap.

I'm surprised we aren't seeing these on ships, since those already have huge amounts of electricity available to potentially power them and already have point defense systems based on guns. Or maybe gun based systems work fine, but can't be used on land since 20mm gunfire that goes up is going to come down somewhere, and is much more likely to come down somewhere bad on land then on sea.

The US Navy is actually the one most interested in lasers, because the huge power generation capability of ships lends itself to their use quite nicely.

EDIT:

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/08/17658147-navy-unv...

Somewhat confused. I'm sure they demo'd shooting down mortars before.

This version does seem to be mobile though so perhaps thats the breakthrough.

Yeah, I think mounting it on a truck is the new part.

It's cool, I'll give them that....but is this really what the world needs? It's too bad these minds couldn't have worked on something that could actually benefit the Earth rather than something to destroy all who oppose the will of the United States!

It's a defensive laser weapon. While all defenses generally act as force multipliers in some capacity, it's a weapon which improves the ability of the US to efficiently defend itself.

The US military has been able to destroy all who oppose it since the 60s. That's not the point here.

What is the point here? That we have a new high-tech defensive system that is going to make our enemies give up? That our enemies won't figure out a way to counter this new defensive weapon? And then what? Repeat cycle until when?

I guess my point is that it seems we are on an endless cycle of "building a bigger gun" because we are scared of what the other guy has. We spend an outrageous amount of money on these ventures when instead we should be figuring out how to live on this Earth that has a finite number of resources. If we don't change our course than humanity is doomed - either we will run out of resources or everyone will be killed off using our latest and greatest defensive weapon.

I think Einstein says it best: "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

Great, americans who can pick on people now with even less fear of reprisal. That'll help.

Or other nations (say China) develop these systems and deploy them throughout their allied states. US air superiority is severely reduced.

It's never that simple w.r.t. defense tech. A system like this could be used to protect space vessels from incoming high-velocity objects, such as debris.

So what... apply a highly reflective coating to your drones/shells and that thing is worthless.

Try firing a shell with a reflective coating that doesn't get dirty, or outright destroyed, by the firing process.

One problem with lasers is that you have to keep their optics very clean because dirt becomes a heat absorber, which then deforms the optics, which then absorbs more heat...

You might be able to make it work with a missile, but it wouldn't be easy, and any such coating would require high technology to make and have to be actively maintained - can't fire dirty rounds. So, beyond the capability of militias, even if someone was supplying them with silvered rounds that worked.

And while you could definitely silver a drone, the problem is a drone isn't ordnance - you can just keep lasing it all day long till something fails or you hit a weak point (like the camera optics on the drone, which by definition terminate on an absorptive surface).

Bullets, shells sure, that might be a problem. But as for drones: If you know there is such a laser defence system, dispatch one or two silver drones (which maybe high in maintenance) destroy it. Then send the normal drones.

But again: it assumes you can build a drone which wouldn't be killed by the laser system.

Even if you silver the drones, they're not going to reflect the laser back at it - they'll just scatter it away. But a drone is a complicated surface - you've got optics, flaps etc. on it. And a silvered drone would reflect the sun incredibly brightly - it would be the easiest LADAR or just optics target to find in the sky, which means you wouldn't need to hit it with radar and reveal your position to shoot at it - and if the camera optics look at the laser, they'll be destroyed instantly.

Mirrors aren't perfectly reflective, even if they deflect the majority of the energy for a fraction of a second, they will absorb some of it, scorching and becoming less shiny.

You can use mirrors in laser optics because the beam is relatively diffuse at that end.

I believe the best defence against a laser is likely to be a matter of having a material with a high vaporisation energy for its mass and to spin your projectile very fast so that the laser has difficulty maintaining a single point of contact.

Or, you know, just fire your weapons in mass and hope to saturate their point defence systems. These things must cost like a million bucks each or something - mortar rounds must be pretty cheap. And war is, when you get down to it, an extension of logistics and thus to an extent of whether your system is cost effective.

There is a cool calculation in response to the top comment :)

And bullets can be stopped by vests, or tank armor, or a sandbag, so we might as well just stop using those as well. It ups the ante for anyone that wants to fight the US. That's really the point.

And I'm guessing that making your drones highly reflective reduces their stealth a bit.

Also, if hit by enough lasers, would the reflective coating remain effective?

A little known irony (at least in my opinion): missile/projectile defense systems like this can be destabilizing.

Downing mortars? How can you "down" something firmly standing on the ground?

Mortar rounds...

Well, someone edit the title, then!

It's sounds pretty cutting edge but a video instead of a still (why calling it a gallery?) would have been better.

Looking at these feats of technology and trends of early drones, lasers, processing, robotics, motor-limbs, 3D printing and other aspects of machine development it seems that the day is not far when the outreach of the Government is gonna get completely beyond people's ability to contain it.

I can imagine things like people not being allowed to use naked eyes while walking on the streets; force use of licensed Ocular Rifts to take a stroll instead. Driving cars taken off the list, use self-driving ones etc. Eventually shunt the squishy skin under a robot and rely only on the brain part of the human to do the mundane stuff.

Doesn't look great to me, but ...

>>but a video... would have been better.

Boeing released video earlier in the year [1]. Raytheon has had video of their's shooting mortars since 2008 [2] and drones in 2010 [3].

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_NrG3zcf1s

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrtJbsyvmSo

[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXfKbR0XRz0

> Looking at these feats of technology with early drones, lasers, information mining, robotic motor-limbs, 3D printing and other trends of machine development it seems that a day is not far when outreach of the Government is completely beyond people to contain 'em.

I find this point of view somewhat perplexing. The history of the last 1500 years or so has been a continuous, if not perfect, arc towards better societies. Technology reached the point long ago where it outstripped the ability of the people to contain government in a pure firefight. North Korea's government, for example, is managing to maintain total and absolute power using essentially 1950s technology. If it weren't for the other countries breathing down their necks, they could do it with WWI technology.

The basic problem at the root of most dystopian descriptions of the future is that they assume that government actors are not subject to game-theoretic considerations. If anything, technology makes the kind of governments presented in Brave New World or 1984 even less feasible, because with as destructive technology advances, it takes a much smaller faction of people within the government to topple the whole system.

People are hardwired to think that doom awaits us all whether it's from eternal damnation due to our sins against god, or due to totalitarian governments building dystopic futures on the back of advanced technology.

It's basic Joseph Campbell. The story is always the same, just with some of the words changed.

> People are hardwired to think that doom awaits us ...

I didn't say that doom awaits us all. But responses to my half complete comment do say something about what is likely, or what average people are afraid about. If we are to believe that we often meet our destiny on the road taken to avoid it, these refutations are a sincere indicator of the potential impact.

Let me come to what @rayiner said on the comment above yours.

From parent > If anything, technology makes the kind of governments presented in Brave New World or 1984 even less feasible, because with as destructive technology advances, it takes a much smaller fraction of people within the government to topple the whole system.

Absolutely! Smaller fraction of people will have higher power to execute, topple or rule. So it works both ways.

I do have some apprehensions about this new level of operation. New tech bases itself on deep understanding and application of human psychology, magnifies its wrath on the perpetrated empowers the perpetrator even more. But given any tech product for every x% of legitimate and intended use, there is y% of illegitimate and unintended use. For example, for each licensed gun that protects somebody in the US, there are a few versions of that same innovation that kill hundreds of people elsewhere.

I am not sure if y > x, but could be.

True that a gun is not responsible for the crime - it is the person vying to kill who is - but the gun definitely is a quicker and surer "solution" for people with that intent. It's harder to kill a man with a knife or bare hands, so a killer would prefer a gun.

IMO, petty violence will find a new complex and probably dreadful micro form with advent of weapons having more sci-fi. How this will impact Governments of future, some with money and even more dreadful resources, some with lesser money and more nastier leadership is yet to be seen.

Pew pew.

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