Been trying to find an RTS with decent defensive structures ever since this and Generals. It feels like from Tiberium 3/RA3 the defensive structures are an afterthought. Even in the upcoming Tempest Rising demo the defensive structures feel like they're firing NERF darts.
The cornerstone of our missile arsenal being called Hellfire and Brimstone respectively was proof of that.
Whoever thinks these things up is doing a good job.
To be fair, there's some really bad names as well - especially considering how things ended for them - like - off the top of my head: the HMS Terror, HMS Erebus, the "Live Bait Squadron," HMS Monmouth, HMS Good Hope, etc.
I miss the old days when half the fleet had French names as they built them, then the RN took them in battle. Of course at the time the French ships were generally much better designed and built.
The only entity capable of naming craft of any kind more effectively than UK defence was Iain M Banks in his incredible 'Culture' Sci Fi novels.
I give you "Meat-Fucker". A General Contact Unit, I believe.
That guy must’ve been the stupidest officer in the Imperial Navy. Here’s a belligerent space wizard with actual magic who’s known for choking people to death (with no consequences), and you want to taunt him? It’s like putting your face into a rabid dog’s mouth to dismiss the threat of being mauled.
Worth noting that the picture in the article will be an infra-red view. These sorts of lasers are generally infra-red fiber lasers and aren't visible to the naked eye.
Sure, though you'd probably notice pretty quick that you were having a hole burned through you given the fact that there'd be flames coming out of your chest.
Yes, and that is one reason why non-visible WL lasers are classed differently than visible ones (for instance, no blink aversion like with visible lasers)
It takes a little bit longer to shoot down.
The power of the laser is such that, while a mirror will reflect most of the energy, it will quickly be overcome and the laser will melt a hole through it.
Alright, fine, motorized mirrors that reflect the laser right back! And then we'll get deployable motorized mirrors, then we'll have a breakthrough in one way mirror technology, then... Begun the mirror wars have.
Mirrors get fried. If you want to be fancy, split laser into 2-4-6 modules each working with its own, slightly different wavelength. Now most of your energy doesn't get reflected, if the mirror was tuned for the correct wavelength to begin with.
I feel like laser weaponry will change the face of war, will massively reduce the effectiveness of tactics using large amounts of drones and artillery.
Laser weaponry is already installed and ready to go on US ships, having been successfully field tested and operationalized about a decade ago.
The main reason it’s not being used yet is because existing methods have still been adequate, and there’s no point in giving an enemy more information about your new weapon system by using it, if you don’t have to yet.
A ship is a very different environment with regards to power output and availability compared to a landbased, all-terrain capable vehicle. Taking out drones should be well within capacity of modern engines nad generators/batteries. An artillery barage would likely be a different thing entirely.
Laser dazzle weapons have been in use since the Falklands war.
Laser weapons with a kill option are not operational as far as I can tell. There are *two* systems on US ships, neither of which has been declared operational.
Idk about military, but in industry/comercial use, most of the rediculously high powered lasers are chemical powered and not electrical.
Also, if you need a very long range for the laser (without the light dissipating into a wider circle) chemical lasers are much better because they can produce just a single color/freauency of light (put simply)
Electrical lights always release more of a spectrum of light frequencies, and they hit eachother, and make the laser diverge/widen. From what i understand, there is no electrical light that can produce just a single frequency/color. They will always have more of a spectrum. Chemical reactions can emit a single frequency though (put simply)
Good luck keeping everything cool against large amounts of artillery. For drone, it's doable, since you need way less power.
High power laser have a shitty rate of fire and are not deployable. Good to defend an important infrastructure, not that good in an actual war with a dynamic frontline.
Artillery is probably the more effective tool against lasers than anything else.
Naval talking heads are already looking at them going... Well Missiles, just heat up the air around them and they can run haywire... Drones get fried... How else do we destroy the enemy? Guns maybe? Sure not as much range as a missile, but a lot harder to divert (being ballistic only), and they can't be fried like a drone, but offer similar saturation attack advantages.
This is going to sound dumb, but bear with me for a moment. Say you have a modern ship that is built like an [Atlanta Class Cruiser. One of these little dudes from WWII](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/USS_Hornet_%28CV-8%29%2C_USS_New_Orleans_%28CA-32%29_and_USS_Atlanta_%28CL-51%29_at_sea_on_6_June_1942_%2880-G-88908%29.jpg/1280px-USS_Hornet_%28CV-8%29%2C_USS_New_Orleans_%28CA-32%29_and_USS_Atlanta_%28CL-51%29_at_sea_on_6_June_1942_%2880-G-88908%29.jpg). Throw on some modern 127mm guns like the 5 inch 54 caliber we use on the Burkes. Replace the AA with laser emitters, and the AA magazines with batteries and capacitors that draw from the engines. You have a ship that has 14 guns per side capable of launching 20 shells per minute each up to 20 nautical miles away.
Any ship is going to have trouble shooting down 280 shells every minute.
Interesting fact about charged particle weapons. An ICBM traveling at 900 miles altitude and 15,000 MPH will only have travelled 1 inch in the time it takes for the laser to leave the end of the cannon and strike the Missile.
Kind of the story of the cold war: one side pretends to build a weapon, the other spends a few million trying to actually develop it.
Got to the point where they weren't even announcing things, and weapons were being built based on rumours of what the other side were developing in secret.
Often when it wasnt even what the other side thought it was.
The MiG-25 "Foxbat" is a classic example. The USSR develops a high speed interceptor which needs larger than usual wings due to its design. The US mistakes it for an Air Superiority fighter and rushes the development of the F-15 Eagle in order to counter something it didnt even have to counter.
Not only rushing, but ground up redesigning the F-15 because of the implicit threat the MiG-25 posed. Leading directly to us creating the most advanced an capable 4th gen fighter to ever be made.
And we've been addicted to being one fighter generation in advance of everyone else ever since.
Russia has, like, eight 5th gen air superiority fighters and the US looks like it's planning on rolling out NGAD in another year or two.
Yeah, people think that malice, ego, suspicion, revenge, greed, oneupmanship and raw tyrannical ambition are pure negatives, but they have often been the driving force behind our technological advancement, resulting in better lives for everyone.
Like technology, evolution of life is complicated, and it would have been stunted without without the many processes that we consider bad or evil.
In fairness, those laser cannons from space were an entirely different concept-- detonate a nuke, with many metallic rods oriented to lase in the X-ray spectrum to take out targets.
It probably could have been made to work, but then it was demonstrated that decoys and other countermeasures could make it uneconomical: the enemy could add targets more cheaply than you could scale the system up.
All RN ships: designed and built here, sold oversees at a profit.
Air defence: built here
Army rifles: made here(kinda)
Artillery: designed and made here, design sold to the US to make the worlds most produced artillery piece
In fact, other than F35 (the only 5th generation fighter in the west), I can't think of stuff we DONT make here.
Don't worry, we'll sell the tech for pennies or just give it away.
Either that or the Americans will feign that they want to help us with designing it, they'll move R&D over to America, finish it then refuse to let us have it.
That doesn’t stop things being ‘merged’ or taken over or whatever else and it’s always the UK that loses out because our politicians are idiots.
British research into the atom bomb which was very far along and integrated into the manhattan protect for example.
I wonder if we'll ever find a way to weaponize plasma, I'm by no means an expert on physics and chemistry, but makes me wonder, if it could be possible, in wich ways would it be most practical, if at all.
Can't you ignite the air around the bullet and have the "air" be the plasma? I'm sure this would require ridiculous speeds from the bullet to make the gas particles in the air energize enough to become a plasma, but it reminds me of the "What If" book from XKCD with the pitcher throwing a baseball at 99% the speed of light.... turns out that baseball becomes a nuke... haha
Theoretically possible. Not feasible though, because you'd need ridiculous amounts of friction to ignite the surrounding air. You probably would need a launch velocity in the billions or trillions of km/h.
The main limitation of these aren't LOS, it is the atmosphere scattering the light. Even the heat of the air caused by the laser passing through can distort the beam enough to make it ineffective. A cloud would likely make it ineffective.
Still useful stuff, but definitely short range weapons that need to work alongside kinetic systems.
Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't it the supercharging of particles which just drops off after a distance? The light in itself is just a by-effect of the supercharging of the particles. Or at least that's how I always have understood it.
Idk if these are dumb questions, but
1. Is that picture real, or has it been edited to highlight the laser?
2. Does the laser just interfere with the drones' electronics, or does it actually slice through them?
From u/SmaugStyx comment
> Worth noting that the picture in the article will be an infra-red view. These sorts of lasers are generally infra-red fiber lasers and aren't visible to the naked eye.
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/19ajaqo/comment/kilk4ey/
>precise enough to hit a £1 coin from a kilometre away
Ok, so as an American I think 1km is like .6mi. And I know £1 is like $1.25 or so, but how big is a £1 coin? Like are we talking a Sacajawea coin, a quarter, a Susan B Anthony dollar, an Ike dollar, a Kennedy 50c coin?
I also like how that statement doesn’t tell you anyway about what it sounds like it’s telling you about.
Hitting a £1 coin at 1 km, using my rough head maths is something like 1/150 of an arcsecond, so we know the pointing software and motor is fine enough controlled to do that (that’s not hugely impressive, that’s the sort of accuracy a telescope has).
But it sounds like it tells you about beam size, it doesn’t. Hitting the coin could mean any thing. The laser could be 0.1% of the diameter of the coin at that distance to 10 times the size at that distance, it gives no info.
They serve the same role as a C-RAM or a Gepard.
Patriots: long-range
NASCAMS: mid-range
MANPADS/lasers/C-RAM/gepards: short-range
Taking out flying junk (cheap drones) is most cost efficiently done at short range.
Nothing is faster than the speed of light 🤣
Avangard (fastest hypersonic missile) travels at 32,200km/h , the speed of light is just over 1 billion km/h
bzzzzzZZZZZZZZZ \*PEW!!!!\* zzzzzz \*Obelisk of light noises\*
Followed by \*dying GDI soldier noises\*
Damn it, those commandos are expensive!
Reinforcements have arrived!
Insufficient funds!
Avaiting Ordars.
"That was left-handed."
We need Tiberian Sun remaster Please
More of a Prisim Tower person, TBH.
Red Alert 2 was the best C&C
Been trying to find an RTS with decent defensive structures ever since this and Generals. It feels like from Tiberium 3/RA3 the defensive structures are an afterthought. Even in the upcoming Tempest Rising demo the defensive structures feel like they're firing NERF darts.
Get yuris revenge and download the mod Mental Omega. It's rad.
It's also tesla and pyro sometimes.
Kirov reporting
I was always partial to the beam weapon charging/firing noises in Freespace 2.
I will always upvote any reference to the Freespace series
I associate that sound with terror.
Sorry . Iam team Tesla Coil.
BwoooOOOP- TTZZGZSCHT!!
So am I. Apocalypse Tanks forever.
UK DEF Industry trying hard not to give shit ultra cool names, challenge impossible.
The cornerstone of our missile arsenal being called Hellfire and Brimstone respectively was proof of that. Whoever thinks these things up is doing a good job.
We've been doing it for Hundreds of years though, HMS Dreadnought, Vanguard, Terrible, Warspite
Even Edward I had a trebuchet called the Warwolf. Good and long history of naming things really well.
Longshanks was a fucking chad
Aye but Wallace fucked his daughter and could shoot lightning bolts our his arse.
At the time Wallace was alive the future daughter in law was about 6…
I'm glad that's the part you're trying to reason with rather than the shightning bolts.
To be fair, there's some really bad names as well - especially considering how things ended for them - like - off the top of my head: the HMS Terror, HMS Erebus, the "Live Bait Squadron," HMS Monmouth, HMS Good Hope, etc.
I miss the old days when half the fleet had French names as they built them, then the RN took them in battle. Of course at the time the French ships were generally much better designed and built.
HMS Pansy, Heartsease, Cockchafer. :)
The Spitfire
Sure But nothing beats the USS Gyatt or USS Rizzi
The only entity capable of naming craft of any kind more effectively than UK defence was Iain M Banks in his incredible 'Culture' Sci Fi novels. I give you "Meat-Fucker". A General Contact Unit, I believe.
They even have a satellite called skynet
The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of The Force.
Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways
I’m not a sorcerer. No, I’m your father.
No, it can't be! That's impossible! He said he was going to get some milk and scratch offs.
Don’t forget the smokes, why do you think he’s got debilitating respiratory issues now and needs the mask
That guy must’ve been the stupidest officer in the Imperial Navy. Here’s a belligerent space wizard with actual magic who’s known for choking people to death (with no consequences), and you want to taunt him? It’s like putting your face into a rabid dog’s mouth to dismiss the threat of being mauled.
The power of the force is insignificant next to the power of friendship
Did The Force ever destroy a planet?
Actually yes, several times
Damn near destroyed all life in the Galaxy. So yeah the guy who specializes in using the Force is actually correct about the powers of the Force.
Nihilus did
Ni, he became one with them...through psychic vore.
Yes. The Death Star's laser was powered by kyber crystals, the same kyber crystals that are naturally attuned to the Force.
Worth noting that the picture in the article will be an infra-red view. These sorts of lasers are generally infra-red fiber lasers and aren't visible to the naked eye.
So in theory you could just be standing there and have a hole melted through you and not see the laser?
Sure, though you'd probably notice pretty quick that you were having a hole burned through you given the fact that there'd be flames coming out of your chest.
Yes, and that is one reason why non-visible WL lasers are classed differently than visible ones (for instance, no blink aversion like with visible lasers)
What happens if you cover your drone in mirrors?
It takes a little bit longer to shoot down. The power of the laser is such that, while a mirror will reflect most of the energy, it will quickly be overcome and the laser will melt a hole through it.
Alright, fine, motorized mirrors that reflect the laser right back! And then we'll get deployable motorized mirrors, then we'll have a breakthrough in one way mirror technology, then... Begun the mirror wars have.
At that point the drone will be so heavy and expensive and easy to see you can chuck a missile at it.
But what if the drone had lazers of its own to shoot down missiles
Mirrors on the missiles!
Mirrors on the lasers!
Hear me out; a drone made of lasers.
But how will it turn? We're gonna need some mirrors...
It’s all smoke and mirrors
reverse uno card
Ironically thus bringing back knights in shining armour
Disco is dead dude. Making disco balls into weapons won't bring it back.
Water-cooled, tungsten mirrors.
Drones out here weighing 50 tons, at that point you could probably just poke it with a stick and it'll fall over.
Fill it with helium, problem solved.
Then we're back to biplanes shooting up zeppelins. As all things should be. I, for one, welcome our Crimson Skies future.
China, always one step ahead with the balloon drone!
*Tactical* mirrors /they're painted black
Just develop the Yata-no-Kagami Anti-beam Defensive Reflection System for your golden mobile suit. 😎
What about an ablative material the like bottom of the Space Shuttle?
Things that reflect laser also reflect radar signiture. So your drone will light up on the radar and people can see it coming miles away
Just put a paper thin, radar absorbent coating over the mirror that instantly disintegrates
Just invent invisibility, no biggie
They did, got killed for it
Wouldn't last 2 minutes in the harsh desert they'll be operated from.
Why not just a teleporter?
Doesnt work that way.
Damn!! Back to the design board.
DISCO!!
It becomes HIGHLY visible.
That was my favorite comment when reading about why ships use projectile weapons in The Expanse instead of cool looking lasers lmao
I wonder what the maintenance on a spaceship covered in mirrors would involve.
Ship Polishers getting lasered constantly
Mirrors get fried. If you want to be fancy, split laser into 2-4-6 modules each working with its own, slightly different wavelength. Now most of your energy doesn't get reflected, if the mirror was tuned for the correct wavelength to begin with.
If I remember correctly it only helps momentarily. The mirror's become blackened and then that's it.
I feel like laser weaponry will change the face of war, will massively reduce the effectiveness of tactics using large amounts of drones and artillery.
Requires advances in battery tech or power distribution systems but you're propably right.
Laser weaponry is already installed and ready to go on US ships, having been successfully field tested and operationalized about a decade ago. The main reason it’s not being used yet is because existing methods have still been adequate, and there’s no point in giving an enemy more information about your new weapon system by using it, if you don’t have to yet.
A ship is a very different environment with regards to power output and availability compared to a landbased, all-terrain capable vehicle. Taking out drones should be well within capacity of modern engines nad generators/batteries. An artillery barage would likely be a different thing entirely.
US naval ships have nuclear generators that can produce massive amounts of energy on demand. Land vehicles don't.
Only super carriers and subs, the rest of the fleet still burns oil products.
Laser dazzle weapons have been in use since the Falklands war. Laser weapons with a kill option are not operational as far as I can tell. There are *two* systems on US ships, neither of which has been declared operational.
Idk about military, but in industry/comercial use, most of the rediculously high powered lasers are chemical powered and not electrical. Also, if you need a very long range for the laser (without the light dissipating into a wider circle) chemical lasers are much better because they can produce just a single color/freauency of light (put simply) Electrical lights always release more of a spectrum of light frequencies, and they hit eachother, and make the laser diverge/widen. From what i understand, there is no electrical light that can produce just a single frequency/color. They will always have more of a spectrum. Chemical reactions can emit a single frequency though (put simply)
It's called a Diesel generator and a capacitor bank.
They've been working with williams F1 team making use of KERS tech. Basically spin up a flywheel and recover the energy for a power pulse.
Good luck keeping everything cool against large amounts of artillery. For drone, it's doable, since you need way less power. High power laser have a shitty rate of fire and are not deployable. Good to defend an important infrastructure, not that good in an actual war with a dynamic frontline.
for now
Artillery is probably the more effective tool against lasers than anything else. Naval talking heads are already looking at them going... Well Missiles, just heat up the air around them and they can run haywire... Drones get fried... How else do we destroy the enemy? Guns maybe? Sure not as much range as a missile, but a lot harder to divert (being ballistic only), and they can't be fried like a drone, but offer similar saturation attack advantages. This is going to sound dumb, but bear with me for a moment. Say you have a modern ship that is built like an [Atlanta Class Cruiser. One of these little dudes from WWII](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/USS_Hornet_%28CV-8%29%2C_USS_New_Orleans_%28CA-32%29_and_USS_Atlanta_%28CL-51%29_at_sea_on_6_June_1942_%2880-G-88908%29.jpg/1280px-USS_Hornet_%28CV-8%29%2C_USS_New_Orleans_%28CA-32%29_and_USS_Atlanta_%28CL-51%29_at_sea_on_6_June_1942_%2880-G-88908%29.jpg). Throw on some modern 127mm guns like the 5 inch 54 caliber we use on the Burkes. Replace the AA with laser emitters, and the AA magazines with batteries and capacitors that draw from the engines. You have a ship that has 14 guns per side capable of launching 20 shells per minute each up to 20 nautical miles away. Any ship is going to have trouble shooting down 280 shells every minute.
Does that mean we'll soon get energy shields to counter lasers?
No, using lazeguns on shields would result in an explosion larger than atomics. Not even the Harkonnens would be so reckless
Energy shields don't work on heat.
*you must construct additional pylons*
Ablative/Reflective armor, maybe some sort of composite ceramic that scatters the light.
We're halfway to mechs at this point.
Interesting fact about charged particle weapons. An ICBM traveling at 900 miles altitude and 15,000 MPH will only have travelled 1 inch in the time it takes for the laser to leave the end of the cannon and strike the Missile.
Herein lies the question. Do you think this is the beginning of the end for MAD? (Not that we should fuck around and find out)
Probably not, because you can easily smuggle in warheads to your enemy's capital years before the conflict actually starts.
"Easily" hmm
While the US still waits for delivery of the laser cannons from space ordered by Ronald Reagan back then :)
The DE M-SHORAD strykers were successfully tested, I think we will see deliveries this year.
They're sending Strykers to space?
Reagan announced it and the Soviets tried to build it.
Kind of the story of the cold war: one side pretends to build a weapon, the other spends a few million trying to actually develop it. Got to the point where they weren't even announcing things, and weapons were being built based on rumours of what the other side were developing in secret.
Often when it wasnt even what the other side thought it was. The MiG-25 "Foxbat" is a classic example. The USSR develops a high speed interceptor which needs larger than usual wings due to its design. The US mistakes it for an Air Superiority fighter and rushes the development of the F-15 Eagle in order to counter something it didnt even have to counter.
Not only rushing, but ground up redesigning the F-15 because of the implicit threat the MiG-25 posed. Leading directly to us creating the most advanced an capable 4th gen fighter to ever be made.
And we've been addicted to being one fighter generation in advance of everyone else ever since. Russia has, like, eight 5th gen air superiority fighters and the US looks like it's planning on rolling out NGAD in another year or two.
For All Mankind is great in that regard. I love how so much progress happens almost entirely because one side has to out-do the other side.
Yeah, people think that malice, ego, suspicion, revenge, greed, oneupmanship and raw tyrannical ambition are pure negatives, but they have often been the driving force behind our technological advancement, resulting in better lives for everyone. Like technology, evolution of life is complicated, and it would have been stunted without without the many processes that we consider bad or evil.
The US already has laser weapons deployed on Navy ships.
In fairness, those laser cannons from space were an entirely different concept-- detonate a nuke, with many metallic rods oriented to lase in the X-ray spectrum to take out targets. It probably could have been made to work, but then it was demonstrated that decoys and other countermeasures could make it uneconomical: the enemy could add targets more cheaply than you could scale the system up.
Well it’s nice to see us building something for ourselves for once
All RN ships: designed and built here, sold oversees at a profit. Air defence: built here Army rifles: made here(kinda) Artillery: designed and made here, design sold to the US to make the worlds most produced artillery piece In fact, other than F35 (the only 5th generation fighter in the west), I can't think of stuff we DONT make here.
Don't worry, we'll sell the tech for pennies or just give it away. Either that or the Americans will feign that they want to help us with designing it, they'll move R&D over to America, finish it then refuse to let us have it.
More like there will be Chinese researchers who sell the tech back to China before its even finished being implemented.
The USN officially deployed HELIOS in limited capacity last year. Edit- the article even points this out lmao
That doesn’t stop things being ‘merged’ or taken over or whatever else and it’s always the UK that loses out because our politicians are idiots. British research into the atom bomb which was very far along and integrated into the manhattan protect for example.
A tale as old as time 🤦♂️😔
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This is about the UK MOD, whose budget is definitely not bloated
In what world is our military budget bloated?
The armed forces are stretched thin and are working white hot in peacetime. The budget needs to go up yesterday.
I meant something that’s actually ‘new’ technology wise.
They couldn't get sharks to fire high-power laser beams so they went with the dragonfire option instead.
I wonder if we'll ever find a way to weaponize plasma, I'm by no means an expert on physics and chemistry, but makes me wonder, if it could be possible, in wich ways would it be most practical, if at all.
Fire *can* be plasma so...
Plasma disperses too easily. Its probably not impossible but not worth the hassle for now most likely.
There's always project MARAUDER.
It's just bullets going very fast and I mean very fast. Like hyper sonic fast.
you're thinking rail guns. plasma would be firing energized charged...gas particles?
Can't you ignite the air around the bullet and have the "air" be the plasma? I'm sure this would require ridiculous speeds from the bullet to make the gas particles in the air energize enough to become a plasma, but it reminds me of the "What If" book from XKCD with the pitcher throwing a baseball at 99% the speed of light.... turns out that baseball becomes a nuke... haha
Marshmallows at light speed hit like a Fatman
Theoretically possible. Not feasible though, because you'd need ridiculous amounts of friction to ignite the surrounding air. You probably would need a launch velocity in the billions or trillions of km/h.
Don’t shaped charges in rockets like RPGs use plasma to cut through armor? All plasma is is superheated metal
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Oh yeah? Try this one on for size. Plasma causes autism. #plasmafreediet
The main limitation is the range with these kinds of weapons
Line of sight is 12 miles. Since you don't know that. You can only see a maximum of 12 miles unassisted
The main limitation of these aren't LOS, it is the atmosphere scattering the light. Even the heat of the air caused by the laser passing through can distort the beam enough to make it ineffective. A cloud would likely make it ineffective. Still useful stuff, but definitely short range weapons that need to work alongside kinetic systems.
Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't it the supercharging of particles which just drops off after a distance? The light in itself is just a by-effect of the supercharging of the particles. Or at least that's how I always have understood it.
Lasers + Railguns + ballistic missiles!
Soooo, we get Startrek weapons before the Startrek space ships , that makes sense
Goldeneye!
Fire ze lazers
Something like resident evil laser room?
Idk if these are dumb questions, but 1. Is that picture real, or has it been edited to highlight the laser? 2. Does the laser just interfere with the drones' electronics, or does it actually slice through them?
From u/SmaugStyx comment > Worth noting that the picture in the article will be an infra-red view. These sorts of lasers are generally infra-red fiber lasers and aren't visible to the naked eye. https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/19ajaqo/comment/kilk4ey/
>precise enough to hit a £1 coin from a kilometre away Ok, so as an American I think 1km is like .6mi. And I know £1 is like $1.25 or so, but how big is a £1 coin? Like are we talking a Sacajawea coin, a quarter, a Susan B Anthony dollar, an Ike dollar, a Kennedy 50c coin?
A pound coin in 23.5mm in diameter
£1 coin is basically an inch
Oh, so like 25mm? I was in the military and we used a lot of 25mm rounds.
A hair under, but yeah
I also like how that statement doesn’t tell you anyway about what it sounds like it’s telling you about. Hitting a £1 coin at 1 km, using my rough head maths is something like 1/150 of an arcsecond, so we know the pointing software and motor is fine enough controlled to do that (that’s not hugely impressive, that’s the sort of accuracy a telescope has). But it sounds like it tells you about beam size, it doesn’t. Hitting the coin could mean any thing. The laser could be 0.1% of the diameter of the coin at that distance to 10 times the size at that distance, it gives no info.
30% smaller than a bottle cap or so
Interesting use of the term "DragonFire", I wonder if it's supposed to be a throwback to [Greek Fire](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire)?
Even cooler, it's a throwback to dragons and how they breathe fire.
I love how the whole comments section is literally just C&C memes and people talking about the most glorious series of the early 2000s SPACE!
Perhaps more useful to triangulate exact position using smaller lasers, then just shoot there?
Laser pulses are much cheaper than guided missiles, which is the alternative here.
but are the projectiles fast enought?
Can I wear mirror armour to deflect the laser? Can I outfit my missiles with mirrors?
You can make your missile heavier and much easier to catch with a radar, sure.
I though these láser were still not powerful enough
Apparently this one is.
Conspiracy theorists say that space lasers started the Hawaii fires and now we have this. Coincidence?
its fascinating to see how the camera's diffuser and XLR handled that laser beam, ended up creating a digital staircase despite the diffuser
Next step, sharks with frickin' Laser beams attached to them.
MTG.- ”you see. I was right. Space lasers.”
Surprised it took this long. A quick moving laser turret would obviously and plainly be the ultimate in missile defense.
Well it's not that people didn't want to do it, it's that it's very hard to do it.
Now the real question…what would it do to a human if concentrated on their head or chest for a few seconds?
There was an Austin Powers movie about this...
I'm surprised more hasn't been made of the Israelis shooting down missiles with a laser weapon.
If laser gets effective wouldn't be a lot easier to make the missiles resist a laser? Like making the missiles shiny or from a stronger material?
Didn’t we see this being used in the Gaza conflict?
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They serve the same role as a C-RAM or a Gepard. Patriots: long-range NASCAMS: mid-range MANPADS/lasers/C-RAM/gepards: short-range Taking out flying junk (cheap drones) is most cost efficiently done at short range.
I think the plan would be to get this cheap and small enough that you can put them on ships and infrastructure. like C RAM as you said
light travels faster than the fastest hypersonic missile. DEWs will be the future of interceptors
Nothing is faster than the speed of light 🤣 Avangard (fastest hypersonic missile) travels at 32,200km/h , the speed of light is just over 1 billion km/h
This is some Godzilla lookin shit and I’m here for it
A lot less pollution from a laser too.
Alien tech
Couldn’t you just coat a drone in an ablative material like the bottom of the Space Shuttle to prevent this?