U.S. Navy Shoots Down Drone With Laser
By Wyatt Earp | July 21, 2010
This is a banner moment in history, my friends. Sure, it starts with ship-mounted lasers. A few years in development, and the next thing you know, we’re all walking around with blasters on our hip.
The United States Navy is now the ultimate power in the universe. I suggest we use it.
The U.S. Navy has used a a laser weapon to shoot down four unmanned aerial vehicles in a test that rings up memories of Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile defense shield in the 1980s. The successful test of the Laser Weapon System off the coast of California was announced during the Farnborough International Air Show, which is taking place this week in England.
Mike Booen of Raytheon gave USA Today the money quote for the day: “The targets came in over the ocean, and it was a good day for lasers, bad day for drones.”
Now if only I could get one of these for the house. Those punk teenagers will think twice about walking on my lawn!
Topics: Coolness! | 16 Comments »
July 21st, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Also good news for targeting systems too. The battlefield breakthru power point was defined a few years ago as 100 KW and then you could start to do really cool things on the battlefield with them. They can combine them now using many special solid state laser diodes in parallel with a collimator etc., in 10KW modules and just keep adding modules, kinda like deadly legos. Of course you have to have a continuous 10, 20, 50, 100KW etc. power supply which can be now be similar to, off the shelf emergency gen sets. Solid states can also be tailored for various weather conditions by slightly changing the lasing frequency so water vapor doesn’t absorb to much etc.
Say you have an ICBM traveling at Mach 10 (7000 mph = 10267 ft/sec), 100 miles away. It takes light 0.00054 seconds to cover that distance at 186,200 miles/sec which means if you want to hit the warhead exactly you lead the missle with the beam by 5.514 ft. In effect this means that anything you can see or track up to escape velocity (Mach 25) is now an easy…one shot one kill.
This means the alien greys will have to fly alot faster in our atmosphere now:) LOL
July 21st, 2010 at 3:01 pm
Ships with freakin’ laser beams!
July 21st, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Those aren’t the droids we’re looking for.
July 21st, 2010 at 3:54 pm
It’s a shame Senator Byrd was killed on the Deathstar mishap… He would have enjoyed seeing a fully functional Deathstar laser.
July 21st, 2010 at 5:02 pm
Yes but cleaning up and replanting the lawn on the spots where you vaporize the little punks would be a pain.
July 21st, 2010 at 5:13 pm
Think of all the popcorn you could pop.
July 21st, 2010 at 7:30 pm
Now that is COOL! Can’t wait til they can mount them on jet fighters. . . .
July 21st, 2010 at 9:27 pm
Jon – My brain hurts after that math.
Smite – Next thing you know, sharks will have them on their heads.
Robert B. – “Move along.”
Sully – “Everything is proceeding as planned. The Rebels will soon be destroyed.”
Ingineer66 – No pain, no gain.
Jon – Faster than a microwave!
JDalco – Or my personal car!
July 21st, 2010 at 9:57 pm
As a USN vet I’ll tell you once we’ve been the ultimate force in the universe since 6 June 1942.
July 22nd, 2010 at 2:57 am
BillN – I dunno, dropping a couple of nukes of Japan might trump the battle of Midway. Definitely the ultimate force in the universe on that one…
July 22nd, 2010 at 7:42 am
BillN – Building the Iowa-class battleships didn’t hurt, either. Monsters of iron.
Smite – That’ll learn ‘em for attacking our soil. Now about those Muslim extremists . . .
July 22nd, 2010 at 9:11 am
Wyatt – The Iowa class BBs were indeed awesome, a pity we couldn’t complete the other two congrees initially ordered, and the Montana class BBs that were to be built. Although I’m an old “Bubblehead,” I still think that the BBs delivered more bang for buck. Born too late to serve on one.
July 22nd, 2010 at 9:56 am
Robert B. – We took a guided tour of the New Jersey by a vet of the battlewagon. Fantastic, interesting stuff – although I don’t know how men fit in the 16″ gun fire control. Damned tight squeeze.
July 22nd, 2010 at 12:21 pm
People were smaller back then Wyatt. Before obesity plagued the US.
Or is it starvation, whichever one Michelle is campaigning against this week, because it seems to go back and forth.
July 22nd, 2010 at 10:23 pm
Ingineer66 – Maybe her personal chef – the new Food Czar can tell us?
July 22nd, 2010 at 11:43 pm
“Now if only I could get one of these for the house. Those punk teenagers will think twice about walking on my lawn!”
Oh, but you can! And these are NOT your father’s laser pointers. (And they’re also not wise to goof around with, obviously…)
http://www.wickedlasers.com/