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Scifi PEW PEW, but for real!
xpowderx
Member UncommonPosts: 2,078
As someone who is older.. Never thought I would see this day. Star Wars meet the U.S Navy! As someone who loves scifi, I am quite excited about this prospect.
Here is a little bit from the story.
ARLINGTON, Va. (CBSDC) — Expect to see the Navy using lasers on ships within the next couple of years.
Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, chief of the Office of Naval Research, tells Wired that they have pushed up the timetable from four years to two to install laser weapons on board ships.
We’re well past physics,” Klunder told the magazine. “We’re just going through the integration efforts. Hopefully, that tells you we’re well mature, and we’re ready to put these on naval ships.”
Is that COOL or what! You can read the full story at the source.
Comments
Lasers have been buildable for the sake of military use for decades. The problem has always been powering the damn things for more than a few seconds. This thing will mainly used on targets they want to disable without blowing them to hell.
They actually are not all that efficient, there are far easier ways to deliver destructive energy to a target.
To be honest, I'm more excited about the gauss cannons scheduled to replace many of the 5 inch guns in our fleets in the 2020s. They fire a magnetically accelerated 18 Kg projectile at about mach 7, and are capable of accurately obliterating targets at up to 220 nautical miles away (about 253 standard miles to us landlubbers). Projectiles launched at distant targets will actually exit the atmosphere before coming back down in a frenetic orgy of kinetic doom. The traditional explosive based 5 inch guns our battleships are currently outfitted with are limited to about 13 nautical miles.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Hemingway
If you can power a laser, you have a power source that'd make a better explosion than laser.
EDIT: that is to say for the same amount of fuel wieght for a laser you could load something deadlier and easier.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."