"Star Wars" laser battles might have happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but for the U.S. Air Force they're just now starting to become a reality.
A new high energy laser weapon and F-16 flight simulator, designed by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Theater Aerospace Command Control Simulation Facility at Kirtland Air Force Base, will let pilots test technology that could put the United States far ahead of its enemies.
The F-16 model is a smaller version of the airborne laser weapon already under development for use on a Boeing 747 for shooting down missiles. It could be ready for use in 2012, but before that happens, pilots will test the system in the simulator to see how useful it is and suggest ways it could be improved to help them in combat.
"Essentially what we're looking at is that this laser can hit a target at the speed of light, almost instantly compared with the time of flight of a missile, which can take several seconds," said Jono Tyson, a contract employee from Scientific Research Corp. and assistant project manager at the simulation facility. "The laser is also a much more cost-effective weapon versus firing a missile that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Firing the laser will likely only cost a couple hundred dollars."
This fall, the two Kirtland agencies will attach the system to flight simulators in Arizona at the Fighter Weapons Training Branch. Pilots at the facility will tell the Air Force whether they think the laser is worth further development, said Rudy Martinez, the simulation facility's project manager.
The laser system is a renewable weapon, another advantage. When missiles fire, they are completely destroyed, but a laser needs only to be recharged before it can fire again, said Rick Garcia, a spokesman at the research lab.
The high energy laser weighs about 5,000 pounds and can fire on targets up to 10 miles away - a short distance compared with the 40-mile reach of air-to-air missiles. If the pilots like the simulation, scientists at the research lab, which developed the technology, will try to make the weapon smaller and more powerful, so it can fire greater distances and take up less space on an F-16.
"What we're also trying to figure out now is how long it takes for our laser to take out a target," Tyson said. "It's not like 'Battlestar Galactica,' where you just fire, and they go down. It has to hit the target for a second or two."
The system can also fire at targets on the ground, such as enemy lines or tank columns, Tyson said.
To build the simulator, scientists and technicians at the simulation facility added an extra firing button on the pilot's stick and developed extensive software programs that realistically simulate the targeting instrument panel and visual firing of the system on two video screens.
The one unrealistic thing about the laser is the sound it makes. When fired, the simulator makes a noise that sounds a lot like a "Star Trek" phaser blast. In real life, the laser makes no noise at all.
"The problem is, pilots don't know when the weapon has fired if it doesn't make a noise," said Suzanne Baker, a software engineer who helped develop the system. "We got the noise for this one from Tactical Air Systems. I think they got it from 'Star Trek' or something, but I'm not sure. You'd think a bunch of nerds like us would know that."
The system has been fully developed and tested, but it must be adapted for the much more advanced flight simulators in Arizona. Its developers will spend the next several months tweaking it to work on those systems and hope to finish late this year.
This is interesting. I wonder why no one has posted anything on this. It really shows where we are going with technology. Something like this could be put into space (if it isn't there already) and used as a tactical weapon, like we've seen in GoldenEye (James Bond movie), etc...
Soon enough, there will be a type of pistol or rifle that will use the same principles of technolgy. I don't think it's beyond the scope of reality to see infantrymen (and women) of the future wielding laser rifles...
Nice post, Marc. Too bad no one jumped on this....
I think it's pretty cool, but it's not new. This dates back to the Star Wars program which was "shot down" long ago. We've had the technology to implement this for decades, just never permission. My bet is that the prototypes have been operational for a Looooooong time and that only now are they becoming visible to the public.
Rail guns were another promising weapons technology because of the velocity with which the projectiles could be launched and with much better effectiveness (sheer projectile size alone) than aircraft-mounted machine guns and much greater speed than missiles.
Wasn't the Star Wars program about having big, very heavy lasers mounted to a fighter where missiles would normally be placed? Was the technology back then really stable and robust enough to have been introduced at that time?
They wanted to install orbiting laser cannons that could destroy missiles in flight once they reached the high altitudes required for intercontinental ballistics. The concepts were much the same: a "compact", high energy laser cannon capable of such power. Now and then new techniques come along for how to generate high energy pulses, or yet another means for focusing light rays, but they all do the same job. The biggest challenge is in materials selections: the more powerful you want the laser to be, the more robust your containment/control system has to be.
It's like the scientist who invented the most corrosive acid ever known that would eat through anything - how do you make a jar that can hold it? Such is the problem with high power lasers where all the energy of the weapon is contained in a focused beam which must be focused by real, physical things like crystiline structures, lenses and mirrors, etc. If the laser is hot enough to super-heat a missile to cause its destruction, you can bet that it's hot enough to burn through most optic materials that deliver it as well. In the past solutions to this problem were based on efficient cooling systems and pulsing the laser output such that the mechanical components of the laser would indeed become "hot", but never hot enough to actually lose their function via distortion, melting, etc.
And so every time weapons specialists want to bump up the destructive potential of laser weapons, they're faced with this same issue, as they have been for 40 years now. Based on what I know of technology, the only real advances I can imagine them making are in perhaps more heat-resistive mechanical components by use of newly developed alloys, etc that may permit increased output either through either increased pulsewidth, or potentially even continuous output.
Now if there is ever any actual advance to be made it would be in the form of laser output without the need for mechanical light columnator components. There are other forces which can effect the vector path of a light wave. One such force is gravity, of course, as evidenced in astronomy observations of objects behind other objects which may appear to the side of the closer object. It is possible that electromagnetism in great enough force may be able to channel light as well, just as it channels electronc rays in CRT monitor screens, and just as it does in particle accellerators. If one were to build a light output device, perhaps one which results in the consumption of a solid fuel in a chemical reaction (thus you can put out a virtually unlimited energy state withtout worrying about burning up your supply device) and fire it into an EM containment chamber whose magnetic fields are structured in such a way that the aperture might emit aligned light rays without the light ever having contacted a mechanical surface.
This technology would yeild a virtually limitless power threshold for laser weaponry, but I don't know how far down the road something like that is.. with a computer controlled targeting system that hooks into the EM columnator, a ground-based deployment of such a weapon at the battle front could potentially eliminate hundreds of ground troops silently and accurately in a period of several seconds, picking them off one at a time. That's the kind of stuff the military can only daydream about getting budget approval on though..
sean: good read. i'd like to explain my understanding of a few things and then ask a question of you. in a crt, there are plates on each side that vary in magnetic force. this force adjusts the vector of the electron beam that 'draws' the screen when it strikes the phosphors on the screen. now, the smallest particle that has a charge is the electron. photons are emitted by electrons when they change energy states. so i said all that so that i could ask this: is it possible to use an EM force as a kind of 'wave guide' for a laser? if i'm wrong in any of this please tell me. i'm just trying to learn a little something, and you seem to be pretty well informed.
How much photons are released during such a process in relation to each electron? I'm totally new at laser technology, but I'm pretty interested. Sean, you do seem to have a wealth of knowledge regarding this subject. You seem to be the one to talk to...
Regarding "how much light is released" when an electron changes energy states, the answer is easy: exactly one photon is released when an electron jumps from a higher energy state down to a lower energy state. The energy release in the state change is in the form of a photon. The wavelength of the photon which gives the light its apparnet color is exactly proportional to the difference in energy state change. Just the opposite occurs when a photon strikes an electron and bumps it UP in energy state - the electron receives the energy of the photon which gets absorbed.
As for the question of whether magnetism can affect photons, I must say I really don't know for sure, but if gravity can affect photons and magnetism can affect a whole array of subatomic particles, I'd be surprised if it was impossible. There are super-magnetic machines that are capable of crushing even non-metallic (normally "non-magnetic") materials. Even an apple can be magnetized in a powerful enough field - how powerful would the field have to be to magnetize a photon?
ahhhhh... thanks sean, i hadn't even thought about the gravity of the situation ("groan", bad pun i know.) gravity is tied to the electromagnetic force somehow. we just haven't figured it out yet. we've unified the electromagnetic and the weak force. we just have to tie in the strong force and gravity somehow. thanks.
06-24-2003 09:42 PM
Cool, liked that sound bit
i'd like to explain my understanding of a few things and then ask a question of you. in a crt, there are plates on each side that vary in magnetic force. this force adjusts the vector of the electron beam that 'draws' the screen when it strikes the phosphors on the screen. now, the smallest particle that has a charge is the electron. photons are emitted by electrons when they change energy states. so i said all that so that i could ask this: is it possible to use an EM force as a kind of 'wave guide' for a laser? if i'm wrong in any of this please tell me. i'm just trying to learn a little something, and you seem to be pretty well informed. 
