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Termyn8or -> RE: Laser Weapons: For Sale (1/13/2007 6:18:50 AM)
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I sure hope the US gets this if Israel is going to have it. The USS Libery incident in 1967 proves that they'll stab us in the back like a Palestinian.
The problem with portable lasers is the power supply. Back when I had some creativity I mused about designing one. Hand held but with a battery pack on a belt. Perhaps carbon dioxide based and in the five watt range. Of course it takes alot more than five watts input to get five watts output, but at five watts output you can cut a car in half. The trick is to keep the beam small and totally coherent.
There are still problems. Aiming is a pain, although there is no trajectory (well a straight line) the beam is invisible. Range is also a problem. Too much range, as soon as you get through the car at any given point everything on the path of the beam will get hit. Imagine shooting a gun that can kill someone two miles away. You wouldn't want too many of those being used in the city to say the least.
This technology has existed for some time, as do particle beams and all kinds of things, the problem is the bulk. Raytheon certainly didn't invent the laser, they just made it more practical.
In fact you can make a maser weapon with the magnetron from a microwave oven. With a piece of specially shaped tubing you can concentrate all that power into a narrow beam. Of course since the source is not coherent and is of a large (relative) diameter, it will need to be focused which means knowing the range. With a coherent laser, range is not that important.
What I'm surprised that they do not come out with (they might just not be saying) is a plasma gun. When not contained plasma has very little mass. In a fusion reaction plasma is contained in a magnetic "bottle". If they get the reaction started and then reverse one of the fields to expel the plasma it will likely travel far. Again, the range needs to be known because plasma is matter and will not remain coherent even if you could make it so. Also the only way to focus it is magnetic fields. To collimate it would be impossible with today's technology.
I do not know if collimate is the exact word, but matter can be collimated, that is made to act coherent. To explain, those water and light shows. To make the water cannon they run all the water coming from the big pipe through an array of small pipes of equal diameter and length. This causes the water to sort of stick together after it leaves the nozzle. The same preinciple, even if it could be applied to plasma would not work because plasma will expand, water does not.
I also wonder what they have been doing with EMPGs. I know they exist, in fact I downloaded plans for one. They are almost common knowledge, yet I have never heard of one being used, but then they do not tell us everything. I know this much, if someone uses an EMPG near a fusion reaction I do not want to be around. It's not just the possible disruption of the magnetic "bottle", if it screws up the electronics that generate and regulate the fields of the "bottle", the plasma will escape. They use magnetism because no material on Earth can contain it.
Actually the people who really build WMDs (US and Israel) are going to get stupider. Eventually they will build them without batteries. Right now I think they got enough sense to know that you can't expect your 220 line to work in time of war, but they seem to be collapsing. Eventually the buyers of such weapons will screw up and not have the backup power to run it. Might happen.
Y'know right now it's nice to sit here in the "good" countries and feel secure that such weapons will not be used against us. Think if you were Palestinian learning that your possible allies in the future (Russia and China) could be shot down even with Moskit2 missiles and the Korean one that is supposed to be even better.
We have had argumentrs about strategy on this board before, people say the Moskit has a limited range. What one must realize is that many of those countries are no bigger than a state in the US. Many are smaller.
One day we will see a missile coming and see a laser fire up and follow it and detonate it before it gets to us. People will be in awe, I will not. If they made a "new" laser weapon public, what are they still hiding ?
By reasoning and logical extrapolation I have an idea how far they are along in technology. I can tell you how they can see though the roof of your house and how they can tell you have one pot plant in a huge cornfield. I can tell you that the reason SDI is not up and running is the power source. Not enough power to fire from a satellite. The reason my handheld five watt coherent CO2 laser weapon doesn't exist is because of lack of a power source.
Anybody can take a microwave apart and attach a tube to the magnetron output and have a dandy little device. But what do you plug it into ? The wall. The problem with these things is that the power is likely to be out when you need them most.
As described, lasers do exist, but to fire them up you need two big fat wires with high voltage and some current behind it. Even if you could do it, with the best (known) battery technology today you might get one or two blasts out of it.
Such things would be (are) great for covert ops, assassinations and all that, but without one hell of a power source, simply are not the weapon of choice for the common Man.
Enough for now, we don't need the NSA poking around here.
T
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