John_Turner This is about a hundred 500-watts-at-aperture fiber lasers harnessed to a proprietary beam combiner for 50,000-watts-at-aperture power, feeding into a really speedy gimbaled mirror. It confirms a target by shining a continuous-wave guide beam on it, then burns it at full power in a series of pulses. It takes advantage of the target's own airspeed to clear fumes between pulses, hammering its way into the target one pulse at a time. Anything that can't stand having a single one-inch hole hammered into it is no longer safe. That includes not just drones but artillery shells too. This thing can fend off an entire artillery regiment by prematurely detonating the shells in flight. No known countermeasures, chroming the shells doesn't help. It's the future, folks. Next stop: Future Future! Reply
twin_savage John_Turner said: That includes not just drones but artillery shells too. This thing can fend off an entire artillery regiment by prematurely detonating the shells in flight. No known countermeasures, chroming the shells doesn't help. This is highly misleading; the UK's DragonFire has no hope of defending against what normal people would call artillery. It might be able to defend against very very fragile and slow rockets and specific types of mortars assuming it can even track them, but it'd need more than an order of magnitude more power and be able to track an object at mach 3+ to defend against what normal people call artillery which this system cannot do. Against plastic quadcopters and chintzy composite flying lawn mowers it will do very well though. Reply
USAFRet twin_savage said: Against plastic quadcopters and chintzy composite flying lawn mowers it will do very well though. Maybe not arty shells, but regular aircraft might be vulnerable. Reply
twin_savage USAFRet said: Maybe not arty shells, but regular aircraft might be vulnerable. You're probably right, but I'm thinking doctrine would say to use a missile to ensure the job is done quickly and with a higher success rate for targets that had a more beneficial kill exchange ratio… that being said there are probably alot of AC that aren't particularly valuable lasers would be good for like the new emerging category of "drone fighters" like some of the GA converts Ukraine uses to down Shaheds a la Yak-52 Reply
USAFRet twin_savage said: You're probably right, but I'm thinking doctrine would say to use a missile to ensure the job is done quickly and with a higher success rate for targets that had a more beneficial kill exchange ratio… that being said there are probably alot of AC that aren't particularly valuable lasers would be good for like the new emerging category of "drone fighters" like some of the GA converts Ukraine uses to down Shaheds a la Yak-52 1. This is new technology. It will evolve. 2. Just about every small aircraft is vulnerable to a couple of 1" holes in it. F-16/15/18, Typhoon, Rafale, MiG, Su…etc, etc. Reply
twin_savage USAFRet said: 2. Just about every small aircraft is vulnerable to a couple of 1" holes in it. F-16/15/18, Typhoon, Rafale, MiG, Su…etc, etc. The problem with this is that most of the structures on the the US and Russian craft are aluminum and will wick the heat away from where the laser is trying to cut. The European craft might not fair as well with their composite skins. This is super back-of-the-napkin math but when sheet aluminum of thickness very roughly comparable to a wing skin is cut we'd use 3kW focused into a 20 thou spot size; 3kW focused into a 20 thou spot is 150 times more flux than what the DragonFire is producing at a 1" spot size even before accounting for all the atmospheric attenuation that would affect the DragonFire. Laser travel speed is also a factor in this analogy, but DragonFire's weak output would put it far below the minimum travel speed needed to produce a cut. EDIT: I'm also assuming the DragonFire's beam diverges to a 1" spot size at whatever engagement range we're talking about which I don't think is unreasonable; even if it only diverged into a quarter inch spot size it'd still be below the threshold for cutting aluminum of the ⅛-¼ range. Reply
bernard2025 You don't stop lasers with chrome or mirrors. You stop lasers with intumescent paint. The paint absorbs the heat and flakes off. Lasers are useless. Reply
Co BIY The power supply on these has to be pretty substantial. Reply
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- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/uk-dragonfire-laser-downs-high-speed-drones#main
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