Energy Weapons VS Ballistic Weapons

[Krieg]

The key factor is exactly WHERE the battlefields of the future are located.

All of the argument thus far has centered around a terrestrial battlefield, while much of speculative science fiction moves said engagements out of the gravity well and into space.

The arguments for/against each family of armaments change greatly when you change the assumptions to include vehicle born power sources, a vacuum environment, engagement ranges increased by several orders of magnitude, and vehicles maneuvering with extreme delta-v.

Recoil also becomes a far more important consideration while atmospheric effects become correspondingly less so (and indirect fire becomes a non-factor)...


Changing the subject a bit but just to put things into perspective a bit regarding power requirements & capabilities...current goals are about 10% efficiency for weaponized laser systems. That means producing a 100 Kilowatt beam will require about 1 Megawatt of source energy (a 100KW beam is the magic number right now for a multi-purpose weaponized system).

So in order for man portable (which for some reason the majority of the discussion seems to revolve around) laser weapons to become feasible two things must occur...there must be radical improvements in both energy generation/storage AND in the efficiency of laser devices themselves.

Back to the issue of "man portable" weapons. It's obvious that most military planners want to eliminate the average grunt from the equation. There is a lot of energy being spent on battlefield ROVs in the short term and truly autonomous combat vehicle in the long term. A hypothetical armed robot replacing the foot soldier also helps alleviate at least some of the power/weight issues revolving around lasers (and other energy weapons) at the squad/fire team level.

 

[hobgoblin]

No, not at all. They also stop at collimation, diffraction limits diffusion, thermal interactions with the atmosphere, interactions with smoke, fog, and cover, waste heat, side glow, and weight and delicacy of the apparatus. You have to think about what happens to the weapon and the user if it gets a splash of mud on the collimating lens or any neutral filter protecting the lens, and how you might prevent this from happening in a practical battlefield weapon.

Those a problems that can be looked at and maybe fixed/worked around after one have a proper power source at hand. right now one do not even have that and therefor cant experiment with ways to fix the other problems.

fix one poblem at a time, if one are going to worry about everything all the time then one will never get anything done (one will most likely be rolled up as a ball in the corner scared about even moving).

 

[Agemegos]

Those a problems that can be looked at and maybe fixed/worked around after one have a proper power source at hand.

Diffraction can't. It is fundamental to the nature of light.

Do you even know what diffraction is?

 

[Agemegos]

The arguments for/against each family of armaments change greatly when you change the assumptions to include vehicle born power sources, a vacuum environment, engagement ranges increased by several orders of magnitude, and vehicles maneuvering with extreme delta-v.

Indeed! A friend of mine was just telling me about his 1 TW laser operating at a wavelength of 6 nm. That would be a dandy weapon for a spaceship, assuming that you could aim it accurately enough (a bit of a problem as you can't aim X-rays with a mirror). And assuming that you could get the pulse duration up above 1 ps.

But laser weapons in space don't replace ballistic weapons--we aren't using ballistic weapons in space. And they certainly don't supercede ballistic weapons. Private eyes will be packing railgun-pistols that fire shards of antimatter-doped silicon before they pack a practical laser-pistol.

 

[hobgoblin]

Diffraction can't. It is fundamental to the nature of light.

Do you even know what diffraction is?

i have a vague idea...

but why limit ourselfs to light? or are you talking about the full EM spectrum when you use the word light?

 

[Agemegos]

fix one poblem at a time, if one are going to worry about everything all the time then one will never get anything done

First you have to identify a project worth working on. If your preliminary engineering studies show that something is fundamentally impractical, then the sensible course is to choose another approach to solving the problem. (And our problem is to put the enemy out of action--energy weapons are suggested means, not a determined end). There is no point in mending the easiest problem if some of the others are fundamentally insuperable. There is always another project to put your efforts into.

 

[Agemegos]

i have a vague idea...

but why limit ourselfs to light? or are you talking about the full EM spectrum when you use the word light?

I am referring to the full EM spectrum, as it happens (sorry, I did not make that clear). All wavelengths are subject to diffraction, though the effects are larger with short wavelengths. The limits I calculated about were for light with a wavelength of 100 nm, which is well into the ultraviolet. Visible light lasers would diffract more. I chose 100 nm to give a generous limit. In fact air is pretty much opaque at that wavelength, and such a weapon would only be useful in vaccuum.

We have 'lasers' working on every wavelength from microwaves to soft x-rays (the record is 6 nm wavelength, and 1 nm is just around the corner (when the boffins get free-electron lasers working properly)).

Some invisible wavelengths offer possibilities, though they still won't go over hills or other obstacles, and they still have trouble with smoke. Certain of the possibilities are unattractive trade-offs: longer wavelengths are scattered less, but cannot be brought to a tight focus because of the Rayleigh Limit. Short wavelengths can be held to a narrow parallel beam, but they have more trouble with scattering. Unfortunately, air just isn't transparent at very many wavelengths. Hard UV lasers will be scattered by air as though by soup, and x-ray lasers will be completely absorbed by air (at least until they blast themselves an evacuated channel to shine through).

So you can think of a microwave beam, but it will need an emitter metres across to produce a narrow beam over any distance. And a handgun the size of a household satellite dish would look silly on a policeman's hip.

 

[hobgoblin]

First you have to identify a project worth working on. If your preliminary engineering studies show that something is fundamentally impractical, then the sensible course is to choose another approach to solving the problem. (And our problem is to put the enemy out of action--energy weapons are suggested means, not a determined end). There is no point in mending the easiest problem if some of the others are fundamentally insuperable. There is always another project to put your efforts into.

thing is that effective power production and storage can be used for a lot of stuff. even more so if one have energy/matter converters (or replicators if you like).

thing is that even tho pure EM weapons are impractical to say the least, offshots of going after that goal may well be applyed to other fields.

history is full of ideas that have been put aside by someone only to be found and put to a diffrent use by someone else.

so just because a goal may be impossible or impractical it does not mean that no good will come from trying to reach it.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Hobgoblin, you don't have to try to win an argument here. Agemegos please don't be condescending ("do you even know what diffraction is?").

I've seen both of those behaviours exhibited in this thread by both of you recently, and I'd like it to stop. Neither behaviour is necessary or advisable on ENworld thanks.

Regards,

Now, where DID pbartender get to?

Regards,

 

[hobgoblin]

im not trying to win the argument, but ill leave it be.
marry x-mas or whatever