hobgoblin said:
outside of large bore weapons like shotguns, this stuff cant be done internaly with handguns anyways.
Indeed not, but it can be done with mortars, grenade-launchers, field guns, and gun-howitzers, all of which are ballistic weapons, and therefore germane to the subject: whether energy weapons are capable of completely displacing ballistic weapons.
given the change in warfare, interdiction weapons are becoming a nono a they dont see the diffrence between a enemy "soldier" and a civilian.
Perhaps you are thinking of landmines. I an thinking of machineguns, anti-personnel rounds fired from mortars and guns, hand grenades, etc. I see no sign that they are vanishing from the battlefield.
depends on the beam realy. if it can damage matter, some leaves will not stop it, and the smoke particles should be no problem either. its just a matter of pumping more energy down the beam
Nope. The leaves, smoke particles etc. disperse the beam by diffraction and Rayleigh scattering. And if you pump enough energy down the beam to burn them away, the heating induces thermal bloom. Lasers are lousy at penetrating light cover.
depends on the wavelength used. last time i watched a video where they tested a laser used to shoot down a missle, they had to use a ir camera to even see the effects of the laser, the beam was invisible. if one is using ir sensors or similar to spot the beam, one can allso spot the heat flare from the muzzle of the gun. the only change is that you can see the line, if it even stays long. and the reason they stay long today is because we cant pump enough energy down range fast enough. fix that and what you will see is a small line cutting across the field for maybe a second...
Invisible wavelengths are all very well until you start trying to pump enough energy down the beam to burn your way through smoke and leaves, evacuate an air-channel to overcome thermal bloom, and then deliver enough energy to burn through ablative armour and inflict a dissabling wound, all in a fraction of a second (soldiers don't stay still for a second after they have been hit). Then you are talking about a beamso intense that it heats the air to incandescence, and your 'invisible' laser beam is about as inconspicuous as the invisible electric current in a lightning bolt.
incendiary may be a problem, yes. but that depend on the flamability of the materials attacked. more often then not, its the time spendt in contact with a source of heat thats the issue. a beam weapon will most likely be a pulse (if you avoid the classical phaser of star trek) and therefor the material will be heated to 1000+ degrees, but at best only a second. last time i checked i had to hold even a open flame of a match to the paper for some seconds to get the paper to realy ignite. if i just touched and then removed i would at best get some smoldering edges.
That's because the low power of the flame did not deliver enough energy to heat the paper to its ignition point (451 Fahrenheit, of course) in the short time. Take into account that the paper was losing heat to radiation and convection even while the flame was heating it, and you will see that the low power is a significant issue. Any sort of effect laser weapon is going to have to deliver at least a kilojoule to an area no larger than a few millimetres across in a small fraction of a second. That will start fires.
as for the rest: last time i checked, most of those where hand deliverd allready.
More often they are delivered by grenade launchers, mortars, and artillery pieces. Remember that we are talking about energy weapons replacing ballistic weapons in general, not just energy smallarms replacing ballistic smallarms.
tune down the energy deliverd so that it pains rather then wounds.
That won't be as effective or as long-lasting as CS gas, glue-guns etc. Such a beam is unlikely, for example, to penetrate street clothing.
basicly the problem right now is one of power source. if we can find one that can deliver the needed watts within the time it takes to fire a bullet and still be man portable, then we are looking at a practical beam weapon...
Possibly you are better-informed than I. My understanding was that we don't yet have a laser smallarm that is powerful enough to injure as well as light enough to carry, even if it is plugged in to the mains. Not to mention that the large lasers we have are delicate and need cooling. The power issue involves weapons that fit in a 747 and are intended for anti-missile use, not weapons that are small enough or rugged enough for troops to take into ground combat.
By the way, you ought not to talk of delivering 'watts within the time needed'. Watts are a unit of power, ie. a unit of the
rate at which energy is generated, delivered or consumed. The issue is delivering
joules within the time needed, or in short developing enough watts.
