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LoBlo -> RE: Directed Energy Focus (9/8/2015 2:00:36 AM)
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I found the sum of the talks thought provoking, but what the 'real capability' in terms of minimizing footprint, maximizing wattage, and accounting for atmospheric dispersion is still not clear.
A FEL on a AC-130 is an interesting idea. Fighter sized still seems decades off from my impression. But if a firing ranges and wattage on a AC-130 sized platforms are sufficient... then the entire concept of a 'fighter' now becomes questionable as designs for maneuverability and kinematics gives way to persistent, endurance, and wattage. No 'fighter' will outmaneuver a laser and launch kinematics is a void point. Just move the giant laser platform into whatever airspace needs to be controlled at it will zap all the SAMS fired at it and all the interceptors launched against it. The question of shooting 'lookdown' through the cloud layers still is a issues and cloud layers become synonymous to the thermal layers of submarines subsurface tatics.
Naval platform lasers of sufficient wattage to burn through adverse weather or even the normal salty, humid, maritime surface atmospheres with a short enough dwell time to be useful in AAW still seems at least half a century away at the soonest in my impression as well. Aside from the limited anti-UAV anti-small boat that the USS Ponce is harboring, but those can already be accomplished with the CIWS type systems which are more weather robust. A different environment than the high altitudes of Air-to-Air.
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