In warfare, innovation breeds countermeasures – modified armor against crossbow bolts and bullet-proof material against guns – today, it’s, well, lasers against drones. So yeah, we’ve come quite a long way, haven’t we? Glasses with visual interfaces, watches that track our running speed and read us our text messages, cryogenic freezing of ovums, and, well, lasers. It is a bit difficult to take the term seriously after all its time in the science fiction bin, but, they’re here. And function in warfare. Lasers. In fact, the US Navy unveiled a video a few months back showing a ship-mounted laser effectively incinerate a speeding drone at long-range. Actually, it’s part of a pretty long line of near-insane tech the US Navy has got. I mean, all those defense contractors aren’t incredulously rich just for nothing. They’ve got missiles that travel at about seven and a half times the speed of sound using electromagnetic railguns, destroyer ships that operate on the seawater they’re floating on while being about 50 times harder to spot on radar than other ships their size, and, of course, their Laser Weapon System that takes down drones and other nuisances. Now, you might be going: “Gee, lasers sure are gonna be expensive to operate, right?” Nope. A dollar. That’s how much a shot costs. A dollar of energy is all they need to incinerate a small plane. Then again, the actual system itself costs $32 million. And recently, the Chinese have gotten themselves a speculatively similar system, although from the sound of it, it may have been improved a good bunch. Their machine has a 1.2 mile range, and can bring down: “various small aircraft” - within 5 seconds of finding the target. It’s effective up to a maximum altitude of 500 meters, and can go up against aircraft flying at or under 50 meters a second. According to the Chinese, their system’s main use will be to burn down drones during public events, as Yi Jinsong, a manager with China Jiuyuan Hi-Tech Equipment Corp, noted that small-scale, unmanned drones were both relatively cheap and easy to use, therefore being prone to use by terrorists. - See more at: ift.tt/1utRsna DaatSyn News - Chinese lasers will be taking down drones
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 09:35:07 +0000
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