Why Laser Weapons Didn't Work, But Are Now Coming Back
Вставка
- Опубліковано 27 вер 2024
- Laser have come a long way. They are powerful, simple and inexpensive to operate, and hit the target at the speed of light. But are they the future of warfare? This is #NotWhatYouThink #NWYT #longs
Music:
Shortage - Marten Moses
Ostinato - Vieveri
No Stone Unturned - Brendon Moeller
Avalanche - Anthony Earls
Linda Low - Lucention
Orcas - Marten Moses
Upon Entering Another Realm - Brendon Moeller
Just the Right Amount - Arthur Benson_2
Nitrous Oxide - Prozody
Composite Key - DEX 1200
Footage:
Select images/videos from Getty Images
Shutterstock
Raytheon
Lockheed Martin
Boeing
Leonardo
Northrop Grumman
US Department of Defense
Note: "The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement."
In other words, BRRRRRRRRRTTT or PEW PEW?
BRRRRRRRRRTTT
Brrrrrrrrt
BRRRT
BRRRRRRRRRTTT is way better
BRO IMAGINE 100BILLION WORTH OF DRONES RUSHING YOU BY WAVES AND FURTHER from each other's so it can be hit so easily THEN RUSHING THEM BY SEA OR AIR SUPERIORITY
The idea of AI drone swarms is utterly terrifying but also kind of neat.
I feel like it could be cool if it can work in construction.
...yes i do like factorio.
Right? It is good investment. But it can made much more reliable and potent. 😂😂 The shxt I see online (from the West) is sooo linear, it isn't even funny! 😂("🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️…")
Terrifying.
The "best case" is they put us out of work.
@@TaylerKnox or small drones, or a small shell full of drones' that reinters the Earth's atmosphere...
Those viral video games with swarms of zombies are training us. Those with high scores will be recruited and paid well to fight off the drone swarm!
Great video. I used to work in this field. Here's some non-classified information and a few updates and some interesting information for your future videos on this subject.
1) The power beaming from space is typically referred to as microwave beaming or UV beaming. The idea has been around since the 1980's, but like the Star Wars initiative the technology to make it happen hasn't existed until recently
2) the technologies being referred to here have to do with: widely available multi-core cpu's, transistors & LED's becoming very powerful, and having very effective heat reduction. This lead to very small, low heat output, highly efficient devices, with quantum effect prediction engineered into them that allows these devices to be produced en masse without signal "Loss" or function loss due to being so tiny (circa 2015)
3) all energy weapons suffer significantly in cloudy, smoky or misty environments. Kinetic weapons and IR target acquisition will still be a staple of the military in the future to prevent this loophole from being exploited, and it is another reason why the research and limitations are still being taken seriously. There does not currently appear to be a way to counter this effect. ⚛️
4) Devices that use multi-focal projected microwave beaming & scattering were not covered here (i.e. "Havana Syndrome"), and I do expect that military grade devices will be available in the next few years, and most likely used by Russia in the near future against civilian and military populations. You should do a video on that one, they are very powerful anti-infantry & area denial devices, and there does not seem to be a counter to them outside of disabling the energy systems powering them. There does not appear to be any body shielding, vehicle armor or moderate thickness materials, other than a bank vault 🏦 that can stop this effect. (Maybe active EM shielding devices?)
5) Energy beam transfers from site to site is a pretty awesome tech. They can still be channeled into a conduit or receiving stations to turn around corners due to refractive cascades inside of glass, just like a fiber optic cable. The power output right now is too high for the materials we currently have. There are other solutions that are being used in the mean time to resolve this. But it seems like it won't be long until stronger transparent materials are developed that can shunt and refocus these beams, so that's pretty awesome
6) high energy microwave or UV beams from satellites that miss-align on their targets do exactly what your video describes. 😂 🧑🚒🔥🔥🚒 There is a reason we still don't use them. But pulsed arrays are coming 🛰️ and they do look to be much more safe. Still too dangerous to be in the middle of a base though; water based receiving stations or deep receiving stations appear to be the way to go.
7) all of these devices discussed here are vulnerable to air-burst nuclear devices & salted EMP blast effects. So it is likely that NONE of these weapons would be useful in a large war with another armed nuclear nation. The use of tactical devices purely for their EMP effect is high on the list of defensive strategies for any super powers, so these devices have other limitations too but they are great for all the conflicts that aren't large scale wars ☢️
Oh I forgot to mention:
8) Hyper Sonic high altitude missiles are really not an issue for modern military defensive networks. I think you covered this in a previous video as well; the TTI (time to intercept) during the re-entry or launch phases didn't change, so nothing about the way these devices currently work changes how we intercept them or the war field in any way.
2nd stage hyper sonic speed prevents them from being easily intercepted from low-orbit defense satellites. 🛰️🛰️ A technology that no one currently uses.
In the future, medium-orbit range interception lasers based on satellites would be able to stop them due to the inherent increased length of the angle of interception. 🤷♂️
The current devices are considered to be "false hyper-sonic" re-entry vehicles. If scientists ever figure out a way to cause the 1st & 3rd stages to also be hyper sonic, then that WOULD be something huge. But it doesn't look like that will happen anytime in the near future. (10-15 years)
Wow. Neat. Thanks. 👍 A lot to absorb in this technology. Basically, the bigger the power supply, the more powerful your laser. Why do I get the feeling these are going to be used as anti-satellite weapons in low Earth orbit? What's going to happen to us when we can't get on UA-cam?! 😵
@@williamyoung9401 It is possible and tbh, it would be just as catastrophic to the nation destroying them. There is a huge concern right now that the amount of low-earth debris being generated could reach a level in 30 years that would prevent humanity from leaving Earth for several hundred years. 🌐
It's all still M.A.D. doctrine, so I would have to presume the possibility is very unlikely.
Every other nation has a complement of very intelligent scientists, that are keyed into the global internet, regardless of that nations general policy. 💻 👩💻 They are well aware.
This is a good time to point out "obvious foreign policy" decisions regarding science, when each nation has their own scientific community, that is already a part of the larger global community. 🌍🌎🌏 - There's a reason China recently banned Japanese sushi, and it has nothing to do with science! 😆😅⚛️ 🚫 👍🐟🐟🦐🦐👍
@@MurseSamson many interesting ideas thanks for the share. Forgive my relatively uneducated remarks, but here they are 3) yes, this is a point that I felt should have been covered in the vid, as well as the range issue 4) this is interesting and scary, will read into it, 8) from what I read, what has changed is the ability for those vehicles to execute efficient evasive maneuvers, furthermore, the successful chinese test of a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System in 2021, means that it is pretty much impossible to predict when such a missile will reenter the atmosphere and with which trajectory, meaning that shooting it in re-entry phase is much harder.
Thanks for your detailed and professional view of this topic. There are so many videos over here but not a single one discloses the unit cost of a HEL Laser system of let's say 50 KW or the 5 KW unit on the Polaris. Do you have any unclassified information about this? I don't refer at the cost of the prototypes that should be immense but a targeted unit cost of a serial product.
Direct Energy Weapons are a promising technology with the potential to change the nature of warfare, they are unlikely to completely replace traditional kinetic weapons. Instead, they may complement existing capabilities and be used in specific scenarios where their advantages, such as precision and speed, are most valuable.
i understood what tgis says 💯
Hello GPT
@@noahtutt497 LOL exactly what I noticed.
I'm telling you, this is BatttleMech coming. Stompy robots soon to arrive.
Just like *gasp* every other weapon system created so far! This sort of austere assessment in weapons development is a very rare thing to see and never fails to make me happy when I see it :).
Forgot to mention the laser showstoppers:
Humidity, in the form of rain, clouds. ☁🌧
Also: dust, smoke, reflective surfaces. Making the target reflective can reduce the effectiveness of the beam up to 90%.
bulletproof glass for an entire plane would still be cost effective if it could break with an 100.000$ missile or some seconds of minigun fire
You forgot to mention the color blue to protect something from lasers
just paint it white lmao
@@kiwi_2_officialthat’s what she said
@@RichHomieGon hilarious and original
The US tried developing a long range laser system mounted aircraft to intercept ballistic missiles but it failed because the laser would get weaker in long distances due to clouds, particles in the air would interfere with the laser
That was also almost 30 years ago and they vastly improved the tech since then.
@@lorenkoski2714 beam attenuation is a normal physics problem. its one major problem with laser operated in atmospehere and it will always be. it would be a great weapon in space tho, unlimited range as long you can control the beam divergent
@royk7712 not gonna argue cause that is a great point, but I'm pretty sure we figured that out 👍 👌 And when it comes to a weapon, since when do we care about destroying more than just the target? Maybe in the public eye, but that's only when someone notices... And who is to say the satellites are in space? They have sub orbital capable machines...
And who's to say we don't have them on satellites already... The star wars project was very real. And I know they try to play it off as a failure or a ploy to get the Russians to overspend there budget... There's a big but there though... That and another project that most haven't heard of, the 'Titan project' which had a very similar strategy and goal.
@@lorenkoski2714 whoa whoa whoa guy, next you're going to claim we & our adversaries have the ability to build lasers in the ultraviolet range with fast-discharge capacitor banks that can be charged with solar arrays and packed into a orbital package under 4tons and rockets capable of getting them there, that could focus a beam of 2sq meters and sustain a discharge of 2 1/2 minutes... because that would just be crazy. You'd be able to start fires and melt metals anywhere you wanted...
The problem with laser tech is the fact that styropyro isn’t immediately being hired by the DOD as the primary director of laser armaments. The “it’s too expensive” and “it’s not effective” are blown away with what that guy does in his garage.
The fact that you could make a UV cancer ray or invisible infrared laser in a garage has so many military applications. Each one of his videos is essentially a futuristic weapon.
I was thinking exactly the same.
But I don't think that the military would except a guy that insane.
@@goferlp7011 "except a guy that insane" Well they did develop nuclear weapons so there's that.
The military HAS tried these. Look up the ADS, the only successful directed energy armament. Styropyro’s stuff is impresssive, but it’s in a control environment, not the heat of battle. Why point a laser 5 feet away from a balloon to pop it when you can use a knife and pop it?
Lasers are extremely niche because they dissipate their energy long-range. A laser from 50 feet away will feel like being in sunlight, instead of melting skin.
@@goferlp7011 ever heard of SkunkWorks?
I love how regularly you post! much appreciated.
Worth noting that, while they may be called "lasers" they are invisible in actual combat, the training footage cgi adds light for visualization. It's a misconception similar to everyone assuming that radioactive = glowing green.
double wrong, these are *infared* lasers, which are outside the visible light spectrum, and two we already have equipment for percieving the infared spectrum, its not cgi, have you ever wondered why there are some "night vision" systems in more consumer oriented products like cctv's and monoculars? ill give you a hint: those little leds that dont seem to emmit light might have something to do with that.
the same stuff btw, used in your tv remote or nowadays, cheaper RGB lighting kits for computers.
Sure they don't look like that to us, but they aren't cgi, that's just infrared camera footage lmfao
@@generic6099 The wavelength of the laser is not what makes it invisible. It's the fact that a laser beam is coherent and the only way to see a coherent beam of light is for the that light to intercept the photoreceptors in your eye. Now, if you shoot a laser through fog or dust, that will scatter the beam making it less coherent and thus visible without it being pointed directly at your eye.
About power beaming, I am quite a bit sceptical : if you take into account the losses due to efficiency of solar cells (70% loss) , and solid state lasers, the process might stay great for a niche but not reasonably expandable, not to mention the extreme costs of lasers emitters due to the necessary optical accuracy requiring extremely precise machining
We've put nuclear powered rovers on another planet. Retail off-the-shelf CPUs are made at the three-nanometer scale. Precision parts and power delivery aren't really problems for direct energy weapon systems .. at least not problems that can't be overcome with time. The real issues are much more basic...
Clouds. For land based targets, a simple smoke grenade is protection. For aerial targets .. any atmospheric diffusion is an issue. That and beam coherence over long distances are the two things stopping these weapons from being used right now. If you can find a way to mitigate them, you'll be financially set for life.
It's utterly unusable as portrayed here, you also have to account for the ability to focus the beam, which is highly dependent on the wavelength and the emitter dish size. Simply put, at orbital distances it is completely impractical... And even at shorter ranges on the ground, as you pointed out, it's not exactly efficient, but could have niche applications (rough terrain, nature reserves, you name it). All in all, I don't expect power beaming to be a mainstream thing except maybe between space infrastructure bits once we actually operate orbital manufacturing (meaning very big emitter/receiver dishes *and* no attenuating/interfering atmosphere)
@@Elristan well the military is a niche operation and they are rarely interested in cost if it gives them a major or even minor advantage.
I'd be more worried about the obvious tell of which direction the laser is coming from. From a military point of view at least. It'd be kind of counter intuitive to put a cheap drop full of receptors. But if it only has one side/one receptor the enemy can map out a direct line of where the laser is.
Things that defeat lasers: rain, fog, snow, sleet, smoke, steam, mirrors. You need the guns too.
Mirrors don't defeat lasers unless they are high energy mirrors that only work over a small band and small angle. These are Infrared lasers and smoke, steam and fog does not have much effect because of the long wavelength. Rain shortens the range or increase the shooting duration. Not sure about snow or how quickly it would melt and evaporate.
@@mrbaab5932clouds definitely absorb infrared radiation, every child knows the clouds block the suns warmth
Mirrors? Put the video games down. A mirror has to be tuned to the exact frequency of a laser to be effective and even then it still absorbs 50% of the energy it reflects. Meaning that a powerful laser will burn through your mirror.
@@T1Oracle wrong. A mirror is a mirror regardless of frequency. You flunked physics class.
@@CraigTheBrute-yf7no You just ignored the part about EFFICIENCY. Sure a mirror will still mirror, but it's still absorbing a large fraction of the laser energy. Start with powerful enough laser that target is still going to Cook.
Note that power-beaming isn’t particularly efficient, even if it’s more efficient than gathering sunlight.
The main issue is, we aren’t using the sunlight so any input is pure electricity gains, but using lasers results in losses and fickle connections able to be sabotaged by fog. I think we got the gist of 13:10 as well though.
Definitely has its uses, but in no way will it replace cables and power infrastructure in the near future.
I love when you cover War stuff it really fits the channel and current times!!
Sounds like the best approach to combating this lazer system is swarming + high velocity projectiles. Alternatively, a large, thin, spinning outer tungsten alloy shell which would prevent the rocket from being disarmed. (Spinning the projectile prevents heating of one area.)
I am Heavy Weapons Guy, and this... is my weapon. It weighs 2500 kilos and fires custom attenuated high wattage pulse lasers at centrimetric precision. It costs 25 cents to fire this weapon for _twelve seconds_
TF2 joke?
Who touched Sasha?
naw it's an Animal Crossing joke@@KenkadeLinden
Imagine a post apocalytic scenario where humans have to hide like rats on a daily circle where lazers from above roast everything on their way
that would be a pretty sick story plot, and a pretty sick in the other way real life plot
Thats kenshi
It's called the sun
Halo reach
@@regarrzo the sun is a deadly lazer, after all
When they say it's way ahead of its timeline, it just means keep at it not throw it away. Cause this stuff should of been made long ago and there ain't any excuses other than fear for what would others do next. But still, good video.
They've been around for a long time and we do use them… Most people just don't realize it and its not publically reported on.
...They should've been made... before the technology needed to actually produce anything of use existed?
I think you should listen what the dude behind the cool CG shots is saying before you make a dumb comment.
It's also a defensive tool and absolutely useless for offensive operations, so there's that.
@@Tyirielthey are here now, this is in use
Power-beaming sounds like something out of TRON. Fascinating!
If lasers proliferate, misssiles will just be equipped with heat reflectors or ablative shields. Hypersonics can already deal with heat, and offer short dwell time, so lasers won't be very useful for things like that. They'll be useful for small drones though
Well, yeah, the same way you can deal with flares and all other kinds of countermeasures. The more countermeasures the missiles have to avoid, the harder it becomes. If missiles and drones have to majorly adapt to these new countermeasures it might affect their performance and their defense against other kinds of countermeasures.
It's about the targeting systems that are guided either through a laser pointer or a heat sensor. Firing a thick beam of pure light at that poor sensor will fuck it up and make the missile fall out of the sky in confusion, which is the intended purpose. It was never to my knowledge meant to destroy the missile itself.
Also RPGs and and similar man-portable weapons. I can see them being being installed around sensitive sites.
A missile's seeker cannot be reflective (and of course no reflective surface is reflective enough when the lasers get big enough: even 1% of several kilowatts can quickly heat a very small area to the point of discoloring) or ablative, and ablatives add a lot of weight very quickly. While those may very well be counter-counter measures employed on future weapon systems, they'd hardly negate the utility of the original counter measure.
In any case, lasers are a point defense type of thing, it's much better the destroy enemy missiles further away, with your own missiles, which do not particularly care if the enemy missiles are shiny.
Dust not only only degraded reflectivity, but burns.
And anything that travels that fast will be scratched up by any particles in the air. Not accounting for the fact that we can already shoot down Russian "hypersonics". The Aegis system is supposed to be better than the Patriot system.
"You never have to reload". That's not entirely true. These lasers take a LOT of energy to fire. This means one of two solutions; generation or storage. Generators are expensive, heavy and aren't very good at coping with large fluctuations in demand. Storage would only require some cheap and comparatively light-weight (though bulkier) super-capacitors that can dump hours worth of generation almost instantly. However, once they discharge below a certain point, they will need time to charge back up again.
In the long term, these systems will require replacement electron guns, lasing materials and lenses; which I suppose is more like replacing a firing pin, reloading brass and swapping a barrel on a traditional gun.
What do u call a gun that shoots salt?
Assalt rifle! 😂
This got a single chuckle from me
Dad joke! Lol
A slug's worst nightmare!
The Future of Warfare is a Sabaton song about the first tank, which was released on September 15, 1916. This video was posted on September 15.
I hope Railguns, Lasers & High-power Microwaves will become the future of warfare in place of cold-war era weapons systems primarily intended for delivery of nuclear weapons due to being scalable, cost-efficient & future-proof as well.
I hope that you're not unironically hoping for this. As Microwave and other directed energy systems have a large potential mission profile for domestic use, and I don't think that's something to be hopeful or positive about.
@@DefinitelyNotEmma True, but t"hermonuclear megadeath because MAD failed" will always beat "so Google can now murder the president of Liechtenstein at a whim" in the public eye.
Yes, the later has significant problems, but the first is an elemental threat anyone alive during the 80s feels in their bones.
@@DefinitelyNotEmma hard to sure, range is another problem though , too much air atoms, would make laser alot less effective, so it can't be use for alot of missions
Personal opinion. Nukes have proven to be incredibly effective. We used 2 of them almost 80 years ago, and now war has become "let's solve this problem at a lower level because we know what the light at the end of the tunnel is.
@@tallspy7150except this doesnt apply to countries without nukes. Top countries have gatekept nuke so weak countries will always be outgunned. This is why Ukranian war was possible in the first place and putin can sort of wave at his nukes whenever things dont go his way
I mean come on, laser weapons, beaming energy from space? We're finally turning into a sci-fi movie and I'm so for it.
Great video. I would suggest the equation for cost shouldn't be the price of the defence weapon vs the price of the aggressor's weapon; ie $3m to take down a $2k drone. I'd suggest the better parameter would be asking the price of what you're defending. If it's a multi-billion dollar installation or asset then the price is worth it! Depending on the value of what you're defending both in terms of price and capability (what it offers) easily offsets the cost to defend it in most cases.
Well. The problem is if someone spent 2 million dollars to attack with 1000 drones you would have to spend 3 billion dollars to counter them. Not gonna work out in the long term.
Powerbeaming is a pipedream. We need more than 100 years for that. Laser modules have very low efficiency, and photovolatic modules that are very specific might have 40% efficiency. At the end of the day you might need 1kw to transmit 100 watts. And they are extremely visible. Imagine shining kilowatts of lasers into the sky. Plus atmospheric scattering comes into play after a couple hundred meters. But overall its a cool idea like all the research topics mentioned here.
0:22 I love how the drone touches the water and just flops and does flips
As a correction, the CWIS (Navy) doesn't use tracer or explosive rounds. The C-RAM (Army/ground based) uses self destructing tracers.
Poor fish, lol. (Kidding of course.)
And the rounds cost more like $200 each if they have a proximity fuze.
The video they used here is from another video, that runs simulations vs. certain weapon systems. It was not developed by this channel, and I've seen it on the original source.
These are people using software, not real bullets. 👍 It's all good man
@@garywatson They don't have proxy fuses, just a delay fuse that self destructs shortly after they were supposed to impact, which both makes them safer and provides a visual aid to people on the ground for how close the incoming rounds are. I doubt you can make a 20x102 proximity fused projectile that is reliable, has self destruct capability, tracer, and enough explosive mass and shrapnel to be useful versus incoming artillery shells.
@@MurseSamson my comment has nothing to do with the videos used. CWIS uses like, plain tungsten rounds. C-RAM uses MPT-SD rounds.
The story about Archimedes using mirrors and sunlight to burn ships is almost certainly a myth. Also, a LASER is completely different from concentrated sunlight.
There is mythbusters video about that!
They used sails back then so....
This is our modern version of the cannon. In the middle ages, cannons were a technological marvel. Then the first handheld firearms came along and rapidly revolutionized the battlefield. I would take a guess that we will have an early version of handheld laser weapons sooner rather than later. Styropyro has already made some amazing stuff, but imagine the might of the military industrial complex behind a man like Styro? That would be insane.
It is very cost effective. Nice vid👍
Laser and drone warfare will become the weapon of modern militaries in the very near future. Drones used in warfare have already proven their worth in terms of - "Gold". With the use of drones pilots are not put into harms way as it has been. Another excellent video. You continue to make great videos well worth watching. Shalom
Imagine a drone with a laser strapped to it
I feel like people are forgetting the last fifteen years of drone strikes and stuff.
I think before long we will see it. Shalom @@Calbjrd
I don't know if they are forgetting the past years, but you do have to admit the last 18 months has brought it out a lot more. Shalom@@deriznohappehquite
talked with the people who worked at the Sandia national lab that developed the LASER for the 707 testing. There is a reason why this isn't going to proliferate like you state...the distance is proportional to the energy required to do damage. the energy required for the Jet based laser was enormous, yet it was only good at relatively short distances....
So basically we Ukraine can put them in nuclear plants to defend
@@mateuszzimon8216you are missing the point. If you want a laser powerful enough to sweep the sky at a great distance the power-supply would have to be as big as an entire large building
About Lidar scanning, it used to be fixed on either a tripod or a car, but some portable scanners are starting to come out (Navvis), and while you have to walk gently with it so it doesn't screw up it's positioning, it's only a matter of time before drones with lidar scanners start to come out.
Also, to correct the narrator, it doesn't take 1000000 photos per second, but 1000000 Y, X, Z coordinate points, along with a panoramic picture to add color to the 3D model.
Lidar was used in Samsung's Galaxy s20 ultra for taking reaallyy damn good pictures. It was used to scan the depth of a picture a lot better. But they unfortunately ended up ditching it in the next gen phones. I want one though, just so i can use 3d scanning apps..👍😄
IRC Apple still have Lidar scanner
Did anyone else notice that one of the companies in this video is called “Faro”?
Take a wild guess what the name of the company that created all the robots in Horizon Zero Dawn was.
They still need nanobots first tho
The net capture drone at 2:32 is called DroneHunter and is made by Fortem Technologies in Utah. It has a miniature phased array radar onboard to seek the target.
What kind of efficiency is reached with powerbeaming? I can't imagine it's very good
So with the last technology listed, using lasers as a method of power transfer, we could theoretically have electric planes that never land.
With the proposed system of orbital "Power transfer satelites" - the plane would no longer be necessary.
If you could direct that amount of energy through the atmosphere, then you cut out the middle man and apply that energy straight to a stationary target.
From polictical assassinations to precise destruction of infrastructure - unless your enemy is in a fortified hole underground, your "civillian relais" could be turned into a terrifying weapon George Orwell would be prould of.
until there is any amount of weather: clouds, fog, rain, ect... lmao
@@epicgamer42069 If we beam energy straight from orbit into high-altitude planes, clouds, rain and fog are not an issue I presume.
@@whatsupbudbud that does solve the issue but I find it questionable if its possible and safe to transfer the large amount of power even a typical narrow body airliner needs to fly.
I can find estimations of the electricity required to get a 747 airborne to be anywhere from 90 megawatts to 190 meggawatts which is an insane amount of power to be shooting through the air with a laser beam. And in this video he only talked about transmitting in the number of hundreds of watts.
And then you have all of the safety problems with shooting down such powerfull beams of energy all over the place. How do you prevent the beam from cooking the plane and everyone in it. Or missing its target and hitting something else and killing a person or causing damage to property.
@@epicgamer42069 perhaps it could be a multi-layered solution where there are relatively stationary receivers at higher altitudes which relay the power at some specific height horizontally to the aircrafts. This would solve the danger to ground level to some extent. No idea about power and such since this is not my field.
You know, the last part about laser being a power conductor actually makes me think of applications for space vessels. Solar sail was a thing at one point, but this, this can essentially lead us to Dyson swarm. Having a swarm of satellites getting power from the sun and transmitting it to earth, that's clean energy and can also be used say to power other things, say Mars colony. Pretty futuristic, I know, but 20 years ago that was even less achievable.
EDIT SO PEOPLE SEE: this is NOT about the usage of lasers as weapons, this is about the usage of lasers as energy transfer around a base or from space.
I would be concerned about the eye safety of these long range laser energy systems. given that 1 watt lasers can blind you before you can blink, pumping kilowatts of power though the air seems like a mistake could easily cause burns on skin or permanently blind anyone who got in its way.
That's the point lol, don't get those pointed at you
Thats a weird concerne If a bullet hits ur eye ur blind aswell😂
Just don't get hit bro.
Kidding aside, It's not that different getting a hole in your head by a bullet or by a laser.
Safety goggles exist.
@@Hizsoo They generally only block a narrow spectrum of light, and it is very easy for a given laser to be outside the blocked spectrum, thus bypassing safety devices.
Dr. Robert Fugate must be remembered as the Father of Directed Energy. He was instrumental in the development of fiber-optics and devoted his prime-years to creating our Nation's Directed Energy Center of Excellence at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico.
Just wrap the drones with reflective material.
Laser proof🧠
Just need more power then 🤣 put a whole nuclear engine behind it. No more problems 🤣
It's not as simple, light and radio waves are both electromagnetic radiation, a reflective drone can't be piloted
They have a laser weapon we have a mirror shield😏
Then just use an EM system like Leonidas or SEWIP
Lasers can also be used as tactical weapons. A strategy to steal a vessel using them may be very effective in the end. You can kill less by targeting a critical and section of a reactor, etc.
You make wargames seem so fun!
who ever came up with the acronym HEL(high energy lasers) needs a raise
Awesome! I waited for the military laser era as a huge fan of lasers! Specially high power lasers!
You know what's wild? Halo (yes the game/books) already addressed this. They talked about how with the increase in laser and plasma technology they (the aliens) had to increase their defenses against them. And developed and developed and they got battle systems that were top of the line against energy weapons. But when they went to fight the humans we had primitive "kinetic weapons" that bypassed all of their technological advances.
As an example that relates to the real world. Technology is getting so advanced that its becoming a liability. War has become economic. Its now "who can do the most damage for the least money" a $200 RPG destroys a $1,000,000 armored personell carrier. You put a $2,000 drone in the air that costs $100k to shoot down. Sometimes, the best answer to "how do I stop the $100,000,000 jet from being shot down, is to just not build it.
I guess this becomes interesting when these systems get small and cheap enough that Ukrainian or Russians soldiers in their trenches start using them to take down enemy drones, without the power supply unit requiring too much fuel or it being so big that it gets spotted and taken out by the enemy.
As a sci-fi nerd, One thing I can tell you is that the fact is Laser weapons cannot stop hypersonic weapons, what's more, is that they're not going replace Gatling guns, because their many ways to counter laser weapons Like mirrors, and sloped surfaces, ultra white paint, etc even if it could make the missile survive milliseconds or maybe seconds longer which might not sound like much but still has a massive effect on life and death you could do that even more by using small effective passive cooling or ablative cooling methods etc. Not to mention lasers are going have problems like being fragile and affected by the atmosphere but those problems are currently being solved yet Gatling guns for point defense won't go away.
Another question is the efficiency - how much energy does it take to generate the laser of certain power and how much of that can be caught and converted back to electricity for example.
Converted back to electricity?
@@Sniperboy5551Like, how much of the power the laser *uses* to charge something actually makes it to the thing being charged
It depends on the wavelength but at the IR wavelengths of interest (~1um) they're less than 40% efficient. oh and that's just the laser. You'd lose even more at the photovoltaic side.
Solarpanels are much more efficient at converting solar power than plants are, but still around the 20-30% range. World record is 47% in lab conditions.
Using specific frequency and directed light would result in more efficient cells, but it’s important to note that these numbers are based on the light (and power) actually hitting the solar-cell.
Distance would quickly add losses as anything from simple temperature gradients to air moisture and small particles would be between the laser source and solar cell.
For some context: Reagans Star wars project was so bonkers in goals that the scientists working on it quickly realised no existing source of energy could come even close to harming an ICBM. The most feasible way to even get the input power was using nuclear explosions, and directing energy from them as laser to the target, in the nanoseconds before the explosion would destroy the satellite.
For beaming energy “anywhere on earth”, I’m sceptical we can really do much better. Any solution not using nukes would boil down to redirecting sunlight, and usually making gigantic structures with wide surface area are so much cheaper to build on the ground instead of in orbit. While the atmosphere, scattering of light and clouds subtract significantly from sun’s energy, so would any redirection, convertion or anything else we could do for sunlight.
I don't know how you did it. I wouldn't have been able to avoid mentioning Real Genius (1985).
"Where's the laser?"
"It's coming."
"It's coming? It's not even breathing hard."
Wait, that was a missile defense system on a FedEx plane at 6:40 ?
Always wondered how they managed to destroy every package I've received through them.
Energy Weapons also push development of miniature fusion cell unit as well.
Just like the submarines, little down time, massive return.
There isn't even normal fusion yet, that's all scifi
Man played fallout and thought it was a documentary lmaoo
How the fuck does this help fusion? There's already a massive laser powered fusion reactor in the US, and it's not worth the effort.
@@staringgasmask There is fusion, just not sustained fusion with a positive net energy.
The Lawrence Livermore tests did it twice, though I can't remember how long.
If we're very lucky, we can have commercial reactors by 2040.
@@recoil53 fission reactors is good enough, we just need to put these fission reactors on more areas, would be more useful than fusion reactors
I was reading in a magazine probably 5 years ago how autonomous warfare could look like, kinda fascinating we are already here
I currently have little confidence they will soon replace current systems but seems well worth including on vessels. I trust that at bare minimum, lasers can burn out the sensors on missiles. Given the cost of each short, well worth the shot. Added layer 👍
So if you incinerate the target with a laser, that's ok. But if you just blind them, that's a war crime. Got it!
It's going to be trivial to make those cheap attack weapons more reflective or more tolerant to heat, and still overcome the more expensive laser setups. Doesn't matter if it costs 50 cents to fire it, you still paid millions to build it & it'll get destroyed anyway
More reflective? The heat will completely warp that. More tolerant to heat? Sure, but how does your laser guided missile protect its guidance system from lasers without impacting the guidance? Heat resistant/sinking materials are also quite heavy, and we are talking about airborne vehicles. Also given all of that, a more powerful laser would still overcome them. I'm not saying it's impossible, but trivial? Lol, no.
Soldiers cost a ton of money to train but get wrecked with a few bucks of ammunition. Military assets are designed under the assumption that a success costs them a lot more than it costs you, so having a military base cost a lot and destroy attacks on the cheap is quite standard.
@@ethanwilliams1880 trivial
What do you think happens to a laser pointing at a mirror? Just like Light, heat is energy, energy can be reflected. Sound can be reflected, all sorts of energy can be reflected.
@@graog123 Heat is not reflected by mirrors. Heat is also not electromagnetic. I'm sure heat can probably be reflected, but we don't know how yet. Sound is just vibrations, which are naturally reflected when they hit a suitably solid object, but what does that have to do with the discussion?
You also missed the point about the lasers. Guidance systems are a thing necessary to make the missile hit its intended target. A defense laser like this operates by wrecking the guidance, not destroying the missile (usually). The guidance receiver can't be a mirror, because then the laser that guides the missile won't work.
Ultimately, if it were trivial, weapons manufacturers would already have designed their missiles to resist lasers.
Worth watching til the end. 13:10 - best part of the video! 🤫
The cost to firing directed energy weapons is NOT just the energy going in. Typically they use solid state lasers, and they wear out quite quickly still. No one is publishing how many seconds you get before their intensity is too low. But it's been mentioned elsewhere that burnout & not energy, it is the biggest cost by a long way when firing.
Yes, directed energy weapons are the future.
The biggest advantage of energy weapons is that they hit where they aim. There is no ballistic arc and no wind deflection. Point the crosshair at a target, and that's where the laser goes. Also, unlike a 20mm round from a CIWS, there's no need to lead the target. For a 20mm USN CIWS to engage a target at 5km, it needs to account for a 4.5s travel time. A Mach 5 missile will travel over 8km in that time. Even a degree of evasion from the missile will put it well out of the line of fire. A laser firing at a 20km target will hit in a few microseconds and the target will only have moved a handful of centimeters.
Star Trek was ahead of its time with phasers.
I just discovered this channel and these types of videos and the artillery one is perfect edutainment content. Subbing
This video did not mention that all laser systems are highly dependent on atmospheric conditions (humidity etc.) which is a huge disadvantage.
8:57 when the work your are doing on the computer is so lit that might explode, then it's a good thing to have safety glasses...
"Raytheon's modular hel" could be a scifi metal band name
I remember one of the protest, a huge crowd with those green lasers all shined it on a drone and was able to take it down lol..
Storm Trooper at 4:45 had me cracking up😆
This came out specifically oddly enough to when the Maui fires are set by laser weapons 🤔
You forgot to mention that greece already has an anti-drone laser truck
Beginning of the video reminded me of a My Alien Roommate skit.
“Our pointy technology got very advanced”
Lasers of visible and UV light do not work through clouds, mist, dust in the air. Light is also bent by different temperatures of the air. Are longer wavelengths better ?
Someday, down in Washington DC, a Laser will poke up out of the center-top of the Capitol Dome, and start tracking and shooting at both Ground and Airborne targets. I don’t know who gets to hold the joystick.
I've never felt more dread for the future from watching a video than this one right here. Geeze.
I bet the Bond villain super weapon looking thing has 1/4 of the power of the one that looks like a complicated backyard telescope.
You missed an opportunity at the end to say, “Let’s hope it’s Not What You Think,” as you show that forest fire footage.
A Swarm Commander could become a Super Villain. He could walk into battle while commanding a swarm of drones to perform various attacks. Of course, he’d probably need some sort of portable, cybernetic helmet.
Travels at the speed of light so you don't have to predict the flight path. Lasers sound cool.
8:40 why do i feel like beck is going to break in with "i got two turn tables and a microphone"?
Best part of the whole video is the not so subtle reference to Hawaii at the end...I just about lost my drink.
*Army industry* : We already get 1 billion in research.
*China* : And I found that a cheap reflectible tape could defeat any laser.
*Army industry* : Did I stutter? I say, I billion
I doubt we're anywhere close to beamed orbital power completely replacing wired power. I could see using beamed power for small, remote outposts like a hospital in the middle of the mountains or forest, but a local generator at a proper base is going to be much more efficient for the foreseeable future.
I always had high hopes for the YAL-01 but was really clueless as to how well they might work in real life.
It turns out that the Air Force was equally clueless!
this is aperture everybody run
But wouldn't an infrared reflective panel or coating negate the infrared energy as it wouldn't heat the target up?
Nice video. It would be nice if the acronyms shown on screen were also narrated so you could listen to the video without needing to be looking all the time
Lasers typically demonstrate LOW energy efficiency, and thereby generate a lot of Waste Heat. Industrial Lasers often use a specially “doped” long length of Fiber Optic Cable as the “lasing” element. The long length of the fiber helps to distribute the Waste Heat over a longer (i.e. bigger) surface area.
@4:00 i think this is a misnomer. lasers take energy and energy sources are finite just like ammunition. Eventually you will need to "refuel" aka "reload". It might be cheaper but im wiling to bet that you can store less energy for a laser then a gun. It comes down to energy density. Energy density is why we dont see battery powered aircraft.
Bro you should have a tv show on discovery or history. I love all your videos!!!
Can’t wait to see job listings for laser operators with keyboard and mouse fps skills as a requirement
Lasers have natural weaknesses: Fog, clouds and dust (aerosols). It would be relatively easy and inexpensive to create a munition with microcrystalline titanium dioxide powder (used as white pigment, food additive and in sun screen) in order to create a cloud that disperses the light in all directions. When talking about high-energy equipment, all soldiers in the vicinity would probably go blind and likely get burns on top of that.
Soot and smoke from large fires, ammonium chloride made directly from gaseous HCl and NH3, aswell as the fumes of burning phosphorus (creates a dense mist of phosphoric acid by reacting with moisture in the air) can also mitigate the threat of lasers in no time and in a large area.
Now comes the kicker: When the lenses used to focus the beam get dirty, they'll crack or eben explode because they absorb too much energy. This already happens with laboratory equipment from time to time.
This is quickly becoming more and more like Ace Combat: Skies unknown, just without the big stuff
It's all MAD - if you can get a direct or mirrored indirect view of the target you can take it out. Ship to ship, air to air, land/ sea to air and vice versa. Instant destruction of vulnerable targets.
If they put a directed energy system on an A10 all I ask is that they also mount a speaker that makes The Noise still.
Would an effective counter to anti-drone lasers be to have the drones drop payloads such as smoke grenades to obscure a direct line of fire? Would smoke from something like a smoke grenade be good enough at diffusing the light to prevent the drones from being burned by the lasers?
Why have drones drop smoke grenades when you can fire smoke grenades at a base without needing to get close?
@@btf_flotsam478 but then the lasers shoot down the smoke grenades before they get there so you need the smoke grenades to have smoke grenades attached to them so they aren't targeted
First of all I love your statements, to my knowledge, are always exact and never commonplace.
Second I like the way you mix humor and technology.
This clip surprise me with many news, but laser was near future weapon from fifties, in the sixties they become so popular we find it on Star Trek, in the eighties they came out of the laboratories to fly into empty space finding founds for a great research program (Reagan star wars), and so on...
it's 50 years I'm waiting for a laser weapon, even just some sort of energy weapon, and we are here still talking...
Laser is a Chimera due to its growth potential in the long term, but for these new elements on Battlefield drones, the last evolution of Rafael Typhoon IV mount (aka Mk38 in US Navy) using 30/173 mm round (lethal up to 2 metres away for a dismounted soldier) with proximity fuze requires a burst of only three shots to destroy it one up to 1 or 2 nm away depending on the speed at cost of 100/150 dollars per burst.
On ground battelfield intended target could be everywhere, so drone can pass miles from gun making it ineffective. Even laser at 10/15 statute miles or 20 kilometres will find itself out the line of sight, but is much better.
Just for laughs a 127 mm / 5" naval gun round have a proximity range against a cruise missile of 10 metres/ 33 feet probably 5 times more for target as drone, so killing swarm of drones with every round.
This is not the way to fight a war, none give Ukraine a weapon capable to hit inside Russia the source of drone (by factory, deposit, supply convoy, bridge, roads, etc), nor one very peculiar war could establish rules for future wars...
Thank you
In short - we are at the very beginning of the development and manufacturing of the foundation and it's technology for a Dyson swarm :) thank You for the video
Lasers have yet to be powerful enough to destroy targets in milliseconds or less like in movies. If they take a few seconds to burn down a small cheap drone, it is possible to overwhelm them using drone swarms and attacking as a wide front as much as possible instead of coming in single file or direction.
Star War's Star Destroyer concentrates three beams into one powerful beam to destroy its target. Light, or whatever energy beam, will not just do what the director orders; multiple lasers won't even interfere with each other (laser interferometers splits a single laser source to achieve what they do due to laser's coherence). However, the destructive thermal effect of lasers on any target can be increased by using multiple laser guns on the same target, controlled as an array, or battery like Patriot systems, in order to reduce the time spent destroying each drone so that the whole swarm can be quickly destroyed before they any can score a critical kill of the control & command center, or just its weakest link, the comms cables linking all battery components. 😆
I saw the part suggesting phase arrays of lasers like that of radios: unlike radio waves that spread out to utilize such effects as phased arrays, lasers radiate in an very much more focused direction, and would be much more difficult to keep their frequency even closely in phase. Even if possible, light also has the duality of behaving as particles. 😁 Quantum entangle lasers needs to be discovered to see if its possible 😅; and I've since learned that quantum entanglements are usually less than microseconds 🤣 (dashing hopes of eternally quantum entangled communications over light years, because of the news of China's experiment in quantum entanglement over a distance of more than 100 km. with a space-based setup; maybe someday).
Laser is an acronym (who remembers?), but we now always use small letters. 😁
Drone swarms could save a lot of allied lives in nations that use tunnel systems such as N Korea