I'm of the school of thought that radical minds get radical results. Most of the people making these advancements stay in the box too much. It's much like the X-Prize. Everyone kept trying to make it work the way shuttle launches have always happened. It wasn't until someone took the "obvious" idea of a two-stage take-off that something was done right. So, again, find the slackers who got kicked out of science classes when things went BOOM! Hehe

You know, my science and chemistry classrooms were built like ammunition dumps, and I'm ashamed to say I know why now...

ours looked like a bomb had gone off, after we were done with it . . which is, of course, pretty much what happened . .
again. and again. and then some similar thingies too . . i am not ashamed to say that despite almost failing chemistry, my boomex was always top notch <.<

I grew up in a mining town. If it could blow up, we did so.

Electrical class was a hoot! We were watched too carefully in woodworking, however. Too many flammable items.

That's... not really how lasers work. It's not a "spread" weapon. It produces a tightly collimated beam; the whole reason it even works as a weapon is that it produces a tightly collimated beam. Yes, you could mount a very powerful one on an aircraft, but it couldn't do anything that a Predator with a couple of Hellfires can't. Well, except that it doesn't have to worry about ammo.

True. But what would the cost effectiveness be if one were to simply "paint" the field. Carpet bombing with a laser.

well, you need HUGE ammounts of energy to fire it, especially constantly . . and you need BOAT LOADS of cooling to boot, so it doesn't melt right out of your plane . .
also, the first real application of weaponized lazer cannons in the real world IS, in fact, mounting one in the nose of a 747 or something like that, and makt it shoot down missles . .

Damn you Tesla. Why did you have to piss off Edison? We would have mastered this shit by now!

Tesla was working on the use of directed energy as a weapon, actually. Well, rumors have it he was working on a working prototype . .

The list of things he was working on is a very long list. The "Death Ray". Powering his house by siphoning the planet. Plugging a phone into the dirt and calling other dirt phones. Destroying buildings with a metronome. His electric car. That vampire had some wild ideas.

Worse, they are all pretty much fesible as of todays technological advances . . had he lived 100 years later, we would have hover boards and flying cars and 3d holographic images already . .

He is the key argument for human cloning and nature vs. nurture.

Three Words: Adjustable Focusing Elements

My lawnmower can only cut a tiny patch of grass at any given moment. But somehow I manage to cut my rather large lawn. I dunno, it must be magic or something.

Compared to the engineering behind the laser itself, working up a focusing system so it can rapidly scan the beam back and forth across any given area should be trivial. If the beam can kill a man in 0.2 seconds, scanning back and forth in lines can quickly render the entire area being covered lethal to foot soldiers, quickly damage and degrade most vehicles, and cook off ammo stores. You could even adjust how closely the scan lines are together based on target types - trying to cook troops will probably need a much finer scan grid than trying to cook vehicles.

It would probably require a mini-nuke power plant to provide the energy needed for both the laser and the cooling system, and set the whole target area on fire, but hey.

I'll admit, though, even with such a system, they'd target small areas, not whole battlefields. But combined with cameras and other sensors to track movement, anyone caught out in the open in the target zone is likely to have a very bad day.

Then again, this is also true of ground troops getting targeted by an AC-130 already, so mebbe it's not such a new thing.



-k

Depends on the thickness of the beam. With these first-gen combat lasers, I'm guessing that's a few millimeters to one, maybe two centimeters. Not really useful for "carpet bombing." In order to saturate a useful area, you'd have to move the beam so fast that it wouldn't have any effect. Lasers are not going to make firearms or explosives obsolete any time soon.

Make one hell of a BBQ along a dry forest.

So wait? They weaponized lasers finally? So THAT'S what happened up near Los Alamos...


(For those not aware, New Mexico's largest fire started a few weeks back and is still not fully contained, right up near Los Alamos)

If you have a flat field, you could also just sit it down in the middle point out out and rotate 360 degrees.

*Blinks* Maybe it's just because I woke up, but you did *NOT* just tell him to sit on it and rotate, did you Nezumi?

Heh... That is what it looked like to me...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGNlW7WqcRo&t=1m02s

Rotate?






-k

Funny, I saw that the day after I posted

But no, please do NOT sit on a laser and rotate (unless you like a perfectly flat, cooked bottom).

One way to get rid of a flabby ass. No pain, no gain!

But in the words of Al Bundy, "I like my 'Hold Me' hiney..."

"Those are Love-Handles"