U.S ups the ante in warfare technology

[billdan]

A US Navy warship has successfully tested a new high-energy laser weapon that can destroy aircraft and drones mid-flight, the US Navy says.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-24/us-navy-test-laser-weapon-it-says-destroy-aircraft-mid-flight/12280740

[glend]

I take it these are fairly power hungry weapon systems, maybe not as much as the now seemingly abandoned rail gun weapon. I worry that the US is continuing to pursue systems which are obsolete in the era of hypersonic attack weapons. The Chinese carrier killer is a good example of something the US cannot stop with these systems, there is simply not enough time available to track, target, and bring a weapon to bear, on a fairly short range hypersonic missle, especially where multiple attacking weapons maybe clogging up defense system capabilities at the same time. The only defense against guided hypersonic weapons may be directional EMP weapons, but such a thing does not seem to exist at this time. Ironically just such a a weapon was imagined in one of the old Bond movies.Of course EMP might well take out the defenders attack options as well.

In my opinion. Hopefully we never find out.

[billdan]

When I was in the RAAF during the Vietnam years, a Russian MIG was dissected to see what made it tick. Everyone was amused that the MIG had WW2 era valves as the electronics, whereas the US had state of the art transistors and integrated circuits.
Then the penny dropped, what if the Russians were developing Electromagnet Pulse technology. The US planes with their transistors running off 5V power would be fried by an EMP, but the MIG's with valves operating off 300V would be immune.

As history shows EMP was never developed as a mainstream weapon.

[Peter Ward]

Scientific American had an article on the viability of Regan's "Star Wars" weapons program back in the 70's. Seems the current US Brass are not good students of science history. It is very cheap and easy to deploy countermeasures against laser and energy weapons. A mirrored surface absorbs very little laser light (duh). Chaff (read aluminium foil) disrupts energy weapons. The more things change, the more they stay the same.....:rolleyes: