Airborne visible light weaponry...
We already have a defensive shield... it's called "The UK's weather".
Although as I type this there isn't actually a cloud in the sky... but you get the idea.
The EU is planning to build a laser cannon with double the power of Britain's under-construction Dragonfire zapper, according to reports – but the general state of the tech doesn't automatically mean Europe will be trying to snaffle Brit raygun smarts. The Sun broke the news that the EU Commission wants to, er, commission a …
"We already have a defensive shield... it's called "The UK's weather".
Although as I type this there isn't actually a cloud in the sky... but you get the idea."
Easily solved. Just arrange for some sort interesting stellar display and you can guarantee an overcast sky.
Yes, the one with the unused binoculars in the pocket.
All these laser weapons pointed to the sky to take out inanimate munitions... They'd be perfect for shedding mushy infantry at a considerable range of it weren't so unpopular/illegal*
* I recall the use of lasers "to blind" people is on the naughty list. Burning holes through their faces might not be
> They are good enough to create the beam though?
The amount of mirrors in the Dragonfly would probably cover a soldier's shin.
There's a massive difference between spending $50k on a 6-inch precision polished mirror (or whatever the relatively small size of the laser's mirror is) that you might buy 50k units of and house inside weather-protected equipment, vs applying the same quality control to something that's more than an order of magnitude larger, and that you'd want an order of magnitude more units of, and that isn't protected from the weather, and has to to stand up to the rigours of a soldier's actions in combat and training - diving for cover, shrapnel, dust, etc. Any damage caused by normal day to day use of such equipment would render that incredibly expensive mirrored surface useless.
Not to mention the soldiers would lose any ability to hide - camouflage - and be easy targets. Bit hard to sneak up on someone at night wearing something like mirrored armour. Would make low-powered searchlights or good old-fashioned illumination flares extremely effective at finding the soldiers.
'Mirrors ain't perfect.'
True (hence the upvote), but in playing these games, assuming some sort of directed energy weapon is being pointed at me, I'd still rather have an imperfect mirrored surface on my armour to reflect 80-98% of the inbound 'death ray's' energy and then worry about the effect that the <20% or so of the inbound energy absorbed by the mirror substrate/material is then having on that material rather than worrying about the effect that 100% of the inbound energy of the 'death ray' falling directly on the underlying armour would be having.
Mind you, after going to the bother of getting my armour "98% shiny shiny' over a wide range of wavelengths, the chances are that some bloody unsporting beardy old oik in funny robes would then come along and royally chib me with a frigging plasma torch with a 3ft long magnetically bottled jet...
it would be an enormous pain to film guys in mirrored armor without the crew being visible in the reflection.
That, and then weapons would have two types of ammo, lazer AND bullets ... nothing like a bullet to break a mirror. I hope you have a backup in case the last disk of your mirror goes titsup.
A better question would have been: why did they not clone Yoda ?
I think that the next time you have an infantry-vs-infantry battle, it's probably already game over anyway.
WW3 will be fought from a computer desk. Actual people on the ground is reserved for "peace-keeping" (i.e. making sure those people without the expensive weaponry don't get hold of it).
The days of even things like tanks, etc. are numbered.
To be honest, nobody is going to pitch professional-army against professional-army again without things getting very bad very quickly. Which is why it's a bit pointless and alarming to teach people that armed forces like that are good careers to go into. Anything serious happens, you're laser/chemical/nuke fodder. Anything non-serious and you're just going to be asked to fight against a bunch of people that last year you armed to help them fight against a different bunch of unarmed people.
If a major first-world power ever declares war on another first-world country again (not just a concept or easy-pickings or the Middle East, etc.), then we have precisely zero chance of things like chemical usage restrictions actually being abided by. People can't even abide by them now - everything from Russian spies to chemical weapons in Syria.
One of the reasons that we really should be just bringing the military home, using them for defence (lovely how they use that word but never "offence" when describing it officially), and absorbing their ENORMOUS cost into something a bit more useful.
WW3 will be fought from a computer desk.
Not likely.
Most of the "smart" and remote control weapons 1st wold countries use today against 3rd+ world countries will be unusable due to the ridiculous amount of countermeasures. The level of ECM which once upon a time required dedicated aircraft is now compressed into a pod which can go on a standard hard point is even stock equipment as on Rafale, newer Suchoy fighters, etc.
Let's hope we never live to see it, but if, just in case, it is ever fought without nuclear weapons, it will be fought within visual range using "brute force and ignorance" weapons. All of the "smart" weapons are least likely to work and will be wasted money. Ditto for all stealth weapons. If nobody can use radar in the first place, stealth carries no tactical advantage. In fact, it is a handicap as you screw the aerodynamics and within vis-range capabilities of the aircraft to make it stealthy.
@ Voland.
Yep! for the foreseeable future it is still down to 'The last 5 yards', well, actually a bit further than that in general but house clearing and hand to hand is still a possibility. The biggest problem for modern soldiers is the increasingly large battery carrying capability, pretty soon frontline personnel will have to carry a crap load of surveillance and telemetry for the General Staff back at base to mess with, leaving the front liners with enough capacity for a catapult/slingshot and picking up stones for ammo.
Progress!
it will be fought within visual range using "brute force and ignorance" weapons
Or, as the old mantra used to be (and still is despite Bomber Harris trying to disprove it), "air power alone can never win a war".
Lack of it can lose you a war, but having grunts take and hold territory on the ground is (at the moment) the only guarenteed way to end a war.
Of course, unless you have all the other bits needed to win the resource war, you are going to need a lot more grunts than the other side. Especially if the tech and training levels are even.
"I think that the next time you have an infantry-vs-infantry battle, it's probably already game over anyway.
WW3 will be fought from a computer desk. Actual people on the ground is reserved for "peace-keeping" (i.e. making sure those people without the expensive weaponry don't get hold of it).
The days of even things like tanks, etc. are numbered."
I'm sorry, but that's a load of rubbish. Unless by "peace keeping" you mean "fighting the bloody war", since a peacekeeper = warfighter = PBI.
Wars are won by the infantry taking and holding ground. Everything else is force multiplier, so if you don't have bodies on the ground who are willing to fight then all the technology in the world isn't going to make a bit of difference.
Force multipliers do make all the difference, but they rely on the PBI doing their job in the first place. So for a first world army with high morale, you can focus on the shiny toys, since the training, logistics and espirit de corps are taken for granted. But those (plus comms) are what will win a battle.
The focus on shiny toys is about making money. The actual fighting of wars is still done by the people on the ground, our beloved PBI. That their job is made much easier when you can call in air or artillery support, and have eyes in the sky, but those planes and drones aren't going to hold any territory.
Consider the difference between Mosul and Syria. In Mosul the Iraqi military is doing the hard yards on the ground* while the US provides a small amount of elite infantry (spec forces) , observations and air strikes. The US military power is quite effective and allows the Iraqis to win the battle with less friendly casualties etc. The strikes are targeted at people directly involved in the combat, and are thus quite effective. In Syria there are no friendly spotters, and the majority of airstrikes appear marginally effective at best**. Even blowing up convoys of Russian "mercenaries" seems political rather than tactical.
The Russians are not really concerned about our laser weapons or the F-35. Our high quality infantry and logistics are what bothers them, since those are difficult to counter.
* using infantry and armored vehicles, not lasers and chemical weapons.
** militarily anyway. Most of the "bomb Syria" stuff seems to be more about political shows than actuall results
Say, 8 beams located around the edge of a recessed dish?
Which would only serve to lose that nicely collimated light lasers give you. It's easy enough to ray trace this: have a number of lasers pass through the focal point of a parabolic mirror and they all head off in the same direction in a reasonably confined area.
However that assumes the laser beam has infinitely small width. In practice laser beams have very definite width. Last time I looked into this the best possible was military secret but the educated references I consulted suggested that in the 10-20KW range a one inch beam may be possible. Even if the centreline of such a beam passed exactly through the focal point the edges of the beam are not. As a result they are reflected off axis and the beam diverges.
In any event, this is purely going to collimate the light (i.e. direct it into a beam) rather that make it coherent. That is another kettle of fish entirely. Even getting a number of lasers working at exactly the same frequency (not almost the same or even almost exactly the same) would seem challenging enough to me. Aligning the peaks and troughs of the beams with all the practical difficulties that entails (convection currents etc) and you are looking at some pretty sophisticated adaptive optics.
So once again the people actually working a multimillion pound project know better than an El Reg commentard without even a back-of-an-envelope idea. Who knew that could happen?
On a cloudy/hazy day, these are useless. Smoke shields absolutely effective. Just bomb a volcano and let the cloud ash from the explosion do half the damage, missiles and shells will just slip through.
If you want to stop war, stop the "few" politicians/criminals that use it as a means.
"Or divert all military funds into either impossible imaginary weapon systems or platforms so expensive you can never afford to let come near harms way"
Would a multi role combat aircraft that needs a regular 'patch Tuesday and being maintained in a country run by a loony, qualify?
"On a cloudy/hazy day, these are useless. Smoke..."
Much less of a problem for infra red or microwaves.
"Just bomb a volcano..."
This would have no effect unless the volcano was about to erupt anyway, and you'd probably need a largish thermonuke to do it, at which point you'd have far more to worry about than a few lasers.
... why this Electromagnetic Death Ray Lust is totally compatible with the headline "Creaky NHS digital infrastructure risks holding back gene boffinry, say MPs" or for unloading a few somewhat less than fully reliable Storm Shadow (something out of Marvel Comics, shurely?) at Syria as a followup to a White-Helmet organized media freakshow.
Hey bartender over here
Two more shots
And two more beers
Sir turn up the TV sound
The war has started on the ground
Just love those laser guided bombs
They're really great
For righting wrongs
You hit the target
And win the game
From bars 3,000 miles away
3,000 miles away
Roger Waters - "Amused to Death / The Bravery of Being out of Range"
This post has been deleted by its author
...when I worked for a certain large organization with it's headquarters located along the Potomac River, I noticed something odd; every single time a beltway bandit was having a big sales (snow) job on laser weapons ... It would rain, or snow, or the fog would roll in... Or all the above. Without fail. God hates laser weapons!
Life extension R&D is what we should be developing....(www.sens.org www.fightaging.org and www.reddit.com/r/longevity), so why are the worlds pathetic screaming monkeys developing useless laser weapons....idiots like trump and Bolton etc, want more wars, they’re too stupid to realize that any war between superpowers will go nuclear quickly....the world is full of wimps that worship at the alter of matcho useless warmongering military buffoons, we now have enough nanotechnology and biotechnology to get a handle on aging and yet we waste billions and trillions on yet more wars.....the world is full of gullible war idiots.