Lockheed's new 60kW laser system

[Gadget]

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/...tes-battle-laser-122919965.html?.tsrc=fauxdal


HAHAHAHAH....In this article, "a 3 million dollar Patriot missile was recently used to shoot down a $200 quadcopter"....Again...HAHAHAHAHAHH

 

[Razako]

Yay, more military spending while our social programs all slide into the abyss. Meanwhile Trump wants to cut ALL funding for PBS/NPR/And the national endowment for the arts.

 

[NightExplorer96]

Yay, more military spending while our social programs all slide into the abyss. Meanwhile Trump wants to cut ALL funding for PBS/NPR/And the national endowment for the arts.

Indeed, have you seen what the Society of Civil Engineer's recently gave to our overall infrastructure grade? It's a D+. Go ahead, keep spending on military but don't expect the country to survive with an uneducated population, destroyed roads, airports, ports and basic to no medical help..... :tsk:

-Alex

 

[Razako]

Indeed, have you seen what the Society of Civil Engineer's recently gave to our overall infrastructure grade? It's a D+. Go ahead, keep spending on military but don't expect the country to survive with an uneducated population, destroyed roads, airports, ports and basic to no medical help..... :tsk:

-Alex

Remember, Trump loves the uneducated. If everybody listed to those 'dirty liberal' educational programs they might learn about things like climate change and think "Woah, this is like actually a big deal! Maybe the government should do something about this". Or they'll learn about the rampant income inequality, horrible health care system we have, abuses by police such as civil forfeiture, or the myriad of other social problems facing our nation.
/Rant over

Aside from that, these military laser systems are pretty awesome. Not gonna lie.

 

[Gadget]

Yeah...There are many better uses for the money, and I didn't mean for this to turn a into a political discussion ...but.....but......but........SIXTY THOUSAND WATTS!

Even their test run last month shattered the previous record at a whopping 58 kW.

:lasergun:

 

[NightExplorer96]

Yeah...There are many better uses for the money, and I didn't mean for this to turn a into a political discussion ...but.....but......but........SIXTY THOUSAND WATTS!

Even their test run last month shattered the previous record at a whopping 58 kW.

:lasergun:

Yes, that is impressive

-Alex

 

[Benm]

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/...tes-battle-laser-122919965.html?.tsrc=fauxdal


HAHAHAHAH....In this article, "a 3 million dollar Patriot missile was recently used to shoot down a $200 quadcopter"....Again...HAHAHAHAHAHH

I guess some terrorists must be laughing their balls off - just order $10k in drones and make enemy spend $150M to shoot them down, all from the comfort of your own, well, sanddune or something

A realistic question would be to what degree using lasers changes that equation. Surely they will not cost 3 million a shot, but i'm not really sure what the actual cost would be. In terms of electrical power required it would not be that expensive, but if the system requires a million dollar overhaul every 1000 shots or so it's still quite expensive.

For an airborne laser system the cost would be much higher, no so much due to the laser system itself, but due to the very short maintenance intervals on military aircraft. Those things get very expensive, apart from fuel cost it's probably cheaper per flight(hour) to operate a 777 than an F16

 

[Encap]

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/...tes-battle-laser-122919965.html?.tsrc=fauxdal

Awesome laser system ready to roll.

That is a milestone for that laser system --that it can now be delivered and deployed for actual use in the field---was several years of R,D,T, & E work for a lot of people to get to this point.

The "social" stuff is apples and oranges not related.

 

[Hemlock_Mike]

The war on poverty has spent a "few" bucks and we have more poverty.
We doubled our food stamp program and we have more hunger.
In Iowa we added 1% to our sales tax for teachers and schools and we got
3 million dollar gymnasiums.
We increased our gas tax by 10 cents per gallon for our old roads and bridges and
we still have old roads and bridges.

It's not the amount of money given away but accountability to insure the money is
doing what was promised and not lining someone's pockets.

HM

 

[Richie89]

I think Lockheed should invest in a 1 terra watt Gamma ray laser :crackup: highest energy density and lowest wavelength possible. Like that was actually possible, last time I checked we can't create a super nova. Lmao!

 

[Accutronitis]

Using a $3 million patriot missile to shoot down a $200 quadcopter drone, Gee what a efficient use of tax payer money ! :banghead:

 

[Benm]

If used in that manner it's a very expensive system obviously.

Then again it was never built to do that. It's intended purpose is to shoot down ballistic missiles (like the SCUD type) or aircraft, not drones.

And there is no way to mistake one for the other with the radar system that comes with a patriot unit either. Surely stealth aircraft can have very small radar signatures, sometimes quoted as 'the size of a colibiri bird', which is probably a bit optimistic on the stealth, but surely a drone could be mistaken for a stealth aircraft based on reflection intensity. Then again drones generally do not come at you at 300 kts or more, so someone firing a patriot missile at a drone is either an idiot or thinks helicopters with star-trek style cloaking devices are commonly used in warfare

 

[Accutronitis]

If used in that manner it's a very expensive system obviously.

Then again it was never built to do that. It's intended purpose is to shoot down ballistic missiles (like the SCUD type) or aircraft, not drones.

And there is no way to mistake one for the other with the radar system that comes with a patriot unit either. Surely stealth aircraft can have very small radar signatures, sometimes quoted as 'the size of a colibiri bird', which is probably a bit optimistic on the stealth, but surely a drone could be mistaken for a stealth aircraft based on reflection intensity. Then again drones generally do not come at you at 300 kts or more, so someone firing a patriot missile at a drone is either an idiot or thinks helicopters with star-trek style cloaking devices are commonly used in warfare

I fully believe they knew what they were shooting down BUT for what ever reason they needed that drone downed and unfortunately a patriot missile was all they had that would get the job done so it ended up costing 3 million dollars to do it BUT with the extensive use of drones by the US I just think that maybe someone should have thought that we should be somewhat prepared at the very least for us to able to take down a rudimentary form of drone that would some day be used against us without the need to use a 3 million dollar missile to do so
???

 

[Encap]

PS It didn't cost the USA a penny in fact it just increased business a tiny bit for Ratheon the US supplier. It was not the US that shot down a low cost drone with a Patriot missle ----it was one of the 13 allies that have Patriot systems purchased from the US + by contrast the Patriot system has been rigorously tested more than 2,500 times with US Army oversight under real-world conditions.

Thomas Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), states that this isn’t the first time a Patriot missile was used to shoot down a drone. The main takeaway, Karako says, is that the growing threat of drones will pose greater threats to alliance air defense systems than what was heard of in the past.

“You can’t really blame the Middle Eastern actor who probably took a shot at this,” he said. “When something pops up on their screen as a radar blip, they may not know that it costs $200 from Amazon. It may just show up as a radar blip. So what this really points to is the lack of sufficiently precise surveillance that informs the air defense mission. Now, if that was an aircraft rather than a drone, an air defense missile may be appropriate. But the difficulty is you don’t always know. It could be a cruise missile, could be a slow-moving aircraft. What this points to is a need for better sensors that know what the threat is.”

Raytheon says: "Raytheon's Global Patriot Solutions provide 13 countries, including five NATO nations around the globe, with a combat proven missile defense architecture that is continuously upgraded to keep ahead of evolving threats."
Looks like better sensors that better identify a threat has become a needed upgrade. Is common these days for terrorist groups like ISIS to use low cost drones fitted with M40 grenades so...anti-drone countermeasures need to be employed.

 

[Accutronitis]

PS It didn't cost the USA a penny in fact it just increased business a tiny bit for Ratheon the US supplier. It was not the US that shot down a low cost drone with a Patriot missle ----it was one of the 13 allies that have Patriot systems purchased from the US + by contrast the Patriot system has been rigorously tested more than 2,500 times with US Army oversight under real-world conditions.

Thomas Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), states that this isn’t the first time a Patriot missile was used to shoot down a drone. The main takeaway, Karako says, is that the growing threat of drones will pose greater threats to alliance air defense systems than what was heard of in the past.

“You can’t really blame the Middle Eastern actor who probably took a shot at this,” he said. “When something pops up on their screen as a radar blip, they may not know that it costs $200 from Amazon. It may just show up as a radar blip. So what this really points to is the lack of sufficiently precise surveillance that informs the air defense mission. Now, if that was an aircraft rather than a drone, an air defense missile may be appropriate. But the difficulty is you don’t always know. It could be a cruise missile, could be a slow-moving aircraft. What this points to is a need for better sensors that know what the threat is.”

Raytheon says: "Raytheon's Global Patriot Solutions provide 13 countries, including five NATO nations around the globe, with a combat proven missile defense architecture that is continuously upgraded to keep ahead of evolving threats."
Looks like better sensors that better identify a threat has become a needed upgrade. Is common these days for terrorist groups like ISIS to use low cost drones with M40 grenades at a enemy so...anti-drone countermeasures need to be employed.

Oh ya I didn't even think of that ! It didn't cost us anything so fire at will ! lol

 

[dden4012]

PS It didn't cost the USA a penny in fact it just increased business a tiny bit for Ratheon the US supplier. It was not the US that shot down a low cost drone with a Patriot missle ----it was one of the 13 allies that have Patriot systems purchased from the US + by contrast the Patriot system has been rigorously tested more than 2,500 times with US Army oversight under real-world conditions.

Thomas Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), states that this isn’t the first time a Patriot missile was used to shoot down a drone. The main takeaway, Karako says, is that the growing threat of drones will pose greater threats to alliance air defense systems than what was heard of in the past.

“You can’t really blame the Middle Eastern actor who probably took a shot at this,” he said. “When something pops up on their screen as a radar blip, they may not know that it costs $200 from Amazon. It may just show up as a radar blip. So what this really points to is the lack of sufficiently precise surveillance that informs the air defense mission. Now, if that was an aircraft rather than a drone, an air defense missile may be appropriate. But the difficulty is you don’t always know. It could be a cruise missile, could be a slow-moving aircraft. What this points to is a need for better sensors that know what the threat is.”

Raytheon says: "Raytheon's Global Patriot Solutions provide 13 countries, including five NATO nations around the globe, with a combat proven missile defense architecture that is continuously upgraded to keep ahead of evolving threats."
Looks like better sensors that better identify a threat has become a needed upgrade. Is common these days for terrorist groups like ISIS to use low cost drones fitted with M40 grenades so...anti-drone countermeasures need to be employed.

Lets not talk about the facts left out of this story by 99% of the outlets that ran this. Lets focus on the key words and run with it.