Footage circulating in Russian pro-military channels this week shows what is claimed to be a Russian laser weapon system engaging aerial drones, according to a Russian military blogger who described the video as an "exclusive." The blogger's post claimed several
It’s not about power efficiency. Lasers require focussing a lot of light at one certain point. But the further the distance the more the light spreads. That’s just physics. Communicating with lasers isn’t the same as burning stuff with them.
Lasers are also utterly doomed when the sky isn’t clear because mist and clouds can fracture the concentrated light
As for intercepting missiles: If you’ve seen the speed at which hypersonic missiles come down you’ll find a laser doesn’t have much time to burn it.
Israel has been bragging about their epic laser tech for multiple years now yet they’re still firing interceptors. A laser might be able to defend one single static target in a 1km range from drones but not a whole border. And swarm tactics can still overwhelm the laser and just destroy it
Yes, and that’s literally where power comes in. The more powerful the laser, the further it stays coherent. Again, these are literally being used in combat right now. And they’re not intercepting missiles, they’re intercepting slow flying drones. What I was saying is that it’s much cheaper to power a laser than to make an interceptor.
Americans also can’t figure out how to make hypersonics, but Russia, China, Iran, and DPRK can. Just because the reich can’t do something, doesn’t mean it’s not possible.
So you spend $10k+ (totally just a WAG) in energy costs to take down a $200 drone, I suppose it works but I don’t think Russia can keep it powered long enough to be effective against swarms of drones.
So you just pull numbers out of your ass to make an argument?
Not always, it was half based on the 30KW ‘Silent Hunter’ they bought from China. While it is a really cool idea, that one used close to 100kW just to produce the 30kW beam. It requires more than that to operate the chillers and pumps that must be ran to keep the whole system from overheating.
I would have to make the asumption that they upped the power significantly as Silent Hunter was only capable of 4,000 meter max range (the ‘killzone’ is only listed as 1500 meters), if they upped the power all of the requirements go up. If they managed to up the power too much, it’s going to cause grid power dips that will thankfully bring down their other systems that depend on it.
ok thanks for confirming that you are pulling numbers out of your ass
Yes that’s true but the power requirement (not to mention cooling) exponentially increases the further the object is because of the light spreading. The amount of burst power and light density needed for a long-range laser is bonkers and making it go further will requires exponential bonkers.
This is why they frequently fire them using pulses but even then getting them to destroy objects at a very long distance gets harder and harder the further the object is. If the drone flies near a laser then it works wonders. If the drone flies around the area laser then it’s not much more effective than simple airshot munition.
I checked the article but didn’t see a video in it so I’m not sure what the laser managed to do here.
Maybe it is, but unless this interception was very long range they haven’t found the magical bullet yet and it isn’t much of an improvement over air-burst ammunition or interception drones.
Do you think the engineers building this system might’ve done the basic math to figure these things out?
And there is a whole interview they did on a Russian TV channel where they show the system in action and taking out Ukrainian drones. You can watch it here. https://southfront.press/russia-unveils-secretive-lasers-downing-ukrainian-drones-videos/