A US Navy warship has successfully tested a new high-energy laser weapon that can destroy aircraft mid-flight, the Navy's Pacific Fleet said in a statement Friday.
Images and videos provided by the Navy show the amphibious transport dock ship USS Portland executing "the first system-level implementation of a high-energy class solid-state laser" to disable an aerial drone aircraft, the statement said.
The images show the laser emanating from the deck of the warship. Short video clips show what appears to be the drone burning.
The Navy did not give a specific location of the laser weapons system demonstrator (LWSD) test, saying only that it occurred in the Pacific on May 16.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/22/asia/us-navy-lwsd-laser-intl-hnk-scli/index.html
And again Murican go around thumping on chest as to how mighty they are and how they will smithe their enemies . Ignoring that goat and sheep herders kicked their pants so hard that they disappear from Somalia and going to disappear from Afghan and Iraq and Syria.
(originally written in Sinodefence forum
https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/t/chinese-laser-weapon-development.3790/page-59)
Just a bit of background as to the extent Xi Dada got into laser.
To the point that China is going to use laser to rip apart vacuum and fabric of space time.
And Muricans still intent on phony FONOPs and thinking that Muricans still holding the big stick
and can decide to Murican satisfaction what they deemed as right and proper.
I think we all can agree it is much easier to scale down from there to something usable on planes and tanks and ships and carriers than to scale that even further up.
And that was written in Oct 2018.
I wonder what stage are they at now?
China’s “Station of Extreme Light” –‘A New Physics That Can Tear Apart the Fabric of Spacetime’
[ QUOTE= "ougoah " ]
As cool as all this sounds and actually is! This news is more than three years old and deals with theoretical stuff. It's not exactly possible to weaponise such a thing and test it as some sort of world destroyer.
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I agree that ripping apart fabric of space time is theoretical and in the future. When the Chinese team hoped to achieve output 100 million-billion-watts.
That they hope to do by 2023, the not so distant future. Note The U.S. Navy's new aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford might not be able to deploy until 2024.
So that meant we should not even talk of USS Gerald R. Ford ?
BUT,
in the meanwhile, in 2016, Chinese team acheived this. At the heart of the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF), is a single cylinder of titanium-doped sapphire about the width of a Frisbee. After kindling light in the crystal and shunting it through a system of lenses and mirrors, the SULF distills it into pulses of mind-boggling power, achieving an unprecedented 5.3 million billion watts, or petawatts (PW) reported Science. (
https://dailygalaxy.com/2018/10/chi...-the-fabric-of-spacetime-todays-most-popular/)
That was the reality , more than 3 years old. Where is that team now? Your guess as good as mine, but far far ahead of Muricans.
You note in the last ten pages of this thread, folks here going ape over Murican 3 30-kilowatt Laser Weapons System (LaWS) aboard the USS Ponce in the Persian Gulf. Or even 100 kilowatt Silent Hunter. Or even US Miracl produced over 1MW.
How is that 30 kilowatt, or 100 kilowatt or even 1MW. going to compare against 5.3 million billion watts ? Which was 3 over years ago?
While that full 5.3 million billion watts might not be weaponisable, how about just only 0.1% or 0.01% of 5.3 million billion watts ?
How big is a single cylinder of titanium-doped sapphire about the width of a Frisbee.? For output of only 0.1% or 0.01% of 5.3 million billion watts should even be smaller I assume?
Not doable at all?
Again your guess as good as mine.
China's Airborne Laser Weapon Would Change Dogfighting Forever
Airborne lasers can be used offensively or defensively.
www.popularmechanics.com
Ha ha ha!
I plagiarise only! I did not write that.
And yes, according to Western writers, China got only a couple of handful of nukes. Max of 200++ nukes
No match for the Great US of A!
Using laser to cut tree branches, not a laser weapon per se, but it looks a littler bit terrifying, if you ignore the fact that it probably takes quite awhile to actually burn through the branches:
