During a trial at the UK MOD's Hebrides Range, the DragonFire laser directed energy weapon (DEW) system achieved the UK's first high-power firing of a laser weapon against aerial targets. The range of DragonFire is classified, but it is a line-of-sight weapon and can engage with any visible target. DragonFire is led by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) on behalf of the MOD, working with industry partners MBDA, Leonardo and QinetiQ. Both the British Army and Royal Navy are considering using this technology as part of their future Air Defence capabilities.
https://gov.uk/government/news/advanced-future-military-laser-achieves-uk-first
https://gov.uk/guidance/weapons-defence-science-and-technology-capability
Does this skid include the gas turbine or generator or whatever they are using to generate the trons? And is the turret all-up with it's own radar / EO or whatever or is that passed from a different system
>soon
Soon
We can only hope
Its been a long time….gettin from there to here
I remember watching the premiere episodes of Enterprise with my mom and grandmother...good times.
wtf raytheon has been doing this for over a decade. really poor showing by the UK for taking so long to get to this stage
The eternal anglo (American inclusive) leading the world in weapons design again
>Canada
I'm pretty sure the last military thing Canada invented was the heavy APC (Ram Kangaroo, WW2)
As America's hair (New England), I'll allow America's hat into our secret club
>I'll allow America's hat into our secret club
They got a chinese lice infestation to sort out before we put them snugly upon our head, first.
Only three on these actually matter.
USA
UK
Aus
The other three will inevitably be incorporated into them over the long term. AUKUS is the beginning of the recognization of this fact.
I fricking hate Canada and New Zealand. Selling out to china should result in annexation.
I wouldn't discount Ireland, they can go from zero to murder at breakneck speed.
post the Irish armed forces then. bunch of freeloaders.
CUTE
I really hope our Irish frens get some cute jet trainers like a Hawk or Aviojet some day soon. Would be cool to see them patrolling CAP in their own skies and flying together with the RAF 🙂
would be even cooler to see them patrolling their whole island on their own
The Leafs are the funniest in terms of how they’re actually all a bunch of schizo war crime fun time lads underneath. My favorite story was how during WW1 they often ENJOYED trench raids, going on hundreds after the rest of the Allies had kind of kiboshed that. One Sgt (?) was even knows for just carrying around a big sack of grenades for passing out and personal use for these.
Leave those dipshits unsupervised for too long and prisoners of war start getting “accident”-ed and so on.
I'm Canadian, can confirm. My brother went off and joined another army because the Canadian one was too gay, and then when the Ukraine shit popped off he went over there to volunteer. He was there for like a year before he came back for a few months, and then immediately went back. He has a giant backpack full of grenades he's collected and the latest AK-12 variant he took from a trench.
He hasn't done any warcrimes yet tho (that I know of)
Did he join the FFL?
What are they gonna do? Get drunk and participate in a UN peacekeeping operation?
>AUKUS SSNs
>Hypersonic Missiles
>Loyal Wingmen
>UUVs
>Deep Space Radar
>Artificial Intelligence
The Boys Are Back
>Eternally reminding Turdies that its an Anglo World, theyre just living in it
That's no way to talk about your prime minister.
We never left!
>Cold war and two time World War champions
Totalitarianism is for Black folk
>ireland
it's an impressive achievement for a poor, deindustrialised nation of illiterate, alcoholic cokeheads.
>poor, deindustrialised nation of illiterate, alcoholic cokeheads
What even is this bullshit? Everybody knows we prefer ket to coke.
nah, there are way more people who do coke
You need to stop seething
Lmao what is it about British people that causes so much burrhurt.
since the spelling and jaded outlook didn't clue you in: i'm english
> 150 kW
isn't lockheed doing work on a 300kw and 500kw class laser at the moment?
yes. NG and Raytheon too
Actual question, could a laser cut through the plasma sheath of a hypersonic weapon? Or are hypersonics immune to the laser meme
“Plasma sheathe” is a meme but yes a laser would go through it
Hypersonics are more vulnerable than regular missiles. The aerodynamic forces acting on it are much greater so even a chipping out a small piece will cause it to go off course or even tear itself apart.
>Directed Energy Weapon (DEW)
>Fire at line of targets
>Range [classified]
Unironically can it hit targets on the Moon?
"Anything visible" which means it can also shoot all of the planets, the sun and a lot of stars, since they're all visible to the naked eye. Sadly, it can't engage your father or the packet of cigarettes he's been picking up these last 25 years.
Doesn't the strength of the laser dilute over distance?
Chapta: H8TA
Yeah, but not quickly.
Yes, just like a bullet loses power over distance.
I love how mad this makes the bong haters. The seething is palpable
I'm glad the Bongs are still doing cool shit
sometimes I worry about them
I mean theoretically shouldn't it's range be literally anything it can see?
In the sense that the light will continue until it hits something, yes. But even lasers fan out over distance and lose potency.
Seeing something is easier than holding a tracking lock. DEWs can't really reacquire targets since they have to hit them continuously for effect, so their limiting factors tend not to be attenuation of the laser itself.
They should point it at the moon.
You'd think so but lasers do have factors that limit their range. For starters you have a bit of diffraction from the aperture no matter how big you make it. If you use one in atmosphere you also have decoherence from thermal pockets.
If you want a bit of back-of-the-envelope maths to figure out how powerful your laser needs to be to make a visible spot on the moon, the beam divergence in radians is:
>laser wavelength/(pi*aperture)
Then from that you can approximate how large the final dot is:
>pi*(distance*beam divergence)^2
and how bright the spot is:
>Laser power/area of final dot
To put whatever final number you get into perspective, the brightness of the full moon at night is about 0.001 watt/square meter
future warfare is going to be insane, I think I understand what it felt like to be a general on the cusp of the first world war, how are we supposed to make sense of this shit and anticipate how it will all play out in the third world war, maybe we won't have to, maybe AI will do the thinking for us
Honestly think the next war will surpass 1 billion deaths total. Sheer amount of new technology on the cusp, over reliance of imported foodstuffs and other interconnected systems which will breakdown.
*Posh English accent* Imma firin ma lazar!
It's actually impressive that such a zombie country managed some progress in this area