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The F-22, Domestic Jobs, and the Military-Industrial Complex
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No, probably not. But as it stands, it's much easier to manufacture and fire a missile that's capable of striking and destroying a current-generation fighter aircraft than the fighter itself (especially since it doesn't have to be big enough to hold a pilot). And those haven't rendered fixed-wing aircraft obsolete yet.
Of course, a laser could be different. I don't think it will, since it'll be even longer before lasers are, well, everywhere, and a laser can only work from so far away.
Yeah but the idea is that there are anti-missile defenses that the planes can have. The same can not be said about anti-laser defenses.
For that matter, assuming that we can get aiming right, with railguns, could those shoot down planes? It seems like they'd have a pretty impressive range.
Khavall's Beginner's Guide to Music Everything(Theory Blog)
But anyways we'd just move to particle accelerators if aircraft came up with anti-laser defenses (assume we had moved to lasers as a way to shoot down planes in the first place, that is... and I don't doubt we will eventually.)
"Successful".
You have several options going up against a SAM. First, radars are homing beacons for missiles, so if they are to survive for any amount of time, they're going to need to either stay silent or jam the missiles. Either way, you can then try to jam them back and sneak in a missile. Then there's the stealth route, where you go in and take out the sites with impunity because you're so stealthy. Of course you'd give away your position when you shoot at them, but the idea is to be out of there or have them out of commission before they can shoot back.
The F-22 is stealthy and it'll be getting some upgraded electronic attack avionics, not to Growler levels, but fairly significant, soonish because it's ability for electronic attack was actually part of the pitch. In other words, F-22s are the ideal aircraft for taking out SAM sites right now.
The problem with stealth is that radar technology improves, so your entire fleet of stealth aircraft will eventually lose its 5th gen advantage. For certain. Western air forces are just hedging that this won't become prevalent within the life cycle of the aircraft. Of course I can't say if this was a smart bet, just that one has been made.
Tell me what your directed energy weapons will do on a foggy day.
edit: Okay, while I'm not holding out much hope for practical long-ranged directed energy weapons, I think I was more indignant at the suggestion that fighters would just be obsoleted away by them than the concept of energy weapons itself.
No one is going to go to the expense of building, developing, maintaining, replacing, risking and equipping aircraft that can only be used when it is foggy, much less training, feeding and insuring the pilots to fly said aircraft, or building the facilities necessary to house and launch them...when they can only be used on foggy days, otherwise lasers will knock them out of the sky instantly.
The future of air combat is probably low-flying disposable UAVs. Anything bigger than that, flying higher than that, is going to be swatted out of the sky by speed-of-light, line-of-sight weapons.
If you just want to blow up that thing over there, you can use a cruise missile anyways. The situation I'm envisioning is, we need the UAV to stay on patrol over the battle area for several hours and supply air support as necessary for troops calling into to fire control. That UAV will need to be in contact, to receive orders and reply with information. What happens when communications get cut off? A human can back to base, maybe still executing the mission along the way, a UAV might not. It would need slick programming.
If by those sarcastic quotes you mean they shot down a fucking UAV with a laser
That is not "Successful" that is just plain successful. They shot it down! It worked! This is not impossible, they fucking shot down a plane with a laser.
But no you're right, absolutely impossible.
Khavall's Beginner's Guide to Music Everything(Theory Blog)
A UAV though could be configured to receive tight beam transmissions, or even lasers/IR designators.
But the basic point is sound- communication interdiction and countering it is going to be a big component of future battlefields involving unmanned assets.
The situations where they do work is when they're told to fly to an area and attack a particular set of targets.
Now in any situation where you might jam a UAVs communication, I can't see how it's objectives couldn't be fulfilled by AI acting autonomously as opposed to a human pilot doing the same.
Unless I'm mistaken an F-22, but in drone form, would be far cheaper, smaller, and capable of maneuvers that would kill a human pilot.
It's not as entertaining when drones play homoerotic volleyball
Colored smoke and IR lasers aren't just used for designating targets. It would still require a human operator to determine their context. It would be a shitty day if a UAV dropped a 1000lb bomb on colored smoke that was intended to mark an HLZ for a Medevac bird. No aircraft (manned or otherwise) can drop ordnance unless it knows what's on the ground. There could be friendly units near the intended target, or the intended target could be a friendly unit due to shortcomings in the UAV's programming. Technology hasn't reached the point where software can identify friend from foe. Jamming would render UAV's useless. Commo is one of the most unpredictable elements on the battlefield and a UAV could lose comms with it's pilot due to any number of factors. Hell, satcom can be "jammed" by simply losing line of sight to the sky. I don't think we should start replacing manned aircraft until we've done more research on quantum radios. I'd imagine they'd lack some of the shortcomings that come with using conventional radios, not to mention they would provide us with a significant increase in wireless bandwidth.
You are so, so wrong.
Erm, don't they use different colored smoke for Medivac and "Bomb the shit out of this"? Like couldn't a human pilot see the smoke, not be able to see what else is on the ground, and let some bombs loose without communications?
Khavall's Beginner's Guide to Music Everything(Theory Blog)
Smoke is rarely, if ever, used to designate a target. If you're close enough to throw a smoke grenade (or shoot one out of an M203) you're usually too close for aircraft to drop anything on the target. If anything colored smoke is usually used to mark your location or the location for an HLZ. Usually SOP will dictate what color smoke is used for Medevac, but if you don't have that on hand then you use whatever you've got. Identifying what you're using to mark the HLZ is part of the list of info you send when calling for Medevac, so you can use whatever color you want.
Regardless of what you use for a marking, no pilot is going to drop a bomb without having comms with someone on the ground. Only specially trained pilots can clear themselves to go hot and they're not going to drop a bomb or strafe some smoke just because it's there.
So we don't have UAVs drop bombs on smoke.
I'm sure UAVs could wait for comm from the ground too, and could take a short data burst instead of a voice comm. Assuming that normal comms went down and we had it computer controlled instead of just flown remotely.
The point is that either the live pilot wouldn't be getting the comm and the UAV won't be getting comm, so there are some of the same problems and the judgment of the pilot could be automated or the UAV could just abort and head home, or the live pilot would and the UAV would and it's being remotely flown.
Khavall's Beginner's Guide to Music Everything(Theory Blog)
My point is no comms, no CAS. If you're bombing a factory or a bridge you don't need comms, but until we fight a conventional war we won't be seeing many (if any) bombing missions like that.
Steam PSN: DerWaffleMous Origin: DerWaffleMous Bnet: WaffleMous#1483
Macross Plus?
...and the Midcourse BMD Defense system intercepted some warheads.
On that basis, do you judge it to be a viable BMD system?
Khavall's Beginner's Guide to Music Everything(Theory Blog)
I'll concede this, I'm not here to argue semantics.
But look, it tracked 3 UAVs, on a clear day no doubt, and it shot down one.
Maybe if it worked on something consistently beyond the range of a CIWS I'll be impressed.
But claiming that we'll never have missile defense or direct energy weapons is absurd, especially when we already have shown proof of concept.
Khavall's Beginner's Guide to Music Everything(Theory Blog)
Solid state lasers are where it's at, it's advancing at a gradual pace. There is no doubt that we'll hit a point where they will be powerful and compact enough to fit into a fighter jet.
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I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
But you see, atmospheric conditions are not a minor impedance where directed energy weapons are concerned.
Just as MIRVs are not a minor consideration for BMD.
The biggest obstacle for laser weapons and railguns is the size of the batteries necessary to power them. This is why government research on batteries is classified. I'm sure we'd use these weapons already if not for the lack of a portable power source.
For aircraft you simply connect it up to the shaft or use a jet turbine to power the things on the ground.
The M1 tank for example has a jet turbine for an engine (common American name is gas turbine), it'd be no trouble at all fitting a solid state laser into say a truck sized weapon system and using a dedicated gas turbine to power the thing.
Then bobs your uncle, you've got yourself a mobile artillery, rocket and aircraft interception vehicle.
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I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
I seriously doubt either engine generates enough energy for this to be feasible without having a huge battery connected to the power source. Even then you'd probably on get maybe one shot/short burst before having to wait a long time to recharge the battery which isn't practical. If this was that simple don't you think we would have lasers and/or railguns on tanks?
Strangely enough, like the F22 that it was supposed to represent, the VF-19 only ended up being deployed in limited numbers due to budget cuts, and they upgraded mostly older designs, or refined newer, cheaper designs, while at the same time introducing cheaper versions of the drone fighter to work alongside them.
Odd, for a fictional universe.
Steam PSN: DerWaffleMous Origin: DerWaffleMous Bnet: WaffleMous#1483
A gas turbine can generate an awful lot of energy, connect it up to a bunch of capacitors for quick charge and ultra fast output of energy. The science behind the electrics on this is easy, it's all well established science. The hard part is designing a solid state laser that doesn't melt itself.
EDIT: The reason we don't have railguns on tanks is because after a couple of shots the sudden and intense magnetic firing warps the railgun. Making it useless, the Navy is working on it but railguns are useless for the moment until the warping problem can be resolved. As I said, delivering the energy to these weapons is no problem at all. We've had the technology for it for a very long time.
EDIT2: Also, I'm not exactly sure where you're getting the idea of batteries from. Batteries can't output massive amounts of energy all at once. The science behind lasers, railguns etc is you have an energy source that gives a consistent energy output to a bunch of capacitors which charge up and then output all the stored energy in a quick burst. The energy source which goes to the capacitors can be anything as long as it is consistent. (so it could be a gas turbine, batteries etc.. but using batteries is impractical on a vehicle as it is much quicker to fill a tank of jet fuel than it is to recharge a bunch of batteries)
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I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
Or By A Dust Cloud!
Or Smoke Discharge!
Laws of physics beat the RULE OF COOL any day.
Anytime a laser could be useful there are non high tech weapons that can do the same job for one tenth the price and none of the maintance hassle. See: Missiles.
You point a laser and it will hit exactly where you point it. Also, you don't need to worry about ammunition. Those are the two biggest advantages to lasers, and missles or any type of conventional weapon currently deployed is subject to those limitations at the moment.
The biggest obstacle with rail guns has nothing to do with energy, but rather the physics of the whole thing. First, you have the friction issue. Because the sabot is in constant contact with the rail and is being propelled incredibly fast, that creates a lot of heat. A LOT OF HEAT. Second, you have the problem of the rails bending away from each other. A rail gun creates a field that pushes the sabot down the rail, but it also creates a strong force pushing the rails apart. With rail guns that have been tested, after only one or two shots, you practically have to replace the entire rail system.
In conclusion, gauss guns > rail guns.