HPM weapons

Imagine what we could do if we were to redirect all that US military spending to exploration of strange new worlds, etc? :-)

Cheers! Rich

or health care?

martin

"Tim Williams" wrote in news:0ifQh.1233$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe12.lga:

Uh,the tighter the beam,the harder it is to AIM over a distance. Any HPM RF "beam" is going to be -at least- as large as the entire AC.

Not when it concerns the effects once it hits the target. RF induces high electrical currents that do the actual damage,unlike lasers that heat the target right at the area the beam hits.

John Larkin wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Yes,size does matter.

Rich the Philosophizer wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@example.com:

Ah,more Utopian wishing. All that US military spending is what keeps you free.

right now the US military is busy exploring the strange old world of Islamic terrorism.

So how big an antenna do you need, and how do you shield your own electronics from the blast?

I can see using a laser to damage sensors on an incoming missile, providing it is fairly close. But the claims floating around about the F-22 frying enemy electronics 100km away just aren't realistic.

Of course, this propaganda is great when it helps congress votes money for more F-22's. But it isn't the first time such claims were used, and it won't be the last.

Regards,

Mike Monett

Design it to be hard from the outset.

I haven't seen that claim anywhere. I have seen unofficial statements that F-22's, F-35 JSF, and some F/A 18's now have distributed-array radars that can spot stealthy objects at 100 miles, and that close-up, focused RF levels can be high enough to disrupt electronics on other planes or missiles. The BAE type gigawatt emitters are the next generation. See AW&ST, Jan 22, p 42.

This time it looks real. Laser-triggered closing switches have been improving rapidly in recent years. google it.

John

Free of what, Exactly?

Free of Taxation without representation?

Free of The threat of being skin-searched by armed thugs at the airport?

Free of Anti-drug warriors threatening to haul me away in the middle of the night, without a warrant?

Free of Gun-control nuts who want to disarm the citizenry so that we have no means to defend ourselves against said armed thugs at the door?

If you believe so devoutly in the 2nd amendment, why do you wipe your ass with the rest?

Thanks, Rich

Well, presumably you would have these arrays phased so directionality is good without RF optics (which are notoriously bulky to drag along outside an aircraft at Mach 3). I don't know a damn thing about HPM, but I know RF engineers know their shit about these things.

Incidentially, the larger the A/C, the tighter the beam, because the array can be bigger. A small array (especially comparable to the wavelength) loses a lot of accuracy to diffraction.

lasers

Not really. RF is conducted along arbitrarily dimensioned wires. Laser light is conducted along arbitrarily dimensioned groups of atoms. For quantum reasons, the path RF takes can be a whole lot more complicated (due to wires being more than 10^20 atoms long), and has the side effect of roasting the electrical equipment thus attached, but that's just the frequency band at work. Either way, electrons bounce back and forth in the target. It all comes back to Maxwell's equations, really...

Tim

-- "Librarians are hiding something." - Steven Colbert Website @

Also high voltage, which causes semiconductor junctions to break down. Then a high enough current will fry them. O.T. Jim, you used to be in the NRA. Here's something you might enjoy:

Mike Monett

Mike Monett wrote in news:Xns990839392236Noemailadr@208.49.80.251:

When he lights up the afterburners,he's not gonna have a garage anymore!

I recall where one guy who owned an aircraft maintenance company bought a "scrapped" T-38 airframe,and restored it to flying condition,the only privately owned flying T-38 in the US. It seems that the salvage people were supposed to cut the airframe into pieces,but neglected to do it,leaving the plane restorable. Others own their own military helicopters,and some old tanks and APCs. Mostly they rent them out to movie companies.

Over here in South Tampa, this weekend, the Blue Angels were having an air show at McDill and I was wondering what one would look like parked in my driveway. Now I know.

Burkas.

Canard.

You don't have an absolute right of any freedom. It's an impossible wish.

Society has the right to protect itself. We may not agree with what we're being protected from but society has to have that right.

Well, there you got me. ;-)

See above. Vote them out.

Why do you believe so in absolutes?

My next door neighbour bought an ex-military helicopter for his own private use. It turns out that the military version is specified differently from the civilian one, so the commercial type airworthiness certificate doesn't apply, it can't be used for commercial purposes, so he got it cheap (for helicopter size versions of "cheap" ;-)

Regards Ian

"Ian" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@newsreg.cos.agilent.com:

Those private companies got around that somehow.The guy with the T-38 has his flying. Maybe the FAA is just jerking your neighbor around.

He was lucky!

Four F-14's were sold for $4,000 each in the late 1990s without being demiled. Here's how they do it:

"The demilitarization process, which makes the aircraft unusable as a weapon, involves removing all classified military equipment from the aircraft (especially electronics), as well as the engines (which makes the surplus aircraft much easier to move). Finally, the fuselage is cut in half, usually just behind the cockpit. This is expensive, as it requires a special cutting machine. Then, in another expensive procedure, the fuselage is welded back together, and evidence of the process, on the outer surface of the fuselage, is hidden. This process means the aircraft can never fly again, because the welds are not as strong as the original, uncut, interior metal framework of the aircraft."

More info:

Mike Monett

Laser and RF weapons are unlikely to ever be worth the trouble. Basic physics. Take all the power you can generate on a plane. Say you have a 50,000 hp turbine driving a generator, giving say 50 megawatts. Now put that into a maser or laser. Typical efficiency of maybe 10% on a good day. So you need a pretty big fan to blow away the 45 megawatts of heat. Now you have 5 megawatts of coherent energy. If it's light or infrared energy, you can warm up a tank at quite a distance, assuming no clouds, dust, or turbulence. But you won't melt it very quickly, and countermeasures cost about 1/1000000 of your costs (aluminum foil is quite inexpensive). If it's RF energy, the directionality is limited by the size of the antenna you can carry on a plane. At best, you're going to warm up a batallion. And maybe cause some cataracts.

Meanwhile you've been hovering or circling, making yourself a huge IR or RF target for any energy-seeking $400 missile. Not a good tradeoff as your plane and lasers probably cost a million times that.

Cool in theory but doesnt make it past the first stage of any war game.

The numbers are more like 10 gigawatts of peak radiated RF. Average power is still low. Electrical to RF efficiency can be well over 50%.

Making heat isn't the object. Frying electronics is.

When a Sidewinder, designed in the 1960's, slams into 10 GW of rf, it's going to forget what it was sent to do. As far as breaking Stealth, these things aren't fired until they're needed. Droping bombs breaks stealth, too.

It's being done now, on real planes, and will be a lot more effective in a few more years. The trend is to non-lethal weapons, unmanned combat vehicles, and lots of electronics. WWIII will be a video game. The losers won't be dead, they'll just be living in tents in the dark.

John

Howcome he can't just have an FAA inspector come out and certify it to his (the inspector's) own standards?

Thanks, Rich