Drones are the headache of our time. There are more and more of them, and they have already become a big problem for the armed forces around the world. They (UAVs, UAVs) are small, cheap, difficult to detect, difficult enough to shoot down (and it costs a lot to shoot down).
They are used by armies and PMCs, terrorist groups (Hezbollah and Hamas), "Armed Forces of Ukraine", "separatists" and just private traders (or "dummies").
The drone threat is not limited to the Middle East or Ukraine.
In 2014, the South Korean authorities discovered that North Korean drones were watching the Blue House / Korea-Seoul-Blue House (the official residence of the President of South Korea - Park Geun-hye, Park Geun-hye)
And there was a whole "bunch" of them. The South Korean security officers got tired of catching them …
Drones are everywhere: over the positions of the DPR / LPR militia forces, over the Crimea, over sea ships, over stadiums … and, possibly, over your personal plot or next to the window of your apartment on the 25th floor (or 1 m). They are watching and dirty, dirty and watching, or they write what you are doing there.
At this week's Defense and Security Equipment Industry in London, German military contractor Rheinmetall Defense Electronics showcased a new sea-based anti-drone laser system.
Moreover, this is not the first "application" of RDE for a total cleaning of the sky from these annoying robotic bugs.
2012-2013, HEL 30 kW Skyshield air defense tower
Mobile variations on different platforms: BTR GTK Boxer (5kW HEL), modified BMP M113 (1 kW HEL), as well as 8x8 Tatra truck chassis (20kW-HEL), respectively named “Mobile HEL Effector Wheel XX”, “Mobile HEL Effector Track V "," Mobile HEL Effector Container L ".
The test results were as follows.
The GTK Boxer (but with a 20kW installation) can destroy an oversized heavy machine gun mount on a pickup platform, striking a beam of ammunition from a cartridge belt. The "terrorist" - the gunner remains alive, the BC burns out with the probability of damage to the feed mechanism.
At a distance of up to 70 m, the crew detected mines and improvised explosive devices, irradiated them with a laser from a safe distance, which caused them to burn for several seconds.
They also successfully cleared a barbed wire obstacle from 70 meters.
At ranges up to 2000 m, they cut and cut radar power cables, power supplies, the radar mast itself and damaged the optics.
Skyshield HEL with a power of 30 kW (demonstrator) destroyed an 82-mm mortar shell at a distance of up to 1000 meters. The attained hitting probability is 5 out of 5 on the first shot and 4 out of 5 on subsequent shots.
There were also successful interceptions of UAVs at distances of up to 500 m.
What is the "novelty"?
Germany's Got a 4-Barrel Laser Gatling Gun is a four-barreled laser Gatling machine gun from Germany.
The system, according to informed "Chinese sources", has not one, but four high energy lasers (HELs) mounted on a turret or turret, making it somewhat similar to a Gatling gun. Moreover, it is "similar" only externally, but not at all in meaning.
The four 20 kW HEL lasers are designed to fire simultaneously using a technique known as the spatial overlay technique. All beams with a monopower of 20 kilowatts are emitted simultaneously and converge on the target into one spot (the same diameter as from a 20-kW laser) with a power of 80 kilowatts, naturally, minus losses for the movement of photons in the medium.
According to the company's press release, any amount of energy can be focused on the target by using spatial overlay - you just need to add the RIGHT number of lasers.
The lens of each ruby red laser is protected by a special coating that prevents the rays from scattering due to fog, rain or water droplets.
The new cannon shot down a drone at a distance of 500 meters during the demonstration. Also, lasers (as already mentioned above) can detonate ammunition, detonate artillery shells in flight, blind the sensors of other ships, and even burn holes in the hulls of light craft.
I don’t even presume to judge who was the first to "invent" the Gatling laser machine gun.
1. Sergey Lukyanenko in 1995 ("Dream Line", heavy army laser weapon "Chance")?
“A six-barreled automatic non-targeting laser fire system, otherwise - a fan laser designed by the famous Martyzenski, in common parlance - "sawmill" … Six barrels were collected in a package on a rotating axis. Each barrel was slightly bent to the side."
2. Patrick Priebe (Patrick Priebe) - German fan of laser weapons, who in 2013 built his wonder-yudo Gatling Gun to prove the correctness of the concept "Laser Gatling Gun"?
Interesting and cheap thing by the way.
The base of the hefty-looking "personal weapon" is made of aluminum, mounted on a rotating turret with 6 blue 1, 4-watt class 4 lasers from Spyder 3 Krypton (at $ 999.95 each).
Plus a side mounted 100mW green laser to aid aiming.
Result?
Rate:
Balloons are destroyed with a bang … unless, of course, the turret is not rotated too quickly.
The speed of rotation of the turret can be controlled with the handle on the bottom of the "laser gun".
Cheap and cheerful: four ball bearings provide axial locking and smooth rotation of the turret, the motor and aiming laser are powered by eight AA batteries, and six blue lasers are powered by four parallel 18650 mAh lithium-ion batteries.
Patrick, by the way, was previously famous for such creations as Iron Man Gauntlet and Plasma Cutter.
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Well? Are we waiting for the appearance of cheap compact and, most importantly, all-weather free electron lasers (Free Electron Laser, FEL) and capacious energy sources such as Nano Flow Cell (flow battery of 30 liters)?
Indeed, unlike gas, liquid or solid-state lasers, where electrons are excited in bound atomic or molecular states, in FEL the radiation source is a beam of electrons in a vacuum, passing through a series of specially arranged magnets - an undulator (wiggler), which makes the beam move along a sinusoidal trajectory, losing energy, which is converted into a stream of photons.
FELs have a wide range of radiation frequency variation (without replacing the working medium), which allows you to adjust to the characteristics of the external environment (clear, cloudy, fog, rain) and without any adaptive lenses.
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Quotes from S. Lukyanenko:
"Convoy" is a civilian self-defense weapon. “The Convoy was a low power laser pistol. A shot from it brought only a painful, but shallow burn, allowing you to stop the enemy. The fact that the pistol had a decent energy reserve and a high rate of fire was delicately disregarded by the law. In automatic fire mode, a series of laser pulses burned through a person through and through in two seconds."
Luchevik "Career". "The old woman, engaged in a rather unusual business: dismantling the ancient ray beam" Career ", put down her weapon."
"Argument - 17" / "Argument - 36". "- Take" Argument - 17 "- decided the gunsmith. - Lightweight, no need to aim. You just have to introduce the identification of all your comrades-in-arms, otherwise you will grind them."
