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Israel rolls out laser defense system

reuters.com

151–160 of 250 posts

Re: Israel rolls out laser defense system

#151

...and then what. What will they do when the rockets get faster, shinier, more erratic in flight...or any of the other things mentioned on this thread? I'm not going to pretend I have the solutions to the Arab Isreali conflict, but this is at best temporary. My best guess is the long term solution (if there is ever one attempted) will be more related to why people are motivated to launch rockets at their neighbours.

Hamas can't get rockets that nice.

Re: Israel rolls out laser defense system

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Palestinians? They have not made it clear at all. TMany people living in Gaza, one of the poorest, unsafe, strips of land with the least amount of autonomy or basic human respect given, don’t have time and energy to focus on a goal of utterly conquering and pushing Israel to the sea. I assume this implies killing all Israelis too? Quite a statement to make about the vast majority of Gaza citizens that can barely…

The thing about your list of conflict is that all of them involve a minority against an overwhelming majority and fighting over distinct territories. This is about two populations roughly equal in size fighting over the same territory.

Kosovo fought with Albania. Albania and Kosovo have a closer population to Serbia than Palestine to Israel. So that situation is even more uneven population wise. And just as ridiculous as just saying Kosovo.

Israel has 2x the population and far more land.

This is not about fighting for the same territory. The West Bank government and people are not fighting to get Israel. The weak Hamas government can say whatever they want. Do you have any citation or anything that the majority of Gaza citizens want to take over all of Israel, if they could get back control of Gaza for themselves including land settled on? Anecdotally, I have not seen this be the case.

Re: Israel rolls out laser defense system

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Palestinians? They have not made it clear at all. TMany people living in Gaza, one of the poorest, unsafe, strips of land with the least amount of autonomy or basic human respect given, don’t have time and energy to focus on a goal of utterly conquering and pushing Israel to the sea. I assume this implies killing all Israelis too? Quite a statement to make about the vast majority of Gaza citizens that can barely…

Gaza used to be the most prosperous Arab nation that didn't have oil. That's not good for recruiting cannon fodder so they launched the second intifada to destroy the economy. They focus on destroying Israel because it brings them money.

They? Do you not see how offensive that is to group together 1.7M people like that? When if that same sort of wording happens for almost any other situation, it’s called out as wrong, which it obviously is, very quickly.

There is a common dog whistle and coded word sort of stuff especially recently with China. Instead of specify the authoritarian Govt and elite in China, one may say the Chinese used to be X but now they are doing Y to hurt every one.

Or: North Korea was doing well before their famine and the Soviet collapse. Or better than the past 30 years. They screwed everything up and now do silly begging for food and silly missile presentations.

Almost no North Korean had a say or any power. Even if most of the population has been tricked into believing the powerful In North Korea are doing fine when they are doing evil things. It’s clear that saying “they” is wrong. The responsible are the elite few in North Korea.

—-

If it isn’t clear. I believe Hamas sucks. Iran sucks for backing them.

Re: Israel rolls out laser defense system

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the current power level, this laser is mainly useful against drones. There is a limit to how much laser power you can shoot through the air. When the threshold for breakdown is exceeded, a high density plasma is produced which is opaque to visible and infrared wavelengths and thus absorbs the laser radiation. The moon does not have this laser power limit, but moving Tel Aviv to the moon would quite expensive and y…

> but moving Tel Aviv to the moon would quite expensive and you would lose the mediterranean climate On the flip side, you'd be really far away from Iran.

Now that you mention it, having people able to flee to moon/space pods/mars changes the "Mutually Assured Destruction" math.

Re: Israel rolls out laser defense system

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as EMPs are viable MAD is still in effect.

An emp would knock out electrical grids.... sure... But that isn't annihilation... Say russia installed this in major cities (rural is acceptable loss), then manufactured super sonic nukes that could deliver a strike in under 5 mins... or even a minute... they could strike many of our nuke sites (not all because of subs) but our major military operation bases, then we strike back from subs, but these take them all ou…

To elaborate, some sources put the death rate in an industrialized nation at 90% at 1 year after initial strike.

We would simply starve.

It is delayed annihilation, and would be returned in kind.

Re: Israel rolls out laser defense system

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These "advanced" rockets will be more costly, which means your more limited on how many you can afford to fire. Thus Israel can intercept these "advanced" rockets with other solutions: Iron Dome, Arrow 2, Arrow 3, and David's Sling. The Iron Beam is the low cost per intercept solution, meant to intercept cheap unguided ballistic rockets.

Other people on here have suggested that tin foil will do as protection, or metal polish for that matter. Im guessing this will make no difference in the number of rockets at all

Other people on here have no experience with high energy lasers. Thermal shock will burn right through the metal foil or polish. We're not talking about a toy laser pointer.

Re: Israel rolls out laser defense system

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those lasers do not burn through. #2 does not have to hit exactly the same place as #1 is heating up to boil electronics. No idea, what is meant under lasers in article, but what they were describing could be even be concentrated radio microwaves to fry electronics. There is no need to use concentrated heat to heat up a tea - your target is making a tea, not making a hole in kettle.

This could be relevant for UAV's, but this system would defend against missiles that are purely ballistic -- no electronics to fry. I assume that even if you don't burn through a descending missile, merely deforming the nose cone can still cause it to go off course.

These are unguided rockets used as terror weapons against civilian targets. They're not very accurate in the first place, so even if a defense system deflects a rocket slightly it can still land in a populated area. I suspect what they're actually trying to do is cause enough airframe damage to make the rocket break up in flight.

Re: Israel rolls out laser defense system

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple beams creates a different problem. Say your beam is 1cm across and you are aiming at a 30cm target. All your energy is in that 1cm. You don't much care where in that 30cm it hits so long as it burns through. But with two lasers, to be effective, each beam needs to hit the same sport on the target. Instead of a 30cm target, laser #2 now has to hit the 1cm beam of the first laser.

They also need to be in phase

Set to funk funk

Re: Israel rolls out laser defense system

#159

I will believe it when I see it. Focusing that much light on a small moving object, through layered and moving air, with an intensity to burn through metal would be an achievement. Burning through enough of that metal to degrade a falling rocket (as opposed to during boost phase of flight) is even harder. For all the talk about cost reduction, have a look at what realworld laser armor costs. Painting the nosecone of…

At the current power level, this laser is mainly useful against drones. There is a limit to how much laser power you can shoot through the air. When the threshold for breakdown is exceeded, a high density plasma is produced which is opaque to visible and infrared wavelengths and thus absorbs the laser radiation. The moon does not have this laser power limit, but moving Tel Aviv to the moon would quite expensive and y…

Couldn't you start of with a larger (meter wide) lens and focusing mechanism, so that it narrows down at the target? Then you aren't heating up most of the air between. Also what about high output short pulsed lasers? Couldn't you get much higher output for a brief enough duration that it wouldn't heat up the air?

Re: Israel rolls out laser defense system

#160

Is there a consensus on whether a nuclear missile shield would be feasible, regardless the technology? Basically, if the US invested 1% of the GDP into developing a missile shield, could it achieve let's say a 98% success rate against incoming missiles?

The issue is global conflicts have a lot of missiles. Your 98% success rate probably still means most Americans are dead. IIRC Russia's ICBMs are measured in tens of thousands, and each one could take out a major US city (until we ran out)
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