USAF wants offensive lasers by 2030

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A must be fairly newish article on the Aviationist about the USAF RFI on lasers for its jets:

http://theaviationist.com/2013/11/22/usaf-lasers-on-jets/

Worth it for the artwork
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11 years 1 month

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will they have PEW PEW sound effects?

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Probably, otherwise what is the point?

I am interested to know what the aircraft is in that image. It looks f35ish but with obvious differences. Does anyone know if it is just illustrative of a generic 2030 design (looks very 1990s) or if its something far more exciting like the F35F!!!

Lasers for destination, defence and attack. Where does all the power come from?

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a mini thorium reactor built into the airframe!

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Lasers again? Did it work for the A-60 or Yal-1?

Whats interesting is the frequency.

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11 years 1 month

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Probably, otherwise what is the point?

I am interested to know what the aircraft is in that image. It looks f35ish but with obvious differences. Does anyone know if it is just illustrative of a generic 2030 design (looks very 1990s) or if its something far more exciting like the F35F!!!

Lasers for destination, defence and attack. Where does all the power come from?

Looks like a twin engine F35. Someone maybe dropping hints of a potential 5.5 generation plane.

It appears DEW is going to a standard feature of 6th generation aircraft.

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14 years 1 month

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A must be fairly newish article on the Aviationist about the USAF RFI on lasers for its jets:

At this point, they should ditch their new bomber in concept... unless it explicitly contains a sufficiently open design and architecture as to make incorporation of defensive DEWs relatively straightforward.

Otherwise, by the time its in service (~2025-2030), it'll effectively become a pre-dreadnought of the skies.

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11 years 5 months

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Hasnt the problem been that atmospheric attenuation is fairly high in the useable wavelengths?

IIRC an artillery shell needs almost 20KW to ignite (Raytheon did tests with a 20KW laser igniting shells 500m away).

Similarily the A-60 and YAL-1 used wavelengths of around 10 microns where the absorption level ranges from 0.1-10dB per km depending on climate, altitude etc. If we assume the low end (0.1dB loss per km) and a target needing 20KW to ignite (5KW more than current Russian radars) then the max range is 40km.

I get that the concept is interesting... but what KW rating and frequency/wavelengths are we talking about?

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lazers on fighters must be lockmarts desperate idea to save their failed F35 design,lazers of any meaningful power won't happen for at least the next 50 years. 5.5 gen no,the current F35 does not even remotely qualify as a 5 gen fighter based on lockmarts own earlier definition,or even a 4gen if judged by its physical performance, not even close to having supercruise or thrust vectoring but instead performance of speed, acceleration and manuverability of pretty much the same level as a mid 1950's Mig19

Looks like a twin engine F35. Someone maybe dropping hints of a potential 5.5 generation plane.

It appears DEW is going to a standard feature of 6th generation aircraft.

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15 years 3 months

Posts: 6,441

a mini thorium reactor built into the airframe!

Well in that case Norway should get their head out of their @ss and start deveopling a fully functional land based Thorium Reactor.
Such is we are not anywhere near it at the moments.. a real shame and really stupid.
Staying depended on Gass and oil will be Our own downfall.. stupid politicians :(

Oh and i also like to point out that Norway has aboundance of Thorium in them Mountains.. loots of it just waitin to get exctracted.

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12 years 3 months

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Probably, otherwise what is the point?

I am interested to know what the aircraft is in that image. It looks f35ish but with obvious differences. Does anyone know if it is just illustrative of a generic 2030 design (looks very 1990s) or if its something far more exciting like the F35F!!!

Lasers for destination, defence and attack. Where does all the power come from?

F35 MkII*?

*New inlets and mach 2 mod are the small things one can expect

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It takes an entirely new level of power regeneration to feed such a weapon,
next gen. will be built around power regeneration, -bigger

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16 years 4 months

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....lazers of any meaningful power won't happen for at least the next 50 years.
Really? 50 years? Are you serious? Earlier this year, the USS Dewey (DDG 105) had a Naval Laser Weapons system (LaWS) installed on board. It is powerful enough to disable an inbound missile.

The YAL-1A ABL has successfully brought down long range rockets with its outdated COIL DEW system. I think you are wrong.
The F-35 IS a 5th generation fighter. It possesses stealth capabilities, AESA radar and thrust vectoring and can utilize a wide range of modern weapon systems. It is not the best multi-role 5th gen fighter out there, but it is indeed a 5th generation fighter and certainly could out perform a MiG-19. Your comments are very bold.

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Well trolled jhawk...

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The F-35 IS a 5th generation fighter. It possesses stealth capabilities, AESA radar and thrust vectoring and can utilize a wide range of modern weapon systems. It is not the best multi-role 5th gen fighter out there, but it is indeed a 5th generation fighter and certainly could out perform a MiG-19. Your comments are very bold.

Oooh... being very efficient with the truth there are we not?

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are you trying to imply that no F-35 has thrust vectoring technology?

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It is indigenous indeed to claim dead-weight swivel is an improvement in maneuverability, -the rationale behind it.
Take note how F-35B is even less than F-35A in every parameter


The US Department of Defense's decision to relax the sustained turn performance of all three variants of the F-35
was revealed earlier this month in the Pentagon's Director of Operational Test and Evaluation 2012 report.
Turn performance for the US Air Force's F-35A was reduced from 5.3 sustained g's to 4.6 sustained g's.
The F-35B had its sustained g's cut from five to 4.5 g's, while the US Navy variant had its turn performance truncated
from 5.1 to five sustained g's.
Acceleration times from Mach 0.8 to Mach 1.2 were extended by
eight seconds, 16 seconds and 43 seconds for the A, B and C-models respectively.
The baseline standard used for the comparison was a clean Lockheed F-16 Block 50 with two wingtip Raytheon AIM-120 AMRAAMs.
"What an embarrassment, and there will be obvious tactical implications.
Having a maximum sustained turn performance of less than 5g is the equivalent of an [McDonnell Douglas] F-4 or an [Northrop] F-5,"
another highly experienced fighter pilot says. "[It's] certainly not anywhere near the performance of
most fourth and fifth-generation aircraft."

At higher altitudes, the reduced performance will directly impact survivability against advanced Russian-designed "double-digit"
surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems such as the Almaz-Antey S-300PMU2
(also called the SA-20 Gargoyle by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), the pilot says.
At lower altitudes, where fighters might operate in for the close air support or forward air control role,
the reduced airframe performance will place pilots at increased risk against shorter-range SAMs and anti-aircraft artillery.

Most egregious is the F-35C-model's drastically reduced transonic acceleration capabilities.
"That [43 seconds] is a massive amount of time, and assuming you are in afterburner for acceleration,
it's going to cost you even more gas," the pilot says. "This will directly impact tactical execution, and not in a good way."

Pilots typically make the decision to trade a very high rate of fuel consumption for supersonic airspeeds for one of two reasons.
"They are either getting ready to kill something or they are trying to defend against something [that's trying to kill] them,"
the pilot says. "Every second counts in both of those scenarios. The longer it takes,
the more compressed the battle space gets. That is not a good thing."