ladajo wrote:FEL is not here today as a tactical system.
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Now imagine a high G maneuvering target that is constantly changing it aspect (burn point) as well as having heat disapative skin and ablative material, coupled with a ridiculously low run in profile and sea spray, salt in the air
I aware FEL with megawatt power are years away. The MW-class can be attained with other technologies (i.e. focusing several 100kW lasers), the difference is that the frecuency of a free electron laser is adjustable, and can penetrate sea spray as the radar can. Against a FEL there not will be options, it is impossible to disipate or reflect such power, there is not material able to do it, so forget the heat disipative skin: the target will be holed.
ladajo wrote:a ridiculously low run in profile
Radars actually can track such profile today. The laser travels at the speed of light so can be real time focused without problem on you missile. Mach 5 is too slowly against the speed of computers and the speed of ligth of the lasers. Today antiship systems can track an incoming missile, the problem is bullets are not lasers; bullets have a balistic trajectory, they are very slow and its trajectory is afected by wind, so it is difficult to aim with them. With laser, where the radar sees the missile the laser will be focused.
High g maneouvering don't means nothing against a system that don't needs to do high g maneouvering to fire.
Even with a 100kW laser a missile will cannot make "high G maneuvering" anymore because its sensors will be fryed in a fraction of second. There will not be time for maneuvering. If the defense system has only one 100kW laser, it would be needed kinetic options. But again that will not be the case (on the long term).
With a few hundred laser a missile will have not options.
ladajo wrote:Then you shoot 6 or 10 weapons at your target and the come in on the deck in a coordinated attack at mach 2.5 or better, that is a tough problem. How much time do you get from horizon to impact at mach 3
How much time do you get from horizon to impact at mach 3
The horizon of a fleet could be hundreeds of km away (AWACS, helos, airfighters, ...). An airborne 200kW laser could have time to defeat your whole attack (it is not easy but possible; the airborne laser used in C-130 has 100-300kW, with a 10cm diameter beam at target). With a BW 100MW onboard, a ship may laser 20 or 30MW of direct energy continously. A fleet even more.
How much power is 20-30MJ per second, on a little sufarce?. For comparation, a 1kg projectile at 5km/s has a 12.5MJ of kinetic energy. What occurs if your missiles are being hit by two 1 kg projectiles at 5km/s every second? Ok, it is not the same impact.
In another view: with 20MW you could mealt at least 10kg of any material per second.
So the question you should ask is: How many time could a missile withstand a 1MW laser (focused on a 10 cm diameter) when approching the fleet. And remember the fleet (even a single ship) has at least 19MW more wating for it.
The defensive system could focus 2-3MW simoultaneously on each missile. Or it could focus 20-30MW secuantially on each missile for 1 second: 10 seconds, 10 missiles mealted. Or better, could blind each of them with a centiseconds flash, and after that could focus secuentially 20-30MW of direct energy on each.
Once a few hundred kW or more powerful laser is focused on a missile, it has no time for high g maniovering. Your 3 or 5 match missiles are like blind turtles made of butter.
There is only an option against high energy lasers: to avoid to be focused with them.
ladajo wrote:Don't forget, the bad guy can target your sensors as well.
Here I agree with you. That maybe an strategy.
If your missiles are focused with a medium power laser (even only a 50kW laser) in centiseconds your missile had been blinded, every sensor exposed to the laser had been destroyed. Once focused with a high energy laser (i.e. 0.5MW) your missile is holed like butter in less than 1 second. A multi-megawatt FEL could defeat
So, it needs to avoid to be focused with the laser. It needs to detect the enemy radar (or other sensors) and be the first who fire the laser against them, or be able to avoid to be focused with laser, or avoid to be detected or tracked. But actually missiles donĀ“t have lasers to fire, and once detected by the radar they will become mach 3-5 turtles against the laser defense.
Hypervelocity misseles will not be able to hit a ship with an onboard 100MW of electric power and lasers with 20-30% eficiency (supposed there is not a system failure).
In an scenery with WB 100MW and laser FEL with eficiency>20%, ships will not have defensive kinetic weapons (for surface and air battles), because its volume and its weigth will have better use (i.e. with more WB, rail guns or more lasers).