Re: Airborne lasers

From: Todd Bandrowsky (tbandrow_at_mightyware.com)
Date: 11/14/04 

Date: 14 Nov 2004 15:14:27 -0800

> True, but the kill mechanism that they are talking about for the ABL is
> heating Scud-type missile tanks while the missile's motor is burning.

I thought the idea wasn't heating the fuel tanks, it was to cause
structural failure in the missile by weakening its skin.

> They still haven't addressed the problem of how they deal with something
> that's motor has stopped firing by the time the laser can engage it.

If the missile has a hole in it, then the aerodynamics of the missile
change. The hole inside the shuttle wing wasn't relatively big, but
at 17,000mph, it was catastrophic. When you are moving that fast, it
doesn't take a to destroy you.

> The
> warhead is going to have a heat shield on it to help it deal with its
> reentry heating anyway, and that can probably be increased in
> capability to make it laser resistant...

Won't the heat shield generally be only on the bottom of the warhead?

> assuming that you _do_ have the
> capability to destroy the missile's warhead itself, then shooting at it
> at the beginning of it's flight is not the ideal way to attack it;
> higher it gets, the less atmosphere between it and ABL, and the more
> powerful and less dispersed the beam is. Besides which, it is now in an
> unpowered ballistic trajectory, and a lot easier to achieve a targeting
> solution on. Less atmosphere also means less air flow over the target,
> and less dispersion of the laser's heat via convection.

Agreed. But if the missile is moving at Mach 10 at 100,000 feet,
there'll be enough air around to cause it tumble and quite possibly
fail.

> To me the thing seem specifically designed to kill Scuds or Scud clones,
> but that's 1950's missile technology, and won't be around forever.

I disagree. All ballistic missiles are increasingly obsolete. It's
not an issue of liquid fuel vs solid fuel, wrapped in foam or smoke or
not. It's that the one great advantage of a ballistic missile is that
its speed is suppose to immunize it from attack, and speed doesn't do
that any more. With that veil pierced, speed quickly becomes a
liability. At that velocity, you don't need to somehow make fuel
explode or burn the warhead up to hurt the missile. Any slight
deformation in the missile's skin should cause it to probably tumble
out of control and break up. Again, look at what a fairly small hole
in the wing of the shuttle did.

In the long, grand scheme of things, ABL and other interception
systems are going to turn rapid wars into slugfests. Technology has
advanced and future wars will be slugfests, empires possible again,
the defense will rule the offense.

Relevant Pages

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