I'm just curious how catastrophic "defeated the vehicle" means. 

catastrophic usually infers absolute destruction and irretrievable in any form or fashion.

  I'd be guessing that it became a variation of an ingot

Possible meaning for "defeated":

- Disabled the engine - burning through the thin metal of a hood and melting lots of vulnerable engine parts.

- Burned the tires off

- Directly fried the (dummy) occupants

- Ignited fuel tank

 

I'd suspect its likely a combination. Regardless, I wonder in its current state if ATL could repeatedly fire, how frequently it could fire,  and how many shots worth of chemicals it can carry?  If its capable of this it would seem good enough today to be of use in rather "safe" (almost no SAM's) airborne COIN work in Iraq and Afghanistan. This would truely be "silent death". Bad guys around one corner wouldn't even know their buddy around the corner had just been taken out - and thus wouldn't run away as soon.

 

Might we see this deployed sooner than originally envisioned?

 

 

Maybe I put this link up before (other similar discussion), maybe not.

 

Keep in mind it is from about a year ago (August 2008).

 

Still, quite interesting.

It did a pretty good job of scorching the vehicle's paintjob. To be fair, I understand that this is only one of the tests conducted and the video of the test where the target vehicle was "defeated" has not been released. If true, one wonders why?

Anybody want to speculate how would this thing do against a maneuvering fighter aircraft?

In the pictures I recall seeing, it burned a substantial hole through the steel hood. They should have been able to burn the hole in the roof and through the driver..

 

I would think most aircraft would be more vulnerable - of course they're also traveling faster and it may be harder to keep the beam on a single location.  The 20KM effective range of this laser would also leave the ATL at risk from the aircraft's missiles.  I suppose they could at least go after helicopters.

 

Though it appears the ATL's guidance system can lock on to ground targets, I wonder if there are any plans to deploy it with a substantial enough radar system, or slave it a ground radar to allow it to:

 

* destroy low flying cruise missiles

* act as C-RAM (this would be an airborne THEL)

* destroy SAM's that have been launched

* destroy A-A missiles

 

Perhaps it could be deployed with a "sister" ship that carried the tracking tracking systems.

 

I note that ATL has now also fired on a moving vehicle - apparently burning the paint on the fender. It seems they were just happy to hit the target.  I would have been more impressed if they had disabled the moving vehicle.

 

This is from Boeing itself:

 

"  The beam control system guided the laser beam's energy to the unoccupied, remotely controlled target, striking the vehicle and putting a hole in a fender.  "

 

Question here is, was it one of those plastic/polymer fenders we see on so many civilian vehicles now,

or actual sheet metal (light steel alloy, aluminum, etc) ?

 

Plastic definitely isn't going to hold up to laser heat like metals would,

but if the target in question was any number of derelict military trucks that are often employed as weapons tests targets, then we know at least that logistics vehicles are vulnerable to it.

 

Further refinement, I'd look at improving my targetting optics to be able to impact as close as possible to a vehicle's fuel tanks...that much heat rapidly dumped into the fuel after getting thru the metal shell should cause some very ideal vaporization and resulting explosion....for use against aircraft, we must remember how many parts of a modern jet actually carry fuel; wings, and quite often, large body cavities are occupied by large tankage.

If sheet steel can be no barrier at 20km, aircraft-grade thin aluminum alloys can't far any better.

Perhaps even at greater ranges they'd suffer.

(Where did this 20km range come from, another article?)

 

And yes, I realize it isn't gasoline, but aviation fuel will ignite with enough heat behind it: need we be reminded of numerous government tests to develop safer aviation?

 (It is fuel after all, and a laser burning thru metal will certainly deliver the heat.)

This isn't like an armor-piercing bullet that physically punches holes thru tanks that self-sealant foam can patch: we have a lot of heat in this equation.

 

The fact that it is stated the ATL "defeated" a vehicle's fender, and the fact that hoods aren't much thicker,

suggest that wouldn't take long for the ATL carrier to destroy the functionalty of a vehicle engine: there's a lot of parts under a hood that aren't made to tolerate the internal temperature of the engine block, and this laser could slice-and-dice (for lack of a better term) a lot of necessary bits under a hood that a vehicle needs to keep its engine running.

 

Need I even speculate on shooting thru the roof into the driver's and crew?

 

As for C-RAM applications: no point making it airborne.

THEL has already tacked up quite a few notches of laser-vs-projectile/rocket,

and recent developments with a weapons-grade laser on the Centurion/Phalanx system are well under way.