A laser that is powerful enough to hurt a human target (especially a human target with body armor) is going to be powerful enough that it’ll be ionizing the air to some degree. It’ll be like a lightning bolt, there’ll be flashes of light and sharp cracking sounds. That’s also ignoring the fact that the random bits of terrain that the laser is hitting will also be exploding. Someone under “suppressing fire” from a laser weapon would be quite aware of the fact.
Also whatever you’re using to generate that much energy will make noise as well
Yes, but it might be a power plant hundreds of kms away.
The pure joy of putting a single joule of optical power into a sub nanosecond pulse.
For those not familiar with lasers, that’s a GW of instantaneous power that you can focus down to a micron sized spot.
https://youtu.be/Z1Xky_ermd4?si=1Luz0fuzm4kcwIwc
All that said, the successful laser weapons right now seem to all be anti drone/aircraft and they are typically using tracked CW (not pulsed) lasers with heating over time to avoid atmospheric lensing. Lots of challenges to overcome in getting pulsed energy a long way through air.
I was wondering if we’d see pulsed lasers in anti-drone warfare… the power supply advantages aside, focusing on just the right point in time with the pulse seems hard.
The hard part is predicting atmospheric effects to get the focus right. It’s basically impossible without some form of just in time compensation. One idea I’ve seen is that you fire a physical projectile and use that to calibrate the focal point at arbitrary distance, almost like a laser tracer.
It’s not easy but you can correct the atmosphere. This is done with guide stars and adaptive optics.
The bigger challenge is that for intense pulsed lasers, the standard laser profile causes them to self focus in air through nonlinear effects. To overcome this you need to make weird profiles like top hats that are much hard to get just right.
This is a fundamentally physical limitation that is pretty tricky to overcome.
It might be hard, but with the processing power we can fit into microchips these days I’d say we fixed harder problems already. I mean, the controller needs at least two cameras or another methode of locating the target and estimating the distance, but I’d guess we could completely get rid of time of flight calculations as the light pulse would be instant for that matter.
But again: I’m just guessing here
Suppressive fire is already an obselete doctrine. That’s why the British army is replacing their machine guns with DMRs (Canadian military may be heading in the same direction).
Turns out turning a motherfuckers head into a fine red mist with a 7.62 tends to make everyone else around them really eager to seek cover. The threat of a well placed shot has a far better suppressing effect than the reality of a bunch of inaccurate fire.
What’s with the credible takes?
Sir this is NCD
May I propose a fully-automatic, belt-fed 7.62 sniper rifle as a noncredible happy medium?
borderlands has entered the chat
Now this is the quality content I come here for
It’s just the car gun from The Jackal.
I think you meant to say .22LR APFSDS DMGG (designated marksman gatling gun)
Curious where you found a credible take.
This “we’re past machine guns now” thing has been tried multiple times before, including by the brits.
our rifles will shoot better instead
our rifles will shoot more instead
I wonder what MG they’ll get after this doesn’t work
Sounds more like somebody doesn’t want to spend as much on small arms ammo than found a superior infantry doctrine
I’d imagine a sniper is probably one of the most effective ways to suppress a group. They probably don’t know where the shots are coming from, and don’t know when it’s safe to move again.
Having said that, I would imagine there are situations where traditional suppression is better. A hail of bullets against the side of an APC is probably terrifying even if none of them are getting through. It’s going to be tough to get someone to open the hatch as the bullets are flying in. But, with designated marksmen only, you’d have to wait until the enemy tries to get out of the APC and then make a tough shot to hit them as they do.
So, basically what the USSR did ? (IIRC, machine gunners and sharpshooters carrying some semi auto scoped rifle were basically interchangeable in their doctrine, at least during WW2)
Turning the Brit’s own standard of having officers walk instead of run into something like the end of Planet Terror.
I don’t know, I’d probably at least duck if the fucking Macrowave started ionizing the piss out of the air near my face.
I am a simple man. I see styropyro and I upvote while he is still alive.
Yeah macrowave
You also wont be able to see them with the naked eye. Imagine you’re on patrol and your buddy drops dead and there was no sound and no visible sign except the crackling from the fire that carved a hole in his chest. War is already scary enough tyvm. Everyone is going to have to wear white or reflective gear.
or reflective gear
It would be fun if the silver spandex of classic Sci-Fi turned out to be standard uniforms to counter laser fire.
Just like with snipers today, although i suspect that giant laser is not optimal weapon in high stakes hide and seek game
If there’s a constellation of them orbiting a few hundred kilometers up they’ll be pretty optimal. Like fairly optimal. Sufficiently optimal.
satisfactorily optimal.
You can’t hide those from ground-based anti-satellite laser
It’ll be like with GBAD in Ukraine but in space, and satellites can shoot at other satellites too
Okay, hear me out: camouflage. Desert camo for the satellites orbiting between Earth and Mars. Ocean gray for satellites orbiting between Earth and Neptune. And we can get Hugo Boss to design the camouflage for the satellites between the Earth and the moon.
I like your style
The atmosphere wants a word with you.
we can shoot that too
If they are wearing white, all the better to see them, and use a variety of guns on them. Besides, no white is perfect, even when clean, (which won’t last long) so the laser would still chew them up.
Also depends on the frequency of radiation used. Does it reflect infrared or microwaves? UV?
All true, but nothing reflects 100% even in the best case.
Yeah, a large part of suppressive fire is that the enemy doesn’t want to be randomly wounded.
And ironically, some armies are moving away from it because they’ve realized that suppressive fire isn’t super effective in modern urban warfare. When you’re trying to “suppress” someone in a building, there’s a good chance that they can just relocate and continue firing before you have a chance to move up. Your suppressive fire is suddenly aiming at the wrong area and isn’t doing anything.
Instead, some armies (like the British armed forces) have started focusing on quality over quantity. Turns out, when every shot has a good chance to turn you to paste, you’re much more inclined to stay in cover. Even when you’re not being actively suppressed, knowing that they have a dozen scoped 7.62 rifles trained on your location means you’re hesitant to even peek your head out. They don’t need to burn through ammo to keep you suppressed, and the suppression is more effective. The occasional “hey we still have rifles aimed at you” warning shot is enough to keep them behind cover.
How does this tactic work when counting for light machine guns?
specifically a SAW or 240B. Which as I understand is the largest enemy casualty producing weapon carried by a U.S. army member.
I don’t know if it really counts as suppressive fire or just overwhelming fire power at that point
Those are more of an area denial weapon. Less “suppressing fire” and more “oppressing fire”
The purpose of suppressive fire is to force the enemy to keep their heads down, so that you can flank them or something. Unless what you’re firing is harmless, it could be used to suppress.
You’re telling me lasers don’t go “pew pew pew”?!
You’re supposed to make the “pew pew pew” noises as you fire.
They’d have to install a manual Pew switch. Go quiet for infiltration, or turn up the speakers for indimidation factor.
If Star Wars has taught me anything, this is incorrect, well still be sitting at about a 35% hit rate.
We gotta make the guns make the PEW PEW PEW sounds
Yeah but now we get to add cool sound effects to the guns
By international law, they have to play Darude’s “Sandstorm.”
Sonic ring chime
At very high power levels they would displace air via conduction heating.
If people were not aware of the suppressive fire, you’d be shooting it and watch people melt out of nowhere
I’m just sad that plasma weapons are essentially a no-go in an atmospheric environment…
plasma glows so it’s visible from far away, why not check out this sick neutral particle beam that already works https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a26858944/pentagon-particle-beam-space-2023/
Meh. If I saw a bunch of people pointing shit at me and the smell of ozone that would work, probably indefinitely.
Time to fall back to suppressive drone strikes!
