For those who aren’t gamers,” God mode” is a method of operation( or cheat ) included in some shoot-related games. You always run out of ammunition and are impervious to harm in God manner.
Of course, there is no God way in real life, but the military organizations around the world are very interested in weapons that resemble it, such as laser and additional” directed energy arms.” For instance, directed energy projects cost the US government close to$ 1 billion annually.
The argument is not unique to Australia. A directed power weapon system was required by the 2020 Force Structure Plan to be” capable of defeating armoured vehicles up to and including key battle tanks.”
The latest directed energy screening range for American business AIM Defence was introduced in March of this year on the fringes of Melbourne by Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles. The Defense Science and Technology team announced a$ 13 million( US$ 8.6 million ) contract with European defence technology firm QinetiQ to create an initial protective light in April.
The new A$ 3.4 billion Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator ( ASCA ) program places a high priority on directed energy technology.
Large quantities of electromagnetic energy are concentrated on a far-off goal by an energy tool that is directed. Light( a laser ) may be used to generate this energy, but microwaves or radio waves may also be employed.
We’ll focus on laser-based directed power weapons for the sake of conciseness, but the same can be said for other types of arms.
These arms may harm the sensitive digital systems that control devices and the people who use them, melt or burn stronger equipment, or both, depending on how much power is focused on the destination.
Magnetic waves are significantly faster than even the fastest conventional arms because they move at the speed of light.
Consider a hypersonic missile that is moving 10 kilometers off at ten years the speed of sound. By the time the directed light power from a high-power light reached the goal, it would have only moved in 10 meters.
Additionally, these arms never run out of ammunition because they project easy rather than weapons. Additionally, this implies that the weapon’s weapons does not need to be produced in a shop.
Directed power moves in a straight line because it is not affected by inertia like rockets and bullets. This makes target and aiming simpler and more trustworthy.
Additionally, directed energy arms have less chance of hitting near objects or sending debris flying because they cause problems by heating up a destination area.
Although directed energy arms have all these benefits over conventional weapons, it has proven challenging to construct good ones.
The enormous power needed to eradicate practical targets like missiles is one issue that laser weapons face. This dimension of object needs beams with hundreds of kilowatt or even megawatts of energy to be destroyed. We would need five years as much power to run these systems because they are only about 20 % appropriate.
Here, we are also into watt country, which is the amount of power a small city uses. Sometimes portable directed energy systems are enormous because of this.
Although devices with capacities up to 300kW have been developed, the US has just recently been able to produce a fairly low-power 50kW light small that is suitable for use on an armored vehicle.
Additionally, the exquisite photonic equipment that produces the light very quickly needs to be freed of all that fire, or it will harm the light itself. Although laser technologies with more effective heat transfer have steadily increased the amount of light energy that can be effectively produced, this has proven to be challenging.
Dealing with for large amounts of energy also has the unintended consequence that any flaws in the visual techniques used to center and direct the light could easily harm the laser procedure catastrophically.
Additionally, it is difficult to direct a laser through atmospheric volatility, sand, or rain to an area the size of 10 cent pieces tens of kilometers away. The simple challenges become clear when you consider how challenging it is to maintain the energy in the same area on a fast-moving destination for tens of seconds.
Having said that, systems to get around all of these challenges are still being developed.
But let’s say that all of the specialized issues with directed power weapons are resolved. Even now, there will be vital infrastructure and supply chain challenges in order to manufacture them in large quantities.
There are businesses in Australia that have the knowledge to produce for gadgets. However, an industrial strength for the processing of the required laser diodes and high-quality optics, which does not occur in Australia, is required to develop and mass-produce directed energy weapons.
We will need to create such industries if we want to have” royal capability”— the ability to produce these weapons without relying on outside sources.
This is a costly and time-consuming invest in national network. In times of peace, it is relatively simple to obtain the basic materials for a directed energy weapon from abroad; however, in time of major conflict, nations that can produce these devices are likely to do so for their special needs.
Australia and many other nations will continue to be interested in developing directed energy arms due to their significant military benefits and the effects of an enemy possessing them.
However, as recent nuclear submarine policy decisions have demonstrated, it is not simple to quickly create an technological capability in technologies that our commercial base has up until now completely disregarded.
Sean O’Byrne is Associate Professor, Deputy Head of School (Research), School of Engineering and Information Technology, UNSW Canberra, UNSW Sydney
Under a Creative Commons license, this article is republished from The Conversation. read the article in its entirety.