“The sky is huge” Lmao
Comment on Well...that was anticlimactic
EndlessApollo@lemmy.world 1 year agoSo they were just putting on a cool light show and won’t even bother to confirm that’s what happened? And even if that can create a similar looking phenomenon, why would they be doing that? The sky is huge, the chances of those lasers intersecting long enough to create that effect for that long are slim to none imo, unless there was a reason for them to be doing that
HorseRabbit@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
Meowoem@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
No it’s an air defence weapon not a light show, they purposely intersect the beams to create plasma to target missiles and planes - a super hot ball of plasma is impossible to defend against and can move as fast as the motors on the laser turrets can reorientate, like how searchlights move faster than planes or now you can just pivot your hips to keep a F1 car in the frame of your camera rather than running along beside it.
It’s got a lot of huge advantages like not requiring ammo so in theory could just slice through a fleet of drones or dozens of decoy missiles without extra cost or logistics however the energy costs are huge so it might not be a fully realisable tool.
I actually think that them sinking billions into r&d but ending up with an impractical device could be why there’s enough drama to get this in the senate - it’s also possible that the whole hearing is designed to look like a poor cover up of the plasma tech so that China thinks it works and invests in r&d only to waste time and effort. The CIA used to do similar to Russia all the time with things like remote viewing.
Certainly I can’t think of a reason aliens would be zigzagging around in busy sky, where as it being a secret test project would also explain all the ‘cover up’ stuff about high level agents taking radar data and telling people not to talk about it, etc.
EndlessApollo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Is that really how that stuff works?? I always thought the idea was that the laser would track the missile and melt it out of the sky. What you’re saying sounds super high tech I’ve never heard of that, I’m gonna look that up tonight bc that sounds really cool even if it’s not practical bc energy costs
Meowoem@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
The simple laser pointer style takes huge amounts of energy and has more limited range from what I understand, this is a newer idea that they’ve been talking about.
Of course beside a few bits of information it’s all classified so we can only really guess about it, this article is really interesting they’re talking about using it to distract heat seekling missiles but also as a kind of display firework that can be controlled. forbes.com/…/ufos-plasma-lasers-and-the-pentagons… the voice of God bit makes me think of those Tesla coils playing the Tetris theme. I might have been wrong about it being an effective counter weapon but I’m sure I read it was planned to counter drone swarms so maybe they’ve been able to up the heat or sustainability of it.