Laser weapons
 

Another write up about more high tech weaponry.

Again please feel free to spot my errors.

oooops
 

Now with the attachment

James,

Fantastic, as usual. Great tactical and doctrinal overview.

Any stats? Also, you can edit your posts if you need to, like to add the attachment.

Tony

Actually I have never stated the weapons as I don't intend to have them appear in my campaign, the article came about after a discussion re the examples that occurred in the supplements. We felt that there needed to be more background on them for them to fit into the campaign.

Now with stats
 

Expanded slightly with statistics. Done as a link as again I'm having difficulty uploading.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15402829/las...2028-04-11.pdf

James, in a post I wrote in the thread GM RESOURCES - links to make GMing easier and better I included an attachment containing a submission by Stavatti Corporation in response to the Light Fighter Lethality After Next-Statement of Objectives. The submission describes the (as of 1999) theoretical TIS-1 (Tactical Infantry System-1) Gasdynamic Laser Weapon System, basically a man portable laser rifle.

The document makes for interesting reading. It seems that Stavatti Corp was confident it could source or fabricate all the required components except for the energy source, a Polonium-210 power cell.

I heard an analyst a few years back (sorry, can't remember who or where) that laser weapons may be passed up in favor of gauss-type weapons and ETC, even in the personal weapon role, because developers are getting further faster with those weapons than with lasers in some weapons applications. Just some rumor I heard.

Here's some links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coilgun
http://www.coilgun.info/theorymath/electroguns.htm

Thanks for that, interesting reading. I would guess that this (if it worked) is far more powerful than the weapon I have written up. I may well pinch some of the details and probably the illustration. A few points come from it that I would welcome comments on:

* there appears to be an issue with recoil. As stated in the Infantry Weapons Guide there is none, thoughts on if the weapon should have a value and options to reduce it if there is.

* how would the military react to the half life of ammo of 60 days? My guess is that this is enough to scupper the project from the start.

* I like the idea of using the excess energy to power accessories BUT this will mean either adapters or new systems to take advantage of it.

* Is the rate of fire too high?

* My personal guess is that this wonder weapon will hit snags in development and be less effective than the manufacturer expects (surprise, surprise).

At one point in time I had a copy of the Scout Platoon FM that touched on doctrine for deployment of the AN/VLQ-7 Stingray system within the Bradley scout platoon (think basis of issue was supposed to be one vehicle per section, so three per platoon). I was stoked at the prospects of getting offensive laser weapons, until someone in the media/humane war industrial complex realized that anti-optical lasers would also cook eyeballs right nicely and the Stingray vanished from all subsequent editions of that FM and military development in general.

Probably just as well. While on the one hand, if I care enough to kill someone, I could probably settle for blinding them as well, I don't know that I'd want to inhabit a battlefield where both sides fielded that kind of stuff. Hell, I've probably got some as yet undiagnosed occular damage from being around IZLIDs and looking up at the sky too often when AC-130s were circling overhead and blasting the area with their IR spotlights.

A tremendous amount of effort clearly went into this. Without addressing any of the technical, political, or other aspects I want to commend you for completing the grunt work necessary to add this piece to the community. I know what a labor of love these types of projects can be. Thanks for doing it.

Webstral

What sort of date were these due to be introduced?

I've done no more than anyone else who's put something on here. I just wish I had more time to write these. One day I will finish the history of the war (currently at 97 pages...)

The link provided says two experimental versions were deployed to Saudi for the 1991 war, but don't know if they were actually used at all. I think the FM I had that mentioned it was the 1993 edition, might have been 1995. Pretty cool system -- scanned in low power mode until it got a flash from some sort of optic, and then jumped the power to fry the system (and for magnified optics the eyes peering into them). No idea if it would overload on false positives in an urban environment with surviving glass panes or on a low intensity battlefield where you have civilian auto traffic and such coming and going.

Damn media...lol Well that is one of those thing with the Internet and publishing most of those field manuals on the net. It is getting to point where we will see more and more of the more technical stuff being left unpublished, for security reasons...

Thanks for that link, HorseSoldier. I'll have to modify the entry on my site accordingly.

Updated version
 

Another revisited article - I have expanded the Soviet laser programmes in particular after some research on real life vehicles. I am still trying to come up with workable rules for the blinding effects and these will hopefully follow.

As ever nitpicks and comments welcome.

James, the hat is most definitely and without a doubt off for you. Marvelous piece of work!

Excellent James, as always.

You've worked like a Trojan; thanks very much.

Man, do you sleep?

I've got to hunt down and print out everyone of your articles. Excellent!

Chris

Out of curiosity - and I apologize if I missed it, I've only skimmed it thus far - why the propensity to mount a lot of the vehicle lasers in a cherry-picker configuration? Very interesting.

To maximise the use of cover I'd imagine. Since the two laser vehicles in the 2.x books can only fire every now and then, they're not exactly able to defend themselves very well if they're spotted.

Besides, cherry pickers look cool with lasers on the ends. :p

Simple answer - because they can. It just provides more versatility in their use, and the weapon is not constrained by bulk, length or ammo feed. The targeting/CCTV system is co-located with the weapon and instead of an ammo feed system all you need is electrical cabling.

Actually the answer is really simple - the two in the books were... With a really small weapon pod they are really small target. Seems not to have been used by real life vehicles though.

James - an excellent work and a very good read.

Updated with new weapons (some from Dark Conspiracy) and new blinding rules.

Forgot to add Proton packs; aka man-portable particle accelerator system.

Interesting bit of info in the news:


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23518592