Gentlemen, we have a Deathray.

[KrazyHorse]

Beam weapons are weapons with directionality. EMPs lack this feature. They are not beams. They are most particularly not "electromagnetic beams". Lasers ARE electromagnetic beams. So are other directional EM weapons like the active denial system (which is not a laser because it is non-coherent, AFAIK).

Do you really want to continue on this tack or will you perhaps just learn your lesson and avoid opening yourself to this form of ridicule when I'm actively posting? I understand that most people don't call bull**** because most people are bull****ters themselves. I am not. When I claim to know something it's generally because I know it. When I smell somebody claiming knowledge they DON'T have I will come down on them like a ton of ****ing bricks.

[Blaupanzer]

I have seen a demonstration of this device. The briefer introduced it with the claim related to the pulse. The electronics in the target were fried. Impact in the water allowed examination of some of the parts. The Navy seems quite interested due the very short range of the Phalanx (a "pellet" shooter, i.e., a gun, rather than a beam weapon.) Are you contending that these people (and my team of evaluation technicians) are all lying, bull****ting, wasting our time? It sure sounds like you are.

[Kuciwalker]

The other way to say this is that ionization causes conductivity to rise. What is conductivity? It's the sigma in Ohm's law that says J = sigma * E

But there's no applied E field (after the initial compton scattering, of course). These electrons flow because they have so hellacious initial velocity and simply haven't had the good sense to slow down enough to be recaptured yet. Conductivity is a moot concept when your conduction electrons have an average energy much higher than the ionization energy.

Thanks; I had actually wondered why the current was generated (I hand-waved it in the explanation). I thought during the Compton scattering they typically absorbed their ionization energy.

[Kuciwalker]

If it uses a radio antenna it's not the EMP effect.

[KrazyHorse]

I have seen a demonstration of this device. The briefer introduced it with the claim related to the pulse. The electronics in the target were fried. Impact in the water allowed examination of some of the parts. The Navy seems quite interested due the very short range of the Phalanx (a "pellet" shooter, i.e., a gun, rather than a beam weapon.) Are you contending that these people (and my team of evaluation technicians) are all lying, bull****ting, wasting our time? It sure sounds like you are.

No, it simply means that you don't understand the difference between a generic name and a specific name as well as not understanding what an EMP is.

[KrazyHorse]

By the way, blau, if you're going to toss around terms like "directed energy beam weapon" you should at least be aware of the fact that it's a generic term for a BUNCH of different weapons, of which this laser is one. It's like watching somebody shoot an M-16 and telling me that there's this fantastic new weapon called a "gun". Thanks, but that doesn't tell me very much.

What you saw demonstrated (if such a thing exists and if you did actually saw it demonstrated) is not an EMP weapon as usually understood. It IS an electromagnetic beam weapon, AS IS the laser referenced in the OP. My guess is that you're claiming to have seen some sort of high frequency radio/microwave transmitter with sufficient power output to disrupt electronics. Such a thing is of course physically achievable. Unfortunately you evidently have virtually no idea how it works.

[KrazyHorse]

The name of the actual project you seem to be referring to is "CHAMP" (Counter-Electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project).

Again, this IS an electromagnetic beam weapon. So is a regular old laser. Neither of them is an EMP device.

[Blaupanzer]

Pursuing this is really not worth it for me as we are on the edge of classified. However, I understand EMP very well, as an effect and as a weapons concept, i.e., gamma rays. You unquestionably have physics concept and math advantages due to your education. I strongly suspect you are not old enough to have attended any live bomb tests unless you've been in south Asia lately. Once upon a time, underground tests were used where the so-called secondary effects were well studied. (Primary effects are blast, heat, and irradiation -- making things radioactive, as these are military planning perameters.) Gamma generation without the atom crunching has been pursued for some years with ostensibly demonstrable results recently. I'll sign off as being a target for childish "I know everything" outbursts is not useful, and you are actually nicer than this in person.

[snoopy369]

I suppose you could call both an "EMP" ("ElectroMagnetic Pulse") device, couldn't you? Both shoot out a pulse of E/M radiation?

Not "EMP" as is typically used by the layperson, of course, but still...

[KrazyHorse]

You obviously don't understand crap about this, blau. I understand how these things work and am smart enough to know what electromagnetic beams are and aren't, as well as to look up terminology like "directed energy beam weapon" in order to satisfy myself that you're throwing together a bunch of terminology which you don't know the definitions of to describe phenomena which you don't know the physical basis of.

There's a reason that 3 newly minted PhDs from my department (out of ~20 US citizen graduates) are doing consulting work for the US military RIGHT NOW on exactly these types of weapons.

[KrazyHorse]

I suppose you could call both an "EMP" ("ElectroMagnetic Pulse") device, couldn't you? Both shoot out a pulse of E/M radiation?

Not "EMP" as is typically used by the layperson, of course, but still...

EMP describes a specific phenomenon whereby high energy free electrons from compton scattering emit cyclotron radiation in an external field. That is NOT how this CHAMP thingie works.

[Blaupanzer]

Not CHAMP. Different sponsor.

[Blaupanzer]

I received some rather stern advice about the potential nature of this discussion, then some assistance. The following is a discussion from Wikipedia that needs to be prefaced. The items under discussion here are very short-range. Subsequent research may have extended this range and demonstrated this. The actual article is longer. I tried to trim it to avoid boredom.

"Non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NNEMP) is an electromagnetic pulse generated without use of nuclear weapons. There are a number of devices that can achieve this objective, ranging from a large low-inductance capacitor bank discharged into a single-loop antenna or a microwave generator to an explosively pumped flux compression generator. To achieve the frequency characteristics of the pulse needed for optimal coupling into the target, wave-shaping circuits and/or microwave generators are added between the pulse source and the antenna. A vacuum tube particularly suitable for microwave conversion of high energy pulses is the vircator.

"Information about the EMP simulators used by the United States during the latter part of the Cold War are now in papers under the care of the SUMMA Foundation, which is now hosted at the University of New Mexico. The SUMMA Foundation web site includes documentation about the huge wooden Trestle simulator in New Mexico, which was the world's largest EMP simulator; and which used a specialized version of a Marx generator.

"Many large EMP simulators were also built in the Soviet Union, as well as in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy."

Again, all this is in Wikipedia. Not entered there by me, I assure you. KH can do the math if he wishes, I could not begin to do so.

[Ramo]

Now, the wavelength of radiation at this frequency is in the tens of meters, so (because the efficiency of an antenna is related to its length in terms of the wavelength...can't remember if the most efficient antenna is lambda/2 or lambda/4....goddamn Jackson EM is fuzzy now) I would think that the major damage done would be to devices plugged in to the power grid?

I'm pretty sure that it's half wavelength. Though classical antenna theory breaks down at higher energies, IIRC (to deal with plasma ****). So i.e. optical scaling would be pretty different.

[Impaler[WrG]]

I recall reading some thoughts about weaponing laser systems to be small enough to install into a turret in the belly of a Jet-Fighter aircraft in place of bomb and missile loads. A power-output shaft from the Engine would spin a generator providing on-demand electric power for the laser. One of the versions of the Joint Strike Fighter has a vertical fan used in VTOL thats powered by just such a shaft system and it's though that it could be replaced with such a laser system if sufficiently miniaturized. If such a system were developed it would be exceedingly versatile as the laser could hit ground targets with either a low-power rapid fire wide-area affect analogous to a cluster bomb, or use a full power effect analogous to laser guided bombs or Air-to-Air missile that could take out ground vehicles, other aircraft and incoming missile. The ability to replace almost every type of bomb load, Air-to-Air missile and act as a defensive system would alow a single such laser fighter to fulfill numerous roles.