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GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

It's already been overturned.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

williatw wrote: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/01/ ... test=faces
This is a year old, haven't heard anything lately. Anyone else have? Even greater potential than the railgun for anti-missile defense for our ships.
This is one of the reasons the new Ford class carriers have 3X the electrical power generation as the Nimitz class they replace.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

williatw
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Post by williatw »

GIThruster wrote:
williatw wrote: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/01/ ... test=faces
This is a year old, haven't heard anything lately. Anyone else have? Even greater potential than the railgun for anti-missile defense for our ships.
This is one of the reasons the new Ford class carriers have 3X the electrical power generation as the Nimitz class they replace.
A Free electron laser is tunable...would it be possible I wonder to tune it to a frequency that was very transparent to water, but readily absorbed by the metal of say a torpeodo? I have never heard of a anti-torpedo laser, but a ship's two greatest threats are missiles & torpedoes. Even if its range was limited, big difference between stopping/exploding a torpedo 100 meters from your ship and it hitting your ship.

MSimon
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Post by MSimon »

46 feet 8 and 5/8 inches above waterline
Would that be the "dry" waterline or fully loaded?
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

ladajo
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Post by ladajo »

It is based on the design loaded waterline. Actual wartime height would have varied a little with fuel and stores loads.

That number in particular comes from the design drawings. The Radar Director sat on top of the optical unit.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

Diogenes
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Post by Diogenes »

williatw wrote:
GIThruster wrote:
williatw wrote: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/01/ ... test=faces
This is a year old, haven't heard anything lately. Anyone else have? Even greater potential than the railgun for anti-missile defense for our ships.
This is one of the reasons the new Ford class carriers have 3X the electrical power generation as the Nimitz class they replace.
A Free electron laser is tunable...would it be possible I wonder to tune it to a frequency that was very transparent to water, but readily absorbed by the metal of say a torpeodo? I have never heard of a anti-torpedo laser, but a ship's two greatest threats are missiles & torpedoes. Even if its range was limited, big difference between stopping/exploding a torpedo 100 meters from your ship and it hitting your ship.
One of the best Ideas i've seen for torpedo protection is to use a series of sonic transducers on the side of a ship to produce a stationary node in the path of an oncoming torpedo. When it hits it, it explodes as if it had hit something solid. (Which effectively, it had.)

I forget where I put that article.

(Think of it as a phased array radar, but with sound wave induced hydraulic compression at the focus of the wave front.)
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

I think you mean "anti-node" rather than "node".

Trouble is, you can't set up a standing wave with an open, or 1/4 wave resonator. The most you could do is create a compression wave as a function of the compressor and allow that wave to propagate out and strike an incoming torpedo. You might do that more than once and create positive reinforcement at a specific point, but that would not necessarily be any more powerful a compression than if you had a single transducer at higher power.

The question seems to me is, can you transduce a compression wave of sufficient magnitude to explode a torpedo. My first guess would be not, but I wouldn't be surprised to find I'm wrong.

Better though, is probably to have a smaller, faster torpedo intercept and detonate, and have that compression wave set off the incoming torpedo. The compression from an explosive is far higher than from a sonar transducer, and if you set it off away from the boat, you have far more magnitude where you want it--at the incoming torpedo.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

williatw
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Post by williatw »

GIThruster wrote:I think you mean "anti-node" rather than "node".

Trouble is, you can't set up a standing wave with an open, or 1/4 wave resonator. The most you could do is create a compression wave as a function of the compressor and allow that wave to propagate out and strike an incoming torpedo. You might do that more than once and create positive reinforcement at a specific point, but that would not necessarily be any more powerful a compression than if you had a single transducer at higher power.

The question seems to me is, can you transduce a compression wave of sufficient magnitude to explode a torpedo. My first guess would be not, but I wouldn't be surprised to find I'm wrong.

Better though, is probably to have a smaller, faster torpedo intercept and detonate, and have that compression wave set off the incoming torpedo. The compression from an explosive is far higher than from a sonar transducer, and if you set it off away from the boat, you have far more magnitude where you want it--at the incoming torpedo.
What about my idea? I know that water is transparent in the visible range of spectrum. Of course sea water is not pure water obviously, so that would greatly retard the range of a hypothetical visible wavelength FEL laser. But still, even if it was just few 100 meters surely you could stop a torpedo with that. I understand the Navy uses laser light in the blue-green part of the spectrum to communicate with submerged subs. A high power laser firing in short pulses would be what I would picture. Could be on a surface ship or on a sub.

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

williatw wrote: What about my idea? I know that water is transparent in the visible range of spectrum.
I didn't respond because I have no idea. I think you'd need an authentic laser specialist to know if what you're saying is possible, and if you found such a person, the answer would likely be classified. If you want to go hunting for an answer though, try the peeps at Kirtland AFB and Sandia National Labs. They're the real experts.

Don't expect a warm welcome though. I was once flying into Albuquerque with a lovely USAF officer in the seat next to me. I started making jokes about the Boeing that had been cut in half to put a laser in place, and she got all chocked up and nervous, as if I were treading on classified information by looking out the window at what everyone could easily see.

My guess is without clearance, you won't get a decent answer to your question.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

ladajo
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Post by ladajo »

Anti-torpedo torpedoes are being explored. It is an idea that has been around a couple of years now.

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87/us ... edoes.html

http://www.dtic.mil/descriptivesum/Y201 ... B_2012.pdf

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87/us ... rpedo.html

http://www.ultra-os.com/torpedo.php


Under-water lasers are also being explored, as I recall blue, green and UV variants work well. That idea has also been a round for a few years. As I understand though, high power is not so useful due to the extreme variance in sea-water as a medium. However, for sensing and communications, it is much more practical. Underwater Lasers are also currently being researched as promising underwater acoustic sources.

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA417137

http://www.nrl.navy.mil/content_images/ ... _Jones.pdf

https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity ... e&_cview=1

http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-rele ... ropagation

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA362880

And last but not least, here is an 'India' assessment on the usefulness of lasers. It also serves as a good generic primer for lasers in general. Check out page 23, Section 4.2, especically the last sentance beofer the last paragraph on page 24, and the last paragraph itself in the section.

http://drdo.gov.in/drdo/data/Laser%20an ... ations.pdf
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

hanelyp
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Post by hanelyp »

An array of transducers across a ship's hull below the waterline could be driven in correct phase relationship to produce a converging wavefront, giving sound at a selected point much more intense than at the transducer. In receive mode the same array could make a massively impressive sonar.

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

What you're talking about would likely interfere with the 5 kinds of sonar the Virginia class already carries, but there has been some discussion I've seen once before that there is an "unexplained" system on the Virginia that uses a phased array. Apparently most of the boat has sonar attached.

The Virginia is an amazing piece of technology. I know people liked the bigger SeaWolf but fact is the Virginia is much more capable in a host of ways, especially including Littoral capabilities and it costs 2/3 as much, which is the big deal when you want to have lots of them.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

ladajo
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Post by ladajo »

Unfortunately, we are not going to have lots of them. The big push right now is for UUAVs. The big idea is to have a manned mother ship control a squadron (per se) of them. Let them go and do the silly stuff we used to do with manned hulls (at great risk), while we stay back and collect or count, as the mission requires. Net Centric just won't die.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

GIThruster
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Post by GIThruster »

I'd think though, that until we have something like gravity wave radio, we'll have to have people on ships in close proximity. Communications is a serious problem for unmanned vehicles and subs can't always communicate, so they need people aboard.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

ladajo
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Post by ladajo »

See my post above.

The underwater comms thing is pretty much licked. There is the option for direct narrow acoustic beam laser driven, orrrrr.... direct blue or green laser, as long as the distance is not so crazy.

They are already doing tens of meters for direct visible, not so hard now to step it out to hundreds. Thousands may be a bridge to far, they may have to go with acoustic for that. But the fidelity that the laser driven acoustic brings is fantastic.

Of course, there is also the satellite laser option, but that means periodic 'shallows' to get the link. Which can be fine if the UUAV is smart enough to drive around between 'coachings', which they pretty much are now.
The development of atomic power, though it could confer unimaginable blessings on mankind, is something that is dreaded by the owners of coal mines and oil wells. (Hazlitt)
What I want to do is to look up C. . . . I call him the Forgotten Man. (Sumner)

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