[Lex Computer & Tech Group/LCTG] ufo

Tue Feb 14 13:07:05 PST 2023

All,

The good folks at the Missile Defense Agency will have to stand in for
Acme-Laser
from a relatively recent article
Return Of The ABL? Missile Defense Agency Works On Laser Drone
By   SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.
on August 17, 2015 at 4:00 AM
https://breakingdefense.com/2015/08/return-of-the-abl-missile-defense-agency-works-on-laser-drone/

HUNTSVILLE, ALA.: Three years after the Missile Defense Agency mothballed
its massive Airborne Laser, MDA is planning to reboot the concept for a new
era.

The old ABL was Boeing 747 with a human crew and tanks of toxic chemicals
> to generate power. The new idea a high-altitude, long-endurance drone armed
> with a more compact electrically powered laser...
> “The problem with boost phase is…you’ve got to get close enough,” Frank
> Kendall, the Pentagon’s procurement chief, told reporters at the Space &
> Missile Defense conference here...” But if you’re close enough to shoot at
> a rocket right after it launches from enemy territory, you’re probably
> close enough for the enemy to shoot you...The Missile Defense Agency will
> take an “incremental, step-wise, knowledge-based” approach this time,
> pledged the MDA director, Vice Adm. James Syring, in remarks to the
> Huntsville conference. “It is a very different approach than we did in the
> past of just leaping to something and investing everything we had.”... MDA
> will conduct experiments and review alternatives until 2018-2019, when
> Syring said it will pick “which technologies we think have the most
> promise.” Then a “low-power laser demonstrator” will fly circa 2021. When
> the full-power system will enter service is an open question, not answered
> in Syring’s brief... In a successful 2010 test, ABL shot down a ballistic
> missile “tens of kilometers” away, Syring said, using about a megawatt of
> power. For the illustrative concept of operations the MDA director briefed
> at the conference — which he emphasized was not the only option — “we need
> to be hundreds of kilometers [from the target] in a platform that can go
> much higher and stay up for much longer.”...The manned Airborne Laser maxed
> out at an altitude of about 40,000 feet, where clouds and turbulence made
> it harder to keep the beam on the target. “65,000 feet is where we think we
> need to be,” said Syring, where the air is so thin that a laser beam can
> reach much farther...What matters is not just maximum power, but how much
> weight it takes to generate (power density), especially when you’re trying
> to fit the laser on an aircraft. The Airborne Laser took 55 kilograms
> (about 120 pounds) to generate a kilowatt of laser power, Syring said,
> which is why a megawatt (1,000 kW) took a 747. Electric lasers currently in
> the lab take 35-40 kilograms per kilowatt, and the MDA research program
> plans to drive that down by a factor of ten, to 3-5 kg/kW. MDA’s ultimate
> goal is 2 kg/kW, which would make a one-megawatt weight 5,000 pounds,
> something a drone could carry... “If it had been easy we would done it by
> now,” Syring said. But given the rapid progress in laser technology, he
> went on, “it’s not a huge reach.”... Unlike a manned aircraft whose crew
> must land and rest, a drone can stay aloft for 24 hours or more. Unlike a
> chemically powered laser, or conventional missiles and guns for that
> matter, an electric laser can keep firing as long as the aircraft’s
> generators are running. A mid-air refueling both keeps the drone flying and
> “reloads” its ability to generate power for the laser. The combination of
> unmanned endurance and unlimited shots means a single drone could stay on
> station for days, instead of needing multiple manned aircraft to come and
> go in rotation...What’s more, an electrical laser can dial its power up and
> down for different targets at different ranges...

“Thinking of this as a ballistic missile killer may be too narrow,”
> Gunzinger [ laser expert and advocate at the Center for Strategic and
> Budgetary Assessments ] said. If MDA can actually solve the boost-phase
> intercept problem, hard as that is, it will have built a laser-armed
> aircraft that’s lethally adaptable to other missions as well.

So perhaps there is something in the works at MDA which will eventually be
able to shoot down balloons at 20 to 30 km

Ted

On Tue, Feb 14, 2023 at 2:28 PM Drew King <dking65 at kingconsulting.us> wrote:

> I'm thinking the government has no contacts at Acme laser cannon Corp.
> Where oh where is Wile E. Coyote?
>
>
> On 2/14/2023 2:19 PM, Steve Isenberg wrote:
>
> Mike,
> I'm thinking that the balloon could have been punctured (by laser or
> cannon), this could have been done around when it was first discovered.
> They could have analyzed the drifting and punctured the balloon when its
> descent would have had the least likelihood of causing damage when it met
> the ground.
> So this would be long before it passed over to the Atlantic; and in fact
> helicopters could have monitored its descent and pinpointed it once it hit
> ground.
> -steve
>
> On Tue, Feb 14, 2023 at 1:35 PM Michael Alexander <mna.ma at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Steve,
>>
>> What you may be missing (although its importance may be debatable) is
>> that if somehow one ‘pricked’ the balloon, it would continue to drift
>> ‘horizontally’ for some distance.  It would land farther from shore, in
>> deeper water, and be harder to retrieve.
>>
>>     — Mike Alexander
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, February 14, 2023, 1:00 PM, Ted Kochanski <tedpkphd at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Balloon seems to be white -- so probably not that easy to "poke a hole"
>> with a laser -- you need to get a fair amount of power onto the balloon
>> MW/sq m and hold it there for enough time to evaporate the plastic
>> We have some R&D tech that could do that at the right kind of range --
>> but it might not be in the right place to be used because of the curvature
>> of the earth
>>
>> Cannon fire from a fighter would seem to be the best approach
>>
>> Ted
>>
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
>> From: *Steve Isenberg* <smisenberg at gmail.com>
>> Date: Tue, Feb 14, 2023 at 12:40 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Lex Computer & Tech Group/LCTG] ufo
>> To: Robert Primak <bobprimak at yahoo.com>
>> Cc: Lex Computer Group <lctg at lists.toku.us>
>>
>>
>> So they shot down the balloon with a missile, it totally deflated, and
>> fell into the water where they have to search to find it, and the impact
>> with the water may have damaged things.
>>
>> Did anyone consider: Poke a hole in the balloon (using a laser perhaps)
>> that would cause it to descend rather than fall rapidly to the ground.
>>
>> (Or am I missing something?)
>> -steve
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 14, 2023 at 11:46 AM Robert Primak <bobprimak at yahoo.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Current terms: UAP = Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon. IAP = Identified
>> Aerial Phenomenon.
>>
>> Current status of balloons = deflated. (Formerly known as "shot down".)
>>
>> -- Bob Primak
>>
>> On Tuesday, February 14, 2023 at 10:54:27 AM EST, <jjrudy1 at comcast.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> John Rudy
>>
>>
>>
>> 781-861-0402
>>
>> 781-718-8334  cell
>>
>> 13 Hawthorne Lane
>>
>> Bedford MA
>>
>> jjrudy1 at comcast.net
>>
>>
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> --
> Drew King
>
>
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