What if a Man Portable Laser Rifle

Sailor.X

Sailor.X

Cold War Veteran
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What if DARPA created and perfected a Man Portable Laser Rifle. Let's say the weapon weighs 5lbs is the same size of a M-14. Has a 20 shot capacity with Energy Clips. Has an effective range of a mile and a half. And can defeat all known types of body armor in military use today. Let's also say in normal use it is cheaper than current Military Rifles in the US arsenal and is basically maintenance free. Which branches of the military would adopt it first and would a civilian version be made of such a rifle.
 
Sailor.X said:
What if DARPA created and perfected a Man Portable Laser Rifle. Let's say the weapon weighs 5lbs is the same size of a M-14. Has a 20 shot capacity with Energy Clips. Has an effective range of a mile and a half. And can defeat all known types of body armor in military use today. Let's also say in normal use it is cheaper than current Military Rifles in the US arsenal and is basically maintenance free. Which branches of the military would adopt it first and would a civilian version be made of such a rifle.
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If it does better then 5.56 Army may jump first.

If it has been fully tested and everything is perfect they would take it.
 
Zachowon said:
If it does better then 5.56 Army may jump first.

If it has been fully tested and everything is perfect they would take it.
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I can see the Navy taking it for the topside Ship Security Watch. Such weapons would making taking out Fast Attack boat combatants way more easy with a rifle.
 
It seems to me this isn't really as useful as what can be made from it.

As an infantry weapon it's marginally better than existing rifles, particularly the "maintenance free" and "cheaper" parts. So it's desirable but won't rewrite warfare any. Expect enemies to invest very heavily in smoke since, now, that ceases to be just concealment and actively becomes protection against laser weapons.

Make a version to use as point defense though, and you're going to change things rapidly. Particularly if it's energy clip can be fed directly from a nuclear reactor, you have a point defense system that, given it's light speed hitting power, it could make the missile obsolete. Make a much bigger, longer ranged version and you could make most aircraft into deathtraps. You may not even need rapid fire for laser point defense due to how accurate it will be given no effective lag and it will ignore wind conditions. I'd expect it to fire rapidly anyway though. Aircraft design theory is going to have to change away from current trends to something that can handle the new laser environment.

I'd expect Israel to work mightily at getting their hands on this tech in order to pair it with Iron Dome and make a superior defense system against incoming mortars and missiles.
 
Sailor.X said:
would a civilian version be made of such a rifle.
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Yes and no.

It would not be legal for a civilian to possess one, not at first. Governments and militaries desire to have a monopoly on force. Naturally, being developed by a government agency, DARPA, it'd be difficult for civilians to acquire one, and laws would be passed banning possession of one. Even if it was invented by a private company, laws would still be passed.

BUT! If the laser rifle was easy to reproduce by civilians in their garages (like AK47s), then it won't matter if it's legal or not. Civilians will make them in their garages, a black market trade will develop and the laser rifles will become easily acquirable by your average joe as long as they put in the effort to seek it out and pony up a few hundred bucks, and at that point it'd be preferable to formally legalize the weapons so that they can be registered, rather than having a bunch of untraceable, unregistered weapons floating around.


The real question would be the impact of the laser rifle on warfare. I'd imagine that a flying drone platform would be developed to carry a laser rifle on a turret, and snipe targets from afar, like the hellicarriers from the second Captain America movie. The drones would be deadlier than ever, since they wouldn't become useless after expending their handful of missile payloads, and can instead carry hundreds, possibly thousands of laser clips before having to return back to reload. Ofcourse, all it'd take would be for one guy with a laser rifle on the ground to shoot down the drone. In fact, drones might become useless/extremely risky to use, because people would develop ground turrets using radar and thermal camera to look for drones and shoot them down first.
 
I mean.
If one has the money they can buy what ever they want in the US. Barring a nuke.
 
No, just the chiefs, keep the stakes real for them. Which is not if they just keep using the roided up musclebeasts for the meatshield.
 
PsihoKekec said:
No, just the chiefs, keep the stakes real for them. Which is not if they just keep using the roided up musclebeasts for the meatshield.
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I mean..you have a point. Thiugh the Army chief of staff is pretty damn good. I think it would be him and the marine chief of staff
 
Depends on several factors: output, if its a pulse laser, wavelength (avoid IR at all costs, it's complete and utter shit), battery weight, rifle weight, total weight, and above all else efficiency (i.e. how much heat the weapon generates for zapping things). If, say, the laser is even 50% efficient (like most GURPS lasers), it would be rather capable, if it is, say 65% efficient, oh boy the real fun begins. Even with a 20kJ (aka about as powerful as the most powerful 0.50BMG round that is publically known) pulse laser, you'll be having chunky salsa going on. The batteries themselves would lead to the mass deployment of armored exoskeletons, just so the infantry won't die instantly when fighting against others who would eventually get this sort of technology.

Then add the fact that you can make LAMS a thing, and you'll need Battletech/Macross levels of missile spam to get through...
 
Zachowon said:
I mean..you have a point. Thiugh the Army chief of staff is pretty damn good. I think it would be him and the marine chief of staff
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Not so fast citizen. Every single one of the combatants are all geezers. So don't expect the type of fights you military people do. Expect a lot of standing and staring for 20 to 30 minutes straight. :D
 
Sailor.X said:
What if DARPA created and perfected a Man Portable Laser Rifle. Let's say the weapon weighs 5lbs is the same size of a M-14. Has a 20 shot capacity with Energy Clips. Has an effective range of a mile and a half. And can defeat all known types of body armor in military use today. Let's also say in normal use it is cheaper than current Military Rifles in the US arsenal and is basically maintenance free. Which branches of the military would adopt it first and would a civilian version be made of such a rifle.
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Penetrate armor out to a mile and a half? Blind everyone within ten miles every time it's turned on.
 
Scottty said:
There's a basic problem with kill-you-in-a-zap laser weapons: using them in on Earth (ie: in the atmosphere) will cause an explosion from the superheated air, the moment the laser is fired.
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Not really from what I can understand. Remember you only need kilojoules to kill a person, you'll need megajoules to harm tanks, and from what I remember that's where you'll start seeing the 'explosion of superheated air' effect.
 
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