PRC/PLAN Laser and Rail Gun Development Thread

Blitzo

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These actually might be the testing equipment on the Liaoning and 002. We saw a bunch of lasers on green trucks during their sea trials.

Looking back at the test equipment on Liaoning and 002 I think those were different in configuration to what we see here.

More importantly, looking at the specific "laser turret" itself in this case, it seems rather large and well equipped to be merely for test/telemetry. Specifically, the turret itself is equipped with the main laser itself as well as two additional sensors -- which mimics the configuration on other recent contemporary laser platforms like AN/SEQ-3 -- one is likely to be an RF sensor and one is likely to be an EO sensor.


I'm tempted to say that this picture could show a laser weapon.



k4hdwQ0.jpg
 

Blitzo

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this picture from the front is a particular reason why I think it's probably a weaponized laser of some type.

The US LaWS aka AN/SEQ-3 has a similar configuration for its main beam director, as it uses six smaller 5kw lasers giving the overall system a combined 30kw output. (The attached image describes 100kw, however that's for a projected development; the actual weapon trialled by the USN is a 30kw weapon
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U29wEb2.png



That picture clearly shows a similar divide into thirds within the beam director, which suggests to me it uses multiple smaller lasers to provide an overall beam. The question is how powerful is each of the individual beams of the Chinese laser? I don't have an answer, however over the last few years we've seen some Chinese defence companies come out with 30kw lasers small enough to be mounted on medium trucks, such as LW-30 and Silent Hunter. This corresponds with advancements around the world where lasers are progressively getting smaller while improving in power. 30kw and even 60kw lasers mounted on medium sized trucks is now within the grasp of contemporary technology.

So the overall output of the depicted laser would depend on when it was developed; if it was developed somewhat more recently, then each of the lasers it has is likely to be more powerful and contribute to a more powerful overall beam. If it was developed earlier, then it would likely be less powerful.



LW-30
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RSrQ5KE.jpg



Silent Hunter
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Rachmaninov

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Translated by google... go to the link directly for pics...

After more than a year of work and dock tests at the Wuchang Shipyard, the old landing ship 936 Haiyangshan, transformed into a floating test rig for the Chinese Navy's new Railgun, descended from the Blue River for to reach the coasts by the end of 2018. Since then, seafarers between Bohai Bay in the north and Shanghai in the south cross its path quite regularly, to the point that several amateur videos circulated on Chinese social networks showing these meetings rather unexpected.

If the details of his test program are not made public - the opposite would be - we know nevertheless that the building and its valuable payload have prepared not only for navigation tests but especially for seafire. several weapons testing centers in Bohai Bay, including one in the Liaodong Peninsula.

See the image on Twitter And according to some American sources, the Chinese Naval Railgun would have already made its first shots in early 2019. In its article published on January 30 this year, the American television channel CNBC, citing sources with a direct access to US intelligence reports, indicates that China has tested its new electromagnetic gun earlier in the month.

Still according to the same CNBC sources, the Chinese Railgun is capable of hitting a target over a distance of 200 km (124 miles) at a speed of 2,575 m / s (1.6 mile / s). It is not clear, however, how this fairly accurate data could be retrieved by US intelligence, is it a mere assumption based on their own systems under development, or measurement methods have been deployed?

The satellite images dated February 26, 2019 show that the 4,800-ton ship was then near Huludao, in a Chinese naval base.

Assuming that the elements revealed by the US sources are accurate, at least for the period when the first test was performed "in the month of January and before the 30", we can still try to find the place in which the Chinese Railgun made its first shots.

Using navigational alerts published by the Liaoning Marine Safety Administration, which manages all maritime affairs in Bohai Bay, a total of 8 military exercises, 3 of which are "real shots" Could be identified.

It is difficult to know, however, which of these officially announced exercises correspond to the shots of the Railgun in question. For a first shot at sea, it seems unlikely that the system will deploy all its power for maximum range. It is therefore possible that the system first performed short shots at varying powers, before extending the range and increasing the rate.

Of course, this is just a guess. The Chinese Navy could enforce a number of pre-defined procedures to run these tests, such as the GJB-592 to assess hit efficiency, the GJB-4739 on precision testing, the GJB-254 on qualifying tests. design ... etc.

It should be noted that the 3 "live fire" exercises as mentioned in the corresponding notifications all took place around Haimao Dao (海 猫 岛), an island located near Lüshunkou and which is a historical field of fire of the Chinese Navy. These exercises, from the 9th to the 12th, then the 17th to the 22nd and the 21st to the 24th of January, share exactly the same zone of forbiddance of square form, namely a perimeter of 43.9 km and an area of 120 km² around the island.

If the Chinese Railgun actually fired 200 km in range, which would correspond to the description of the US intelligence, then the test could have been held on January 14 since the maritime area closed for "military operation" that day is exactly a rectangle 220 km long and 25.5 km wide. But a shot from this distance still presents significant risks, whether from the sea to the mainland or from the continent to the sea (see the diagram below), not to mention the curvature of the Earth that makes this type of very long distance shots can not be measured.

At the level of the characteristics of this Railgun, the only exploitable elements in rejecting any presumption of the local media come from a letter of nomination of China Association for Science and Technology, which proposes the 45 scientists and researchers candidacy to the 12th Guanghua Engineering Science and Technology Award (光华 工程 科技 奖), a national award from the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

Among this list, which already has several well-known names, including one of the main designers of the IRBM and the Chinese AShBM DF-26, is the name of LI Xiang (李翔), a researcher in the Institute 713 of the Chinese naval group CSIC. According to the text, LI is named for his many contributions in the development of Chinese naval guns, including the new H / PJ-45 that now equips the Type 052D destroyers, but also for being the deputy chief designer a project for a "Naval Electro-Magnetic Cannon", in which he and his team "broke into key technologies in resistance to the thermal abrasion of the barrel and the loading of long-range shells", and carried out " continuous shooting tests with a muzzle velocity of 2500 m / s and a power of 32 MJ ".

"The development of the prototype for sea trials is over, the tests at sea will begin soon," said the document dated November 6, 2017, which unfortunately gives no details as to the mass of the projectile.

Apart from this letter of appointment, whose data appear consistent with the Chinese progress so far, a report by Central South University, specifically by its State Key Laboratory of High Performance Manufacturing Complex, also speaks of a new friction stir welding technology applied to the water-cooled rails of a Railgun, but its direct link with the gun currently under sea testing has not been proven yet.

To be continued.

Henri K.
 

kurutoga

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The FEL laser weapon should resemble a traditional cannon from the outside. It needs to have a longer "barrel". That would be the more meaningful laser weapon. Still 5-10 years before we see a prototype on ship. Solid state laser is still just not powerful enough.
 
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anzha

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Chinese media have reported that a prototype laser weapon is being tested by the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).

An article published on 5 April on the Sina news website contains several screengrabs taken from footage broadcast by China Central Television (CCTV) showing a trainable optical device mounted on a mobile chassis with a large main lens.

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half the article is behind a paywall.

However, I think this implies the PLAN isn't waiting for a FEL.
 

siegecrossbow

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half the article is behind a paywall.

However, I think this implies the PLAN isn't waiting for a FEL.

The thing that irritates me about Jane's is that you can't get access to their full articles even if you pay money. You have to be a "client". I have no idea what that entails.
 

fatfreddy

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The thing that irritates me about Jane's is that you can't get access to their full articles even if you pay money. You have to be a "client". I have no idea what that entails.
Client means that they would have engaged Jane's services particularly consulting, research or projects. These engagements would be big tickets and the subscription to their site would be a service they bundle in.
 

Hendrik_2000

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The promise of Laser gun sofar is stymied by the need for huge power for laser gun
Well the problem is power source and the inefficiency of converting low energy beam into high energy beam due to inefficiency of conversion.Therefore it need huge power source But help is on the way Chinese scientist claim they found crystal that will do the conversion efficiently increasing it by factor of 13 But sofar the crystal that they can grow is small It will be many years before they can grow it to the the size of a dime Here it is

Could these crystals be the next leap forward in China’s laser technology?
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Researchers say they have developed a substance that is 13 times better in tests than widely used alternative

Experiments could help solve a power source problem that has plagued commercial and military devices

Stephen Chen
Published: 3:29pm, 4 Sep, 2019

Scientists in southeast China say they have synthesised a crystal with the potential to significantly improve the performance of lasers used in consumer and military equipment.

Crystals of caesium bismuth germanate (CBGO) can turn low-energy beams into high-energy emissions with unparalleled efficiency, according to Professor Mao Jianggao, team leader at the Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Fuzhou.

The team looked at several candidate crystals in their experiments. Compared to widely used potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP) crystals, the CBGO crystal was 13 times more efficient at turning infrared lasers into more energised green beams.

“This is a record performance,” Mao said on Tuesday. “This is why we think the crystal may have potential.”

Their findings were published in the German weekly scientific peer review journal Angewandte Chemie, or Applied Chemistry, last month.

The researchers said CBGO crystals could be a way around a problem that has limited the performance of lasers – the huge amount of electricity needed to power them.


The demand on power is great because existing technology is not efficient at converting low-energy beams to high-energy ones – one reason that laser weapons are not yet as common as scientists predicted in the 1960s.

CBGO belongs to a family known as non-linear crystals, which cause abrupt changes to energy that passes through them. The scientists found that CBGO crystals could double the frequency of a laser beam.

As high-energy lasers can be created by merging two low-energy photons, or particles of light, a process known as frequency doubling, CBGO crystals are an ideal medium, and the higher frequency of the laser, the more energy it carries.

Many military and civilian applications required high-energy beams, they said. These included directed energy weapons designed to destroy drones or missiles, or China’s prototype Guanlan anti-submarine warfare satellite, which will use a green laser to penetrate water to a depth of 500 metres (1,640 feet) to detect a target.

Mao said his team’s research was at an early stage and that years of testing would be needed before the CBGO crystals found their way to market.

The CBGO crystal grown in the Fuzhou laboratory was the size of a grain of sand, he said. For industrial use, crystals would need to be at least the size of a dice.

Growing them was a very slow and challenging job, and there was no certainty that CBGO crystals could be grown on an industrial scale, Mao said.

China is a world leader in crystal research, and some of those most commonly used in laser devices were developed by Chinese scientists thanks to heavy investment from central government.


Professor Li Qiang, deputy director with the Institute of Laser Engineering at Beijing University of Technology, said the discovery of CBGO was encouraging, but its success should be evaluated not only on its efficiency, but also on attributes such as mechanical strength, tolerance to laser damage, and stability in extreme environments such as high humidity.

“Lots of crystals have been proposed over the decades, but only a handful are useful. It’s a high-risk business,” Li said. “China has achieved a leading position in this field not because of luck, but by continuous effort by several generations of researchers through countless failures.”

#5656Hendrik_2000, A moment ago
 
The promise of Laser gun sofar is stymied by the need for huge power for laser gun
Well the problem is power source and the inefficiency of converting low energy beam into high energy beam due to inefficiency of conversion.Therefore it need huge power source But help is on the way Chinese scientist claim they found crystal that will do the conversion efficiently increasing it by factor of 13 But sofar the crystal that they can grow is small It will be many years before they can grow it to the the size of a dime Here it is

Could these crystals be the next leap forward in China’s laser technology?
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Researchers say they have developed a substance that is 13 times better in tests than widely used alternative

Experiments could help solve a power source problem that has plagued commercial and military devices

Stephen Chen
Published: 3:29pm, 4 Sep, 2019

Scientists in southeast China say they have synthesised a crystal with the potential to significantly improve the performance of lasers used in consumer and military equipment.

Crystals of caesium bismuth germanate (CBGO) can turn low-energy beams into high-energy emissions with unparalleled efficiency, according to Professor Mao Jianggao, team leader at the Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Fuzhou.

The team looked at several candidate crystals in their experiments. Compared to widely used potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP) crystals, the CBGO crystal was 13 times more efficient at turning infrared lasers into more energised green beams.

“This is a record performance,” Mao said on Tuesday. “This is why we think the crystal may have potential.”

Their findings were published in the German weekly scientific peer review journal Angewandte Chemie, or Applied Chemistry, last month.

The researchers said CBGO crystals could be a way around a problem that has limited the performance of lasers – the huge amount of electricity needed to power them.


The demand on power is great because existing technology is not efficient at converting low-energy beams to high-energy ones – one reason that laser weapons are not yet as common as scientists predicted in the 1960s.

CBGO belongs to a family known as non-linear crystals, which cause abrupt changes to energy that passes through them. The scientists found that CBGO crystals could double the frequency of a laser beam.

As high-energy lasers can be created by merging two low-energy photons, or particles of light, a process known as frequency doubling, CBGO crystals are an ideal medium, and the higher frequency of the laser, the more energy it carries.

Many military and civilian applications required high-energy beams, they said. These included directed energy weapons designed to destroy drones or missiles, or China’s prototype Guanlan anti-submarine warfare satellite, which will use a green laser to penetrate water to a depth of 500 metres (1,640 feet) to detect a target.

Mao said his team’s research was at an early stage and that years of testing would be needed before the CBGO crystals found their way to market.

The CBGO crystal grown in the Fuzhou laboratory was the size of a grain of sand, he said. For industrial use, crystals would need to be at least the size of a dice.

Growing them was a very slow and challenging job, and there was no certainty that CBGO crystals could be grown on an industrial scale, Mao said.

China is a world leader in crystal research, and some of those most commonly used in laser devices were developed by Chinese scientists thanks to heavy investment from central government.


Professor Li Qiang, deputy director with the Institute of Laser Engineering at Beijing University of Technology, said the discovery of CBGO was encouraging, but its success should be evaluated not only on its efficiency, but also on attributes such as mechanical strength, tolerance to laser damage, and stability in extreme environments such as high humidity.

“Lots of crystals have been proposed over the decades, but only a handful are useful. It’s a high-risk business,” Li said. “China has achieved a leading position in this field not because of luck, but by continuous effort by several generations of researchers through countless failures.”

#5656Hendrik_2000, A moment ago
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