The government expects the Chinese to seize the Spratley's and try to close off the South China sea, which goes along with the Chinese expanding their navy to be power projecting instead of simply a coastal defense force. Its why the Chinese have invested heavily in naval aviation, submarine modernization, longer range advanced aircraft and amphibious assault vessels.
The marines are stripping away a lot of their direct fire support and by removing helicopters and heavy lift aircraft their reducing the mobility of the marines and not increasing them. As well by removing tanks they remove direct fire support and the ability to break lines quickly.
Its a move that makes little sense, they're making the Marines into leg infantry units, The US army has 5 light infantry divisions including the Ranger battalion.
Light infantry is great for scouting, but its short on anti-armor weapons and they aren't designed as an assault force, its likely that a light infantry assault gets slaughtered by a dug in enemy enforced by heavy armor, which is the Chinese doctrine. They're designed to scout and hold ground and defend.
Replacing tanks and mobile guns with drones doesn't make much sense for me. Removing a lot of their amphibious transports makes less sense to me. The Marines are self contained hostile assualt units. They push onto a beach or into enemy territory and establish a beach head. They use a combined armed approach that is all marine, fighters, tanks APCs artillary, etc. That way they're not dealing with a confusion chain of command.
This move makes little sense to me.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
China is pivoting towards (if not already there) a sea power. Thus, the USMC needs to change its focus; it's built right now on a 1990 methodologies and those are useless against a sea power.
Thus, the USMC is transforming to littoral (near shore) regiments with emphasis on ship-to-shore capabilities in austere conditions. The first regiment will stand-up in Hawaii. Two others are anticipated in Japan and Guam
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Meanwhile, the old workhorse B-52 keeps chugging along, expected to serve to at least 2050, as the USAF opens the bidding phase for engine replacement.
A U.S. Navy warship has successfully tested a new high-energy laser weapon that can destroy aircraft mid-flight, the Navy's Pacific Fleet said in a statement Friday.
Images and videos provided by the Navy show the amphibious transport dock ship USS Portland executing "the first system-level implementation of a high-energy class solid-state laser" to disable an aerial drone aircraft, the statement said.
The images show the laser emanating from the deck of the warship. Short video clips show what appears to be the drone burning.
I'd expect that this is going to be the track in terms of countering the new generation of hypersonic long range anti-shipping missiles, so the focus has to be on power, rate of fire and marrying it to the next generation of sensor suites.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
This is easy to negate. Just chrome-dip your drones.
Ok, I'm not a laser guy, or a physics guy, but chrome doesn't work against every laser type. The Chinese have talked about it to defend against American lasers but it wouldn't work in every case. And while Chrome would be fairly effective I would get against lasers, the more power that's put through the laser the faster that chrome coating would degrade.
I saw this on a physics board. Thanks you made me do physics reading on a Saturday you bastard
The minimum threshold of a US Military laser is 100 kw, which means that if the chrome coating in 99.9% effective that still means that 10 Watts of directed energy would get through which is equivalent to an industrial laser cutter. So according to that person, the Chrome coating would be damaged and flake off leaving it vulnerable. And we're talking about military lasers that in theory will be much more powerful.
Also the chrome coating or mirror would be effectively against a frequency, so if the American laser can be frequency adjusted the coating because somewhat less effective.
I was kinda kidding about the chrome, but surly some advanced coatings can be made that would reflect or dissipate the laser. It just seems like it would be a fairly easy weapon to negate. But I'm far to lazy to research that.
I was kinda kidding about the chrome, but surly some advanced coatings can be made that would reflect or dissipate the laser. It just seems like it would be a fairly easy weapon to negate. But I'm far to lazy to research that.
Sorry didn't mean to come across as snotty or dismissive.
I think it would be difficult mainly because I think with lasers you are dealing with heat energy, pure energy and a theoretical kinetic impact (Your hitting something with a high energy stream of photons I believe. So its not like the laser has to hold on position or burn a hole in something to destroy it.
I remember a few years back that the Russians were bragging about laser proofing their ICBM's by using a coating and having the missile spin. But a really powerful laser means that to defend against it means you have to spin the missile at a impossibly fast rate to counter a strategic level laser or directed energy weapon.
so the Russian's basically threw that theory out and went with hypersonic lower level long range missile development with stealth coatings.
When the Chinese were talking about chroming out or coating missiles or drones, it might be effective against one frequency but lets say the Chinese coat all of their stuff to protect against American lasers and they go to war against the Russian lasers that are different they'd have to recoat everything.
At least that's what I understand.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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No worries, didn't take your post as dismissive at all. You actually went and researched, which was far more than I did!
I wonder how much cloud those things could zrrt through. I assume enough cloud would scatter the beam and weaken it. It didn't talk about range, either.
IMHO, the issues that have to be solved for these LASER weapons are:
1. dwell time on the target. especially a hypersonic, sea-skimming, anti-ship missile. Good luck trying to keep a LASER pinned on that for five seconds;
2. a fire control system with enough precision to maintain that dwell time for hi-speed jinking targets; and
3. countermeasures. Chrome? I don't know about that, but I think it's conceivable to mount highly reflective mirrors in the nose. Mirrors with extremely high reflectivity can be made for a certain wavelength of light. The key, however, is knowing the wavelength of the LASER.
A fourth - and not perhaps as important as the above three - issue is power requirements. Very high intensity lights lead to "self focusing" due to the change in refractive index with intensity. This then leads to ionization. That is, light is generated along the beam path, and thus power is lost along the way. This is for dry air so the effects are magnified in ocean air. Space does not have these problems, obviously. So, how much energy can this weapon put on a target at X distance from source? A drone is one thing; aircraft and missiles are something else all together.
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