Re: [ds2 ft2] weapon power was Re: GEV and Grav Vehicles

>> While y'all are doing your maths--what power level and what units
>> should we be talking about for beam weapons?
>
>well, following the ground-combat thread, i looked up kinetic
energies of
>tank guns; have a look at the following:
>
>http://www.sarda.army.mil/sard-zt/ASTMP98/vol_i/sec4/sec4i.htm
>
>i would put the kinetic energy of a round from a modern tank gun at
about
>10 MJ. thus, for a laser to do the same job, it needs to deliver the
same
>sort of power - 10 MJ of energy in a burst maybe 10 ms long, which
gives a
>power of 1 GW. note that you'd be delivering a 10 ms pulse every 10
s, so
>you'd need a 1 MW generator linked to a 10 MJ accumulator.
>
Note that this document has objective for "medium term planning" of
17MJ and "far term" (about 10 years from now) they're hoping for 25-30
MJ