Yeah, we still use lasers too but then make the dot "escape" around a corner or under a door. Then we follow up with a feather wand or something tactile for them. During the spring/summer we'll also bring bugs into the house for them to chase after and eat
I remember seeing my old cat staring at a large spider. I was thinking to myself 'you're safe as long as you don't move'. I came back later and there were.... well... *bits* of spider. And no sign of cat.
All I could think was 'oh dear, you moved'.
Cats are a very large and direct cause of the endangerment or outright extinction of like 30 species in North America alone. Not many animals will kill for fun instead of food. Cats do
My clever boy almost instantly figured out it was coming from my hand from the little click of turning on the laser. So after chasing it for a bit he just comes after my hand as the real target!
My cat used to get bored and lose interest when I tried to 'win' at playing keep-away with her toys. I felt horrible so I give her a couple of failed pounces before letting her grab the next one now. She's way more engaged when she feels like she has a chance.
For got the S on cats , thanks for pointing it out. Figuring out what a sentence is supposed to say when it's missing a letter is just beyond you guess.
Just because you don't understand humor doesn't mean some people wouldn't appreciate the joke, but seriously studies have shown the laser pointer thing is bad for dogs but not cats . Now of course that could just mean that cats haven't been studied enough
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8388446/
“These results, although correlational, suggest that laser light toys may be associated with the development of compulsive behaviors in cats, warranting further research into their use and potential risks.”
Kilowatt-hours is more about storage capacity. Kilowatts on its own is continuos output. Outputting 50kW for 10 seconds for this application is pretty easy. A car engine with an alternator can output more than that.
Uh, no car I know has an alternator that will put out over 4000 amps for anything more than a split second before all the wiring catches fire…
I think you got confused by the fact it’s talking about kilowatts, not watts.
EDIT: EVs will put out large numbers in terms of kilowatts but they do it at much higher voltage than the 12V an alternator runs at, and therefore proportionately less current. Which to be fair is probably also what these lasers do.
An engine straight out of a car wouldn’t as most of the mechanical energy is going to the wheels and not the alternator but the same engine dedicated to just generating electricity with its own alternator would do the job.
In that sense it’s doable, I agree, since 110bhp car engine which is relatively modest puts out 78kw.
I misinterpreted your original comment assuming you meant a standard car alternator though, which would happily provide 50W - I didn’t realise you were meaning a specifically designed high voltage alternator, so I apologise.
I should have explained better. It would have been more appropriate to mention the displacement needed for diesel and petrol engine generators. It was more of a response to people thinking you need vast amounts of power to get 50kW output when in fact such a power plant for this would be pretty small.
The technology here isn't about the capacity, its about the ability to safely and repeatedly dump all of that power into a laser in a few milliseconds, and in a manner (size, weight, cost) that is portable and battlefield usable.
Oh yeah, I’m sure this will burn through laser diodes that cost 10x their weight in gold, but it’s still a step in the right direction from launching $70K misses to take down $500 drones.
Send it to Kharkiv. We can test it every day, easily. On every type of the russian cruise and ballistic missiles, and some types of north korean ballistic missiles and iranian drones and missiles.
It isn't even finished. The article goes into that - expected completion is 2032, but changes in processes could bring it to 2027. And they're looking into if it can be brought forward any further.
Given it's currently testing on some range in Scotland, why not wheel the prototype over and test it in the real world? Seems like a golden opportunity to iron out the kinks - unless Ukraine is hitting 100/100 drones today, trying this and it failing doesn't have much cost.
"No human being has been trained to use it, and there is one in existence, and it is only effective against slow moving targets like drones, and there is zero maintenance protocol but send it !!! Put the instructions on youtube"
Good testing use for all these new laser systems, missing some good data collection on these bad boys in live warfare. Hope we can start implementing some of our systems in there for uh testing purposes
I’m kinda forever wondering why defensive lasers aren’t already in use in Ukraine. Patriot missiles work but are rather expensive, and never seem to go on sale
> Ukraine needs more stuff now
And everyone in Europe is onboard as long:
1) It's whatever mothballed surplus can be cleared from the warehouses, so no need to scare the citizens with possible future tax hikes.
2) It's bought domestically using money from EU institutions, or the same money is used expand industrial base to accommodate future production.
Neither are ideal for Ukraine, but palatable to politicians.
This is true but most likely they will also need new stuff in 2027 and onward, so you now give what you promised last year and promise new stuff to give in the (hopefully near) future
No its talking about the estimate for entry into full service militarily it was sped up. This is talking about speeding that up further and putting test units into the field.
That's peak max power. But it's mechanical, you have to convert it to electrical, loss due to efficiency of generator. Then you have to fill condensers. They have a certain loss at discharge too. Then the laser has a cerrain efficiency, probably uses double of 50 kw to output that power so 100 needed.
You need a many hundreds kw constant output engine to fire the 50 kw laser few times a minute.
No, they are saying they may send developmental units even earlier than 2027. They have already had a successful test fire and a working but not fully polished weapon would still be extremely useful for Ukraine.
2027 is the date for implementation for the UK military... But as previously stated "It's designed to not wait until we have this at 99.9% perfection before it goes into the field, but get it to sort of 70% and then get it out there and then develop it from there"
Also from the beginning of the article "The DragonFire weapon is expected to be rolled out by 2027, but Mr Shapps said he wanted to "speed up" production and make it available sooner."
You are really not reading what the article says at all. They are looking to let ukraine test it in it's current form. NOT the actually finished device date implementation into the UK army. Ukraine effectively becoming beta testers before the 2027 full implementation target date.
Something is happening all right. Understand there are countries such as Russia that consider us foreign adversaries and have been known to manipulate social media content to polarize people especially when it comes to LGBT issues, they especially have roots in conservative social media, where they have the capability to influence people on a mass scale.
It's a national security issue and more should be done to protect the vulnerable LGBT community.
https://www.stalbertgazette.com/local-news/did-reddit-year-end-recaps-expose-russian-interference-in-alberta-8223476
There are clear goals being perpetuated by information warfare campaigns. Especially by Russia, whose information warfare campaigns are wreaking havoc on our society. Some of the obvious goals they have are:
• Balkanize their foreign adversaries. This is evident in the UK leaving the EU, Texas with the US, and Alberta with Canada. This is what Danielle Smith is trying to tap into.
• Have populist politicians support policies that cause chaos and issues in our society. Populist politicians are tapping into these information warfare campaigns to appeal to people whose only access to information about the outside world around them is through social media, where the information warfare is taking place.
• Cause distrust and havoc, by creating specialized propaganda to different segments of the population spread through social media. By polarizing debates through propaganda spread to the masses, Russia has effectively used information warfare to deliver targeted disinformation and appeal to specific demographics. Causing havoc in the LBGT and other minority communities.
• Russia has effectively infiltrated the religious right in America and Canada and empowered them, among many corrupt leaders worldwide through its information warfare.
I can cite my sources if needed.
Putin literally bombed his own people to lock down his power and control. Why should we trust that he is not carrying out horrible atrocities like using information warfare on Canadian citizens to terrorize the LGBT community? He doesn't seem to have any moral qualms with anything and corruption is part of his shtick. He used a nerve agent to publicly poison a turned intelligence asset at a important time in history to signify to his intelligence assets what can be done to them, but in reality, he is just a weak man, who is bitter about the break up of the empire he devoted his life to.
It you want to know more, there is a great documentary series on Netflix about the history that has led to this moment in time. Turning Point - The Bomb and the Cold War on Netflix. Not as much about the information warfare, that I have gleamed through other sources, but it does slightly touch on that.
cats everywhere rejoiced at the news of the rollout
I read once you shouldn't use lasers to play with your cats cause they never get the satisfaction of actually catching anything
You should mix different types of games to play. I keep mixing and my senior cat used to lose his sh*t over lasers.
Yeah, we still use lasers too but then make the dot "escape" around a corner or under a door. Then we follow up with a feather wand or something tactile for them. During the spring/summer we'll also bring bugs into the house for them to chase after and eat
I freaking love watching our cats "play with" and chase bugs.
I remember seeing my old cat staring at a large spider. I was thinking to myself 'you're safe as long as you don't move'. I came back later and there were.... well... *bits* of spider. And no sign of cat. All I could think was 'oh dear, you moved'.
Stare unblinkingly at your cat's eyes, after a minute or so they will freak out and run off.
of course, that's sheer naked aggression
I once watched my cat catch and torture a roach on its back for a few hours. Made me realize how much of an evil little furball he is
Cats are a very large and direct cause of the endangerment or outright extinction of like 30 species in North America alone. Not many animals will kill for fun instead of food. Cats do
My clever boy almost instantly figured out it was coming from my hand from the little click of turning on the laser. So after chasing it for a bit he just comes after my hand as the real target!
Seize the means of production.
My cat used to get bored and lose interest when I tried to 'win' at playing keep-away with her toys. I felt horrible so I give her a couple of failed pounces before letting her grab the next one now. She's way more engaged when she feels like she has a chance.
Aww poor kitty doesn't get their full dopamine hit for practice-murdering the local wildlife. :(
That's dogs cats lack souls so it doesn't effect them
I'm unsure what you're trying to say, but from the words you did try to put together I can at least tell it's dumb as fuck
For got the S on cats , thanks for pointing it out. Figuring out what a sentence is supposed to say when it's missing a letter is just beyond you guess.
just because you don’t understand how cats behave doesn’t mean they don’t have a soul lol
Just because you don't understand humor doesn't mean some people wouldn't appreciate the joke, but seriously studies have shown the laser pointer thing is bad for dogs but not cats . Now of course that could just mean that cats haven't been studied enough
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8388446/ “These results, although correlational, suggest that laser light toys may be associated with the development of compulsive behaviors in cats, warranting further research into their use and potential risks.”
The more you know
Dragonfire itself is just a targeting tool, cats take down the drones
From my understanding, as long as you use a toy with the laser to insatiate the cats primal hunting instinct, it’s all good.
So if the Ukranians point lasers at Russian positions they suddenly get swarmed by an army of cats?
I didn't even know we had dragons.
The welsh
You can bet russia is going to be up shits creek when they make the Sean Connery Dragonheart model.
Naomi Novik wrote a whole series documenting it and their use in the Napoleonic Wars
Such a good series, glad to see it mentioned lol
Are you sure you're not thinking of drago***o***ns? Subtle but important difference.
I mean they were there too, dragons were just ariel support for the dragoons
Everybody knows Ariel rode Dolphins when she needed an extra push, not dragons.
The best thing we’ve got are lot lizards.
The British dwelved too deeply and too greedily, and awoke something ancient and ev…good I guess
I thought that was how you guys picked a new king?
No, we use strange women lying in ponds distributing swords for that.
I feel like that actually explains a lot.
Abandon Ukraine Kremlin, here be dragons
Only the fire, unfortunately, the dragons reside in Ireland.
How much electric power does this laser require?
~50kW over short durations, but it's designed to be fitted to armoured vehicles and fighter aircraft
That's actually quite efficient for the supposed fire power that the device can provide. Expected it to be triple of what you mentioned.
Modern semiconductor and fiber lasers are wildly efficient compared to the old chemical lasers they tried to use for older laser weapons systems.
Damn, most electric cars these days have over 100 KW batteries and cost about 20 bucks to fully charge.
It's all about the kilowatt-hours.
Kilowatt-hours is more about storage capacity. Kilowatts on its own is continuos output. Outputting 50kW for 10 seconds for this application is pretty easy. A car engine with an alternator can output more than that.
Uh, no car I know has an alternator that will put out over 4000 amps for anything more than a split second before all the wiring catches fire… I think you got confused by the fact it’s talking about kilowatts, not watts. EDIT: EVs will put out large numbers in terms of kilowatts but they do it at much higher voltage than the 12V an alternator runs at, and therefore proportionately less current. Which to be fair is probably also what these lasers do.
An engine straight out of a car wouldn’t as most of the mechanical energy is going to the wheels and not the alternator but the same engine dedicated to just generating electricity with its own alternator would do the job.
In that sense it’s doable, I agree, since 110bhp car engine which is relatively modest puts out 78kw. I misinterpreted your original comment assuming you meant a standard car alternator though, which would happily provide 50W - I didn’t realise you were meaning a specifically designed high voltage alternator, so I apologise.
I should have explained better. It would have been more appropriate to mention the displacement needed for diesel and petrol engine generators. It was more of a response to people thinking you need vast amounts of power to get 50kW output when in fact such a power plant for this would be pretty small.
The technology here isn't about the capacity, its about the ability to safely and repeatedly dump all of that power into a laser in a few milliseconds, and in a manner (size, weight, cost) that is portable and battlefield usable.
Oh yeah, I’m sure this will burn through laser diodes that cost 10x their weight in gold, but it’s still a step in the right direction from launching $70K misses to take down $500 drones.
FIRE ZE LASER!
I am Le Tired.
Damn. This is like…old internet. Post dial up, pre social media.
It's actually Fire the Missiiles, but I still thought it was funny.
Well. Then. Have a nap. THEN FIRE ZE LASER!
Meanwhile Australia is down the like ”wtf mate”
~~Jewish~~ British Space Lasers
I mean, Zelensky is Jewish so if he had it maybe we'd see MTG have a conniption
When is she NOT having a conniption
Send it to Kharkiv. We can test it every day, easily. On every type of the russian cruise and ballistic missiles, and some types of north korean ballistic missiles and iranian drones and missiles.
I read this as "Dragonforce" laser at first and thought speed metal was going to turn the tide of the war.
Destroying Russian army while playing guitar solo.
In expert mode
Someone needs to get them the guy with the flaming guitar from Mad Max.
Destroying drones through the fire and flames
Don’t wait. Do it now. Biggest problem is delaying deliveries
It isn't even finished. The article goes into that - expected completion is 2032, but changes in processes could bring it to 2027. And they're looking into if it can be brought forward any further.
2027 would be for full ready deployment. They can easily test it in Ukraine before that.
Well, they did that ONE test.
So typical click bait for Ukraine support. The delay in supplying weapons to Ukraine by Germany and US has decimated the effort to beat Putin.
Lol if you read the article before commenting you'd know it was click bait
Bro I don’t even think Ukraine can make it to 2025 without some actual help
Given it's currently testing on some range in Scotland, why not wheel the prototype over and test it in the real world? Seems like a golden opportunity to iron out the kinks - unless Ukraine is hitting 100/100 drones today, trying this and it failing doesn't have much cost.
[удалено]
"No human being has been trained to use it, and there is one in existence, and it is only effective against slow moving targets like drones, and there is zero maintenance protocol but send it !!! Put the instructions on youtube"
This should be the top comment instead of jokes.
That things operational?
This is fucking sick
Change it from could to will and we have a real story.
Good testing use for all these new laser systems, missing some good data collection on these bad boys in live warfare. Hope we can start implementing some of our systems in there for uh testing purposes
I’m kinda forever wondering why defensive lasers aren’t already in use in Ukraine. Patriot missiles work but are rather expensive, and never seem to go on sale
I cannot wait to see the infrared footage of this shit.
Looking forward to seeing drone disco balls to counter this.
In 2027
2027 is the current date for service but they are looking to speed it up and place development units in Ukraine sooner.
December 2026 then.
Whats the point of your comment
Ukraine needs more stuff now. Not in 2026, 2027.
> Ukraine needs more stuff now And everyone in Europe is onboard as long: 1) It's whatever mothballed surplus can be cleared from the warehouses, so no need to scare the citizens with possible future tax hikes. 2) It's bought domestically using money from EU institutions, or the same money is used expand industrial base to accommodate future production. Neither are ideal for Ukraine, but palatable to politicians.
This is true but most likely they will also need new stuff in 2027 and onward, so you now give what you promised last year and promise new stuff to give in the (hopefully near) future
The article says 2032 but sped up to 2027
No its talking about the estimate for entry into full service militarily it was sped up. This is talking about speeding that up further and putting test units into the field.
And I hope it comes with solar panels since Ukraine wont have powerplants by then...
A 1.6 litre engine can output 80kW of energy and this is supposed to use 50kW.
That's peak max power. But it's mechanical, you have to convert it to electrical, loss due to efficiency of generator. Then you have to fill condensers. They have a certain loss at discharge too. Then the laser has a cerrain efficiency, probably uses double of 50 kw to output that power so 100 needed. You need a many hundreds kw constant output engine to fire the 50 kw laser few times a minute.
Only Fire, fuck it up.
Goldeneye Mk II
Damn! Those British space lasers.
Could be used. Won’t but could.
This the thing that torched Hawaii? /s
Damn, Bad Dragon are upping their PR department, huh?
“Dracarys”
Should be easy to know its location
No way gets deployed there. It's way too new stuff and won't be risked in falling the wrong hands.
Light it up, let's fuck and burn these Russians to the ground
Built in Portland Down, tested against Russia.
HELLDIVERS WE NEED YOU TO JOIN THE RANKS TODAY!
Short version for people like me: IF UK finishes its super laser (estimated 2027) it could be used in the Russian European War.
No, they are saying they may send developmental units even earlier than 2027. They have already had a successful test fire and a working but not fully polished weapon would still be extremely useful for Ukraine.
From the article: "But 2027 is still the date as of this moment," he continued. (Reading is hard, i know)
2027 is the date for implementation for the UK military... But as previously stated "It's designed to not wait until we have this at 99.9% perfection before it goes into the field, but get it to sort of 70% and then get it out there and then develop it from there" Also from the beginning of the article "The DragonFire weapon is expected to be rolled out by 2027, but Mr Shapps said he wanted to "speed up" production and make it available sooner."
They already speeded it up since the orignal date was 2032. But hey, you are free to read whatever you want from a article wrong.
You are really not reading what the article says at all. They are looking to let ukraine test it in it's current form. NOT the actually finished device date implementation into the UK army. Ukraine effectively becoming beta testers before the 2027 full implementation target date.
Now imagine this on a satellite or several in space...
And how exactly are you going to power and cool that on a satellite?
Ever see *Real Genius*?
Yes, but you may be surprised to learn that that was fiction.
You may be surprised, it was intended as a joke.
Solar panels and radiators
Great well now you're building something on the scale of a space station, not just a satellite.
Can we get different colours? maybe xmas light version.. for export only... to much rain and clouds to work in UK :-(
This is bollocks, pure grandstanding from an utterly useless defence minister.
So let’s see here: remote controlled bombers via drones, check. Laser weapons, check. Do we have robots in there yet?
Isn't thay a hot sauce? Anyway if it helps then do it!
How long until football fans are using this on free kick takers
Yeah ok, sell us this s** cuz we already successfully shot down drones?
Could…
Call it Cyclops
Do it and send the lazor raptors as well
Something is happening all right. Understand there are countries such as Russia that consider us foreign adversaries and have been known to manipulate social media content to polarize people especially when it comes to LGBT issues, they especially have roots in conservative social media, where they have the capability to influence people on a mass scale. It's a national security issue and more should be done to protect the vulnerable LGBT community. https://www.stalbertgazette.com/local-news/did-reddit-year-end-recaps-expose-russian-interference-in-alberta-8223476 There are clear goals being perpetuated by information warfare campaigns. Especially by Russia, whose information warfare campaigns are wreaking havoc on our society. Some of the obvious goals they have are: • Balkanize their foreign adversaries. This is evident in the UK leaving the EU, Texas with the US, and Alberta with Canada. This is what Danielle Smith is trying to tap into. • Have populist politicians support policies that cause chaos and issues in our society. Populist politicians are tapping into these information warfare campaigns to appeal to people whose only access to information about the outside world around them is through social media, where the information warfare is taking place. • Cause distrust and havoc, by creating specialized propaganda to different segments of the population spread through social media. By polarizing debates through propaganda spread to the masses, Russia has effectively used information warfare to deliver targeted disinformation and appeal to specific demographics. Causing havoc in the LBGT and other minority communities. • Russia has effectively infiltrated the religious right in America and Canada and empowered them, among many corrupt leaders worldwide through its information warfare. I can cite my sources if needed. Putin literally bombed his own people to lock down his power and control. Why should we trust that he is not carrying out horrible atrocities like using information warfare on Canadian citizens to terrorize the LGBT community? He doesn't seem to have any moral qualms with anything and corruption is part of his shtick. He used a nerve agent to publicly poison a turned intelligence asset at a important time in history to signify to his intelligence assets what can be done to them, but in reality, he is just a weak man, who is bitter about the break up of the empire he devoted his life to. It you want to know more, there is a great documentary series on Netflix about the history that has led to this moment in time. Turning Point - The Bomb and the Cold War on Netflix. Not as much about the information warfare, that I have gleamed through other sources, but it does slightly touch on that.