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

> On Thu, 2 Dec 1999, Laserlight wrote:

> While y'all are doing your maths--what power level and what units

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.

> This is occasioned by finding a "Walk Softly and Carry a Megawatt

more than MW, i would guess. it might be profitable to look at the output
of an MTM - work out the mass, estimate the warhead size, and from there
have a guess at the energy output. we know an MTM does 2d6 damage, so we
can get an order-of-magnitude figure, at least. maybe.

peace, tom

> While y'all are doing your maths--what power level and what units
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