Handheld energy weapons

[Drashner1]

Well - I do kind of see the point about not passing muster for military use. It might not be 100% accurate, but I do see the point. Energy weapons require bigga-watts of power to do their job. Mashing all that energy into a small volume.... We have those objects now - they are called "bombs". When it comes to mashing huge amounts of power into a small pistol magazine, eventually it becomes dangerous for the soldier carrying it, and you'd be better off with a slug-thrower and a grenade. On his sci-fi science episode about lightsabers, Michio Kaku went over this and suggested the best use for such a device was to mail it to your enemy and hope that he turned it on.

But how much energy are you actually talking about here vs the amount of energy OA laser weapons contain?

This isn't Star Trek where pistol size energy weapons are depicted totally vaporizing a human size target in a second or three. Nor is it Star Wars where a flashlight size device is able to cut through inches of armored door in a matter of maybe a minute.

The page on handheld lasers gives the numbers for the type of weapons used in OA:

A 'standard' laser weapon using an ultracapacitor pack (the near future version based on the article and Luke's comments) can store 200,000J into a 1kg power pack, making it able to produce 20 full power shots. In the words of the article:

This is sufficient to overpenetrate a human, leaving a hole about the width of that produced by a .30 caliber hunting bullet, and will punch through all but the heaviest armor that a person can wear.

Checking this page on Wikipedia, we find that 200kJ is a a bit less than the kinetic energy of a car moving at highway speeds and that the kinetic energy of a bullet from an M16 is 1.8e3J. A bit more research on this page, indicates that an M16 generally carries a magazine of 30 bullets = 5.4e4J. Actually, I expect it would be more than this in the form of gunpowder (an explosive substance) since I very much doubt that the gun works with perfect efficiency.

Considering grenades, an MKIII grenade can apparently hold as much as 230g of TNT = 966,000J of energy (energy release of 1g of TNT = 4.2e3J x 230) = 966kJ. Which is more than 3x the total energy stored in the laser power pack. And people presumably carry such grenades around fairly regularly, possibly in multiples.

So, if carrying 966,000J + 54,000J = 1,020,000J around is considered an acceptable risk, then presumably carrying around approx 1/5 that much energy (with the ability to vary the output in various ways as detailed in the article) would also be acceptable.

Scaling up to the presumed Y11K version, we see from the same EG article that a 1kg power pack can hold as much as 20MJ. Ignoring the more advanced functionality and greater efficiency of Y11k laser weapons, this works out to an amount of energy roughly 20x as large as established above as being acceptable. Stored in a solid state and presumably quite durable and stable form. Presuming that each soldier was carrying an M-16 and several grenades and traveling in a small group with others similarly equipped, it seems likely that it is not uncommon for modern soldiers to find themselves in close proximity to this much contained energy (in the form of explosive substances). So, why would a solid state version storing electricity be all that much different?

Going back to the issue of vaporizing people and slicing through armored doors - It seems to me that these things are very desirable from a dramatic or special effects perspective but fairly pointless from an actual combat perspective. A person with a tiny bullet going through their brain/heart/major parts of their circulatory system/vital organs is just as dead as a person turned to plasma - and for a lot less effort. A door blown open with plastic explosive is just as open as one sliced through with a light saber - and such explosives can be made now and carried safely.

Rather liking blowing up a planet (unless your foe is hiding down in the core, why would you ever need to do that?), these sorts of things seem more designed to entertain and excite an audience watching a film than realistic depictions of advanced weapons.

My 2c worth,

Todd