New defense technology, using focused microwave beams to target and bring down drone swarms. This video shows a fully operational prototype in operation,
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Just out of curiosity - Airplane Guys
- Thread starter Downeaster
- Start date
And while waiting for the next drone attack you can reheat the left over breakfast burritos to have them for lunch!
What's next, a death ray? 
You mean another one?What's next, a death ray?
Yeah, been several death rays in the Bond films since I was a boy.
All genuine of course.
"...You expect me to talk?..."
"No Mr. Bond - I expect you to die!"
Good deal Pete! You saw the movie ( so did millions...), we're on the right track!...
First job I had after leaving school was a lab rat in the steelworks. I'd been reading about lasers and how simple they were. I was intrigued by the polishing machines we had in the metallurgy lab and all I needed was a rod of ruby crystal, or a tube of CO2 gas, which would be much cheaper.
At that age, I couldn't see any good reason why we couldn't build one.
Fast forward 50 years and Co2 lasers are cutting steel...
Would likely just be a drop in the bucket. The engine pulls 400kW. I suspect you'd be lucky to get 1kW of cells on those wings. I'd liken it to 1 gallon of reserve in a 400 gallon tank.
Production and storage are the biggest hurdles to solar power, at this time. Solar panels and batteries need to evolve into smaller, lighter, more powerful entities, maybe by 100 fold, before they're sufficiently mainstream to supplant fossil fuels as our primary energy source, because fusion engines and "warp drive" are still a long, long way off...
Supermarine: .... or you could just put a bigger engine in....
Jim is dead-on with that 1 gallon in 400 analogy. I get asked all the time about putting solar panels on car roofs to charge the batteries and keep the car going and so here are some interesting factoids:
- at the equator - the energy impinging on the earth from the sun is about 700W / sq. metre;
- that amount decreases according the latitude at which one is located and it drops to zero at night;
- solar panels - even the best ones - are not 100% efficient at turning solar energy into electricity;
- in fact, the best solar panels available today are only about 10-15% efficient - so that 700W/sq. metre number is really more like about 70-100W/sq. metre;
- a car takes about 30-40 HP or around 47 kW to cruise at 60 mph - and let's use an ideal efficiency of 100W/sq. metre for our solar panels;
- soooo...you would need a solar panel with an area of AT LEAST (47,000 / 100 =) 470 sq. metres or 4826 sq.ft. to operate a typical car on a highway.
- that cool looking electric airplane at 400kW would require about (400,000 / 100 =) 4000 sq. metres or 41,000 sq.ft. of solar panels to fly (that is the square footage of a good sized elementary school or a really big house).
In engineering, we call that 700W/sq.metre a "God number" because, no matter how much better we make our components or how much we optimize things, we cannot affect /change / increase / improve that number. Someone else is in charge and we do not get a say in the matter.
Pete
Yup. Like I said; smaller, lighter batteries, with higher output. Smaller, lighter panels, with higher yield... Back to the old electronic brain... 
