Laser Weapon Operational

[Anomalocaris]

Society with an energy crisis decides to turn energy into ammunition-directly. What could go wrong.

The total amount of energy consumed in process of resource extraction and fabrication of normal conventional metal encased explosive ammunition considerably exceeds the amount of energy the ammunition can usually deliver to target. So turning energy directly into laser ammunition in the long run may well represent a considerable savings in total energy consumed.

You can think of it this way. The total amount of useable chemical energy contained in the fuel that a cruiser carries in her fuel bunkers vastly exceeds the total amount of chemical energy contained in all the conventional munition she carries. Where as a typical ship may only ever consume 1-2 entire magazine load of ammunition during her entire service life, she would go through several bunkerfuls of fuel oil each month. So only an very small portion of the total energy consumed by any warship during her entire service life would be in the form of ammunition going bang! Vast majority of the energy goes into churning water and sending hot exhaust up the smoke stack.

The reason why one does not normally perceived this proportion is energy in the fuel is normally released over a period of weeks, or if the ship catches fire, many hours, where as the energy in the munition is typically released in milliseconds to microseconds. So release of energy from munition is more spectacular.

If a ship could extract some of the energy in her fuel to convert into munition, she would gain considerably in total firepower, in terms energy available for delivery to target, over any reasonable amount of conventional weapons and munitions she could carry.


Weapons are powerful because they deliver energy at an extremely high rate, not because they deliver a whole lot of energy. The total amount of energy embodied even in nuclear weapons is actually very low in the overall scheme of energy consumed by our civilization. Think of it this way, each time a commercial passenger liner flies across the pacific ocean, it burns as much energy in jet fuel as contained in a medium sized tactical nuclear weapon.

When a large fossil fuel powered aircraft carrier burns up one tank ful of fuel (if she is steaming fast she could do that in a 3-4 days) she has burned up several times the energy released by the Hiroshima bomb.

The total amount of fuel energy burned by a medium sized electrical utility in one year to supply a city of 2-3 million exceed the total energy delivered by Czar Bomba, the largest hydrogen bomb ever exploded by man.