Well, yea maybe you are right, who knows. But we really have no other choice. We actually have a very small military budget for this type of stuff, since 80% goes into salary and pension of troops, so we don't have the luxury to devote money to several projects at the same time. I would have liked them to attempt to build a smaller jet engine drone first after completing the junk Rustom 2(or better yet, abandon Rustom 2 altogether), then build something actually good, like the Grip Reaper. But it seems they will directly be attempting Jet engine stealth Aura with indigenous Kaveri engine
. Full marks for optimism though...
Now on to the topic, what do you think was the cost of this lazer kill? I would assume it uses enormous amounts of power, probably drains an entire battery cell. Is it lesser than just shooting it down with a manpad?
There are 2 direct costs and 1 indirect cost.
Direct costs:
1) Energy used by photons. (Energy released by laser as photons)
2) Thermal energy (Inefficiency, which is not included in laser power)
Indirect cost:
- Amortisaiton: This is the cost of repairs/replacing optical-electronic-mechanical etc. parts of system/lifetime cost and amortisation costs of the vehicle carrying the system and personel costs.
Energy used by photons is the power of laser itself. For example 20kW means you will spend 20kW*seconds every single second. It is roughly 20 kilojoules of energy.
Thermal energy really depends on the system and can not even certainly calculated by the producer and they guess estimated values. (calculated guesses based on experiments of system) This varies by laser type too. Lets say that 3 times of laser power. That is 60 kilojoules of energy.
So; direct cost is guessed as 20+60=80 kilojoules. (really a rough and possibly wrong estimate)
You get this energy from alternator which is connected to engine to produce electricity. Diesel engines roughly has %20 efficiency. Lets say alternator gets the %50 of energy produced by engine at stationary vehicle and running engine. (I am just guessing, not an expert on area, other %50 is for other things like energy cost of compressing fuel, diesel pump, water and oil circulation etc) This brings us 0.2*.05 = 0.1 -> %10 efficiency. (Just an estimate)
So; to produce 80 kJ eletric energy you need (80*10)=800kJ worth of diesel burning. Diesel approximatly has 9.25 Mcal energy per litre which is 38.7 megaJoules.
For 800kJ diesel burning you will need about 20 mililitres (20cc) of diesel burned by the engine.
So; about just the energy of shooting the laser you can multiply cost of a litre diesel in your country with 0,02. It is possibly cheaper than cost of a bottle of water.
WARNING: These guesses are very rough and only to give an idea for the cost and how energy works in Laser systems. Electronics, electrooptics, mechanics are not considered in energy cost. This rough estimate only considers shooting cost of laser.
I might be wrong at math calculations somewhere. I am really really sick right now and can barely open my eyes.
