this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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Imagine solar powered war.
You have like a 1m² solar hat that collects 200 watts so you can fire one rifle equivalent shot every 20 seconds, at 50% efficiency.
Your tanks covered in solar panels generate about 6000W of solar energy, vs the 1,120,000W of the Abrahams, so you can drive it for 7.7 minutes per day.
The solar impulse 2 can carry pilot, so about 80kg at a range of ~7000km. The smallest nuclear bomb is the Davy Crockett at about 23kg, so you could carry 3 or 4 of those around 7000km. Really you could build a gigantic solar glider to carry nuclear weapons.
What else? Maybe land mines that need to charge up their explosive power with solar.
I love it. And somewhere back in the base there's a hardbitten sargeant breaking in the raw recruits, chewing them out for flying to get to their base and making them scrub the bathroom with organic cleaners on a compostable toothbrush.
lmao, the drill sergeant shouts them down for putting the algae plastic shell casings in the wrong recycling bill
CAN YOU NOT FUCKING READ ENGLISH, PRIVATE? WHY IS THIS ORGANIC COMPOSTABLE SHELL CASING IN THE ALUMINUM BIN? DID YOUR INBRED F150 DRIVING PARENTS FORGET TO TEACH YOU HOW TO RECYCLE? "JUST TOSS IT WHEREVER", RIGHT?
One of the missions in Ace Combat 4 is to attack a solar panel installation as solar power allows the Erusians to operate their industrial base without energy imports.
crazy they were ahead of the curve. Haven't played it, but I heard it has good world building.
oil never made strategic sense to me, like oh yeah you want to make your prosperity dependent on hostile foreign powers? great idea
yeah it's cheap and energy dense, but we could have invested in alternative technologies way earlier. spending billions to trillions on useless crap instead.
Massive space solar collectors that could beam down energy to units with microwaves, or use the directed energy as an orbital weapon.
dual use, I like it. nothing is wasted in sustainable war.
you could also use space mirrors, 1) to reduce the temperature on the planet, 2) create on demand night and day anywhere in the world at any time, 3) as a melty space laser
you could deny your enemy sunlight, make their climate 10x hotter or green deserts or light your greenhouses. melt a shipping lane through the north pole.
Chaotic neutral technology
What can you drop if you won't nuke someone though? Let's be honest, if all you can use is nukes, planes aren't extremely useful as weapons.
well if you are extremely strict about everything having to be powered by on board solar, you could probably just use potential energy. Fly as high as possible and drop a guided projectile down that is as heavy and as aerodynamic as possible. like a light version of the rod from god.
Also we've seen how effective cheap drones can be in warfare. the same could be true for small solar drones, to drop various payload on your enemy. Yeah they are slow and have big ass wings. but still they are silent and cheap. If you design them well some of them could loiter "forever".
And also I would say solar powered artillery works. either using linear or rotary electromagnetic accelerators. Like a railgun or spinlaunch.
otherwise you could build gigantic transparent blimps covered in fresnel lenses that focus sunlight on an extremely small spot. normal sunlight has ~1kW/m². The Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High Energy Laser has 300kW, so you need ~300m² to match its power, so like 17.32x17.32m dimensions. The Hindenburg-class had like 10,000m². So you could have something in the ballpark of a 10MW laser. The destructiveness depends on how well you can focus it and how much enrrgy you loose via the air. And 2x longer blimps get 4x the death ray power. So you really benefit from scale. Or you just use a fleet of blimps all focusing on one point. You know, don't put all your eggs in one basket.
You could also use mylar if fresnel is too expensive.
But only works during the day lol.
like so:
mass produce these, outfit them with cheap drone hardware or something. unleash a swarm of them over your enemy burning them to a crisp.
That's an amazing, imaginative and vaguely terrifying answer. I love it.
They would still be useful for reconnaissance, and could drop smaller things like grenades.
I think a solar powered drone might work better for this.