Efficiency of Microwave Emitters

[sdifox]

How efficient is our current microwave emitters? I mean, just thinking out loud, what if you hook up an x-ray emitter (maybe an array) to a powerful electrical source? Would that not make an interesting anti-personnel weapon? Mount it on a Bradley platform, stick in a big generator where the personnel carrier space is, off you go to fry people.

 

[Bassyhead]

The use of microwaves as weaponry is already being studied. Check out this. Such weapons would disable electronic equipment. The microwaves emitted from such a weapon would only be dangerous to humans from a very short distance. Think of how long it takes to boil a cup of water in a microwave when it's directly in the path of the waveguide or magnetron and the chamber reflects the waves back to it. As for the efficiency of a microwave emitter, I'm not sure.

 

[dkozloski]

It depends on whether you intend to kill or disable. Microwaves injure by heating and have the most effect on the organs of the body with poor blood circulation such as the eyeballs and testicles. The shipboard SAM missle radars I worked on 45 years ago were very dangerous in this regard. They had a pulsed C-band tracking radar concentric with an X-band illuminating radar. The chart that outlined the threat started with the parameters that you could be in the direct 0.9 degree beam for two seconds out of a thirty second period if you were at least 1100 feet away from the feed horn. Any closer or any longer and you ran the risk of sterility or blindness. We could turn on fluorescent lighting in households on the hillside above the port where we were moored. This would greatly agitate the locals. One time we popped every flashbulb in the photo department of the local base exchange at once. Idle hands are the devils workshop.

 

[canadageek]

:camera:?

 

[harrkev]

dkozloski

Yup. The flashbulbs popped. And yet there were no deaths or injuries reported, I'll bet.

I also hesitate to guess the size of the equipment pumping out all of that power.

 

[dkozloski]

A C-band monopulse tracking beam concentric with a 5KW CW x-band illumination beam. Continuous tracking of a seagull would take him right out of the air. He would get all spastic and then fold up.