"Clancy, Tom - Jack Ryan 03 - The Cardinal of the Kremlin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clancy Tom)

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mite. So we just delivered five sticks. The actual energy transferred is like a kilogram of explosives, but the physical effects are not exactly comparable."
"What you're telling me is that the laser beam doesn't actually burn through the targetЧit's more of a shock effect." Ryan was stretching his technical knowledge to the limit.
"We call it an 'impact kill,' " the General answered. "But, yeah, that's about it. All the energy arrives in a few millionths,, of a second, a lot faster than any bullet does."
"So all that stuff I've heard about how polishing the missile body, or rotating it, will prevent a burn-throughЧ"
Major Gregory giggled again. "Yeah, 1 like that one. A
ballet dancer can pirouette in front of a shotgun and it'll do'
her about as much good. What happens is that the energy
has to go somewhere, and that can only be into the missile
body. The missile body is full of storable liquidsЧnearly all
of their birds are liquid fueled, right? The hydrostatic effect
alone will be to rupture the pressure tanksЧka-boom! no
more missile." The Major smiled as though describing a trick
played on his high-school teacher.
"Okay, now, I want to know how it all works."
"Look, Dr. RyanЧ" the General started to say. Jack cu
him off. '
"General, I am cleared for Tea Clipper. You know that!
so let's stop screwing around." J
Major Gregory got a nod from the General. "Sir, we h*Щ"
five one-megajoule lasersЧ"
"Where?"
"You're standing right on top of one of them, sir. Thel other four are buried around this hilltop. The power ratingl is per pulse, of course. Each one puts out a pulse-chain of al million joules in a few microsecondsЧa few millionths of al second." I "And they recharge in ... ?"
"Point zero-four-six seconds. We can deliver twenty shotl
per second, in other words." I
"But you didn't shoot that fast." Х
"We didn't have to, sir," Gregory replied. "The limitia
factor at present is the targeting software. That's being workd
on. The purpose of this test was to evaluate part of the soft]
ware package. We know that these lasers work. We've haJ
them here for the past three years. The laser beams are coi^
verged on a mirror about fifty meters that way"Чhe pointedЧ "and converted into a single beam."
"They have to beЧI mean, the beams all have to be exactly in tune, right?"
"Technically it's called a Phased-Array Laser. All the beams have to be perfectly in phase," Gregory answered.
"How the hell do you do that?" Ryan paused. "Don't bother, I probably wouldn't understand it anyway. Okay, we have the beam hitting the downside mirror ..."
"The mirror is the special part. It's composed of thousands of segments, and every segment is controlled by a piezoelectric chip. That's called 'adaptive optics.' We send an interrogation beam to the mirrorЧthis one was on the shuttleЧ and get a reading on atmospheric distortion. The way the atmosphere bends the beam is analyzed by computer. Then the mirror corrects for the distortion, and we fire the real shot. The mirror on the shuttle also has adaptive optics. It collects and focuses the beam, and sends it off to the 'Flying Cloud' satellite mirror. That mirror refocuses the beam on the targets. Zap!"
"That simple?" Ryan shook his head. It was simple enough that over the previous nineteen years, forty billion dollars had ; gone into basic research, in twenty separate fields, just to run this one test.
"We did have to iron out a few little details," Gregory acknowledged. These little details would take another five or i more years, and he neither knew nor cared how many additional billions. What mattered to him was that the goal was now actually in sight. Tea Clipper wasn't a blue-sky project anymore, not after this system test.
"And you're the guy who made the breakthrough on the targeting system. You figured a way for the beam to provide its own targeting information."
"Something like that," the General answered for the kid. "Dr. Ryan, that part of the system is classified highly enough that we will not discuss it further without written authorization."
"General, the purpose in my being here is to evaluate this program relative to Soviet efforts along similar lines. If you want my people to tell you what the Russians are up to, I have to know what the hell we're supposed to look for!"
This did not elicit a reply. Jack shrugged and reached inside
his coat. He handed the General an envelope. Major Gregory looked on in puzzlement. "You still don't like it," Ryan observed after the officer
folded the letter away.
"No, sir, I don't."
Ryan spoke with a voice colder than the New Mexico night. "General, when I was in the Marine Corps, they never told me that I was supposed to like my orders, just that I was supposed to obey them." That almost set the General off, and Jack added: "I really am on your side, sir."
"You may continue, Major Gregory," General Parks said
after a moment.
"I call the algorithm 'Fan Dance,' " Gregory began. The General almost smiled in spite of himself. Gregory could not have known anything about Sally Rand.
"That's all?" Ryan said again when the youngster finished, and he knew that every computer expert in Project Tea Clipper must have asked himself the same thing: Why didn't I think of that! No wonder they all say that Gregory is a genius. He'd made a crucial breakthrough in laser technology at Stony Brook, then one in software design. "But that's simple!"