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US Army to Test Laser Based Mine Clearing Device
QueueEhGuy writes "Yahoo News is running a Reuters story indicating that the United States will soon be testing a laser which "will either explode or evaporate the explosives in the device which can be up to 250 yards away.." It's about time, I was starting to think that we'd never blow stuff up with light." New Scientist has another story, complete with nifty graphic. The Zeus homepage has a few pictures and specs.
How are they going to power the thing?
It's not as though you can just plug the humvee in on the battlefield...
Fire the "Laser"
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
... I keep having problems with people tailgating me.
"Derp de derp."
I'ts really too bad that this unit isn't for de-mining during peacetime. There are many countries that are covered with mines from past wars (just think of some eastern European countries and African countries). Too many civilians die each year from old mines. Oh well, this is good news non the less as it will help save lives.
...interesting if true.
but not as cool as if it took out buried mines as well. Seems as if the best use of this thing would be cleaning up the more 'obvious' stuff lying about. Unexploded bombs, etc. Not much for getting mines.
Of course the real problem w/mines all over the world is a social one as opposed to a technical problem. Too many little wars for territorial control being waged by people w/little regard for the welfare of others.
There's profit in it though so I don't expect it to change.
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It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Everybody saw Akira, right? remember Sol? yeah... i remember Sol...
unlike the Starwars (Regan) lasers -- these are solid state so as long as you have a power source, they can be re-used. with the advances in today's high capacity capacitors (erm), just hook up that laser satellite to a solar panel and let her rip. boost the power a litter and who says you can't burn down airplanes in flight and stuff?
and (unlikely, but) if somebody hacked the satellite network? oh boy... i think i am going to buy some SPF4000 sunscreen.
future warfare is getting gonna get really interesting, really fast.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
This is all good and neat, but how about we look at the treaty for banning land mines? Take a look at http://www.banminesusa.org.
Hey, we can clear your land mines with our cool laser technology for only $200,000,000. By the way, here's the brochure for our newest offering of grade AAA mines.
geek page at KY speaks
Maybe it's just me, but I always thought the old N64 Goldeneye method of getting rid of mines would be far easier; you know, there's a mine on the ground, you don't know where it is, so throw a grenade/remote mine/etc in its vicinity and it will blow up with the ensuing blast. Now I know it's a silly videogame idea but it just seems so much more intuitive than this. The specs on this thing (from Zeus' site) say it can hit a target from 25 to 250 meters. You wanna be the one aiming that far? Throw another bomb, it's a hell of a lot easier! Takes care of the under-the-surface ones as well. Of course, the area would have to be rather deserted, but no more than it would take to detonate a surface mine in the first place.
Just my wacky $0.02
Oh, and keep in mind that my tongue is planted firmly within the warm crevace of my cheek.
why? forty-two.
Cutting Edge "graphics", courtesy of MS Paint.
My favorite is the other part of the image here.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
The interesting part of the problem is identifying and mapping the mines, and this device seems to handle both unexploded ordinance and surface mines. I wonder how well it will do with surface mines after a winter - or two. It would certainly beat having people do this stuff by hand.
Once you know of a mine you can mark it and avoid it. As for clearing it, I have to believe that there are any number of ways to clear it without using lasers, and this is where the heat concern is.
I've occasionally wondered why someone hasn't tried clearing minefields using some tacky Rockford Phosgate subwoofers mounted on a nice big tank.
If the late-night losers around here can shake my apartment building as they drive by with their oh-so-cool car audio systems, surely a military organization could crank things up to the point that any mine within a mile radius would detonate.
Besides, you could keep the locals entertained (at a distance) with some cool tunes.
Whoever designed level 61 in Frozen Bubble is a sadistic bastard.
It's about time we start blowing things up with lasers? Apparently you've missed a 6 billion dollar project in the US, which, technically is a hell of a lot cooler. The Airborne Laser. Stick a laser in a 747 and aim it at Nuclear missiles.
http://www.airbornelaser.com/
When will this be a weapon of choice in "America's Amry" ?
as most land-mines were planted by them
I think that's a really unfair statement, especially when you consider the fact that it isn't true. Any country will plant land mines when they find it necessary and lots of countries have been trying to find a way to get rid of them when they're past their use.
If you as a canadian are going to take the high road in this matter you should be criticizing your own country for not making innovations in land mine removal technology. Instead you're sitting there and smugly taking a swipe at the US.
You can't sit as a spectator for this sort of thing and dish out moral judgements and expect to be taken seriously.... but then again you're Canadian so I guess you really shouldn't expect to be taken seriously
This stupid laser is an idiotic idea meant to fatten some stupid colonel's budget. A much cheaper solution has been designed by Dr. Bill Wattenburg and can be seen by going to this page.
The army doesn't care about its soldiers, only its budget.
Currently hooked on AMP
Too bad they didn't have this in time for the 4th of July! Laser light show and fireworks at the same time, and by the military no less. What's more American than that?
Muhahahah here chase this laser pointer muuuhahahaha..
Weeiioow...
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
but there are only 2 places where the US uses land mines, Cuba and Korea.
In korea these land mines are in a strip of land separating North and south korea. These mines help protect our soldiers. And no one lives in the DMZ so its not dangerous to civilians. While 30,000 soldiers may sound like a lot, remeber that the korean war was basically a draw because how many koreas/chines got killed they were able to send more.
So before we go signing any treaties lets be clear what we are risking.
Veramocor
This is troll bait, but whatever. From this:
The countries profiled in this chapter are the 10 with the highest number of landmine casualties. (Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, Croatia, Eritrea, Iraq [Kurdistan], Mozambique, Somalia, and Sudan(footnote 3) as well as two others (Namibia and Nicaragua), which illustrate the global nature of the landmine contagion
The US is neither a huge producer of landmines nor is it a big user of landmines. Its controversy has stemmed from (as mentioned in the article) refusal to sign international landmine bans.
-Sean
Hell, why not just get a group of Junkyard Wars veterans together and give them 10 hours to build a mine-clearing device? My bet is that it would be more effective and versatile than this laser system, and cost 0.0001% of the price (probably less) :)
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
a) cannot penetrate soil
b) is judged useless for civilian mine clearing
c) is presumably 1,000,000 less efficient than a tank mounted flail
So. Perhaps what we're looking at is the normal machinery of death industry dressing up some weapons R&D in a quasi-humanitarian guise? How much more likely that there are 101 offensive uses of this device to each defensive use?
It was foretold in that great annals of earth's (future) history: Plan 9 From Outer Space.
Word is, it's more accurate than Nostradamus' works.
as a canadian you are so proud because the U.S. planted so many bombs in canada? Or are you proud of being a citizen of a non-US country so you can poke fun at us?
Photos.
Blasting sound is not exactly a way to keep your exact position from the enemy. Of course, neither is blowing up landmines.
How do you figure 20KW is more than a vehicle can easily produce? That converts to about 27 horsepower, even with a horribly inefficient generator on a PTO a humvee should easily manage that.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Without looking on the internet...
e mi ne_toc.html
Of the 80 million mines, I'll guestimate that the US placed em in...
Korea (Still in use on the DMZ)
Vietnam (Many of the "mines" are prbly unexploded munitions)
Honduras
At the most, 2-4 million
http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/rpt_9809_d
Angola - That'd be South Africa and Cuba along with Rebels
Eritrea - Somalia
Mozambique - Rebels and the government
Namibia - South Africa and Marxist rebels
Somalia - Somalia during the civil war with Eritrea
Sudan - Civil War, border with Egypt
Afghanistan - Soviets
Cambodia - US, Vietnam, China, Cambodia, rebels
Bosnia - Serbia and the Civil War
Croatia - Serbia, Yugoslavia, Croatia
Nicaragua - The US and the local government
Iraq - Iraq, the Kurds, Iran.
So out of the 53 million estimated, the US might be responsable for a piece of the Cambodia and Afghan problem. The US wasn't big into dumb mines other than Claymore after the Korean War ended, except in Korea due to the problems with fratricide and killing civillians.
I did hear that the license plate on the Hummer read: "ALNPRSN"
Heh.
"Derp de derp."
With Lasers on their heads!
(incidentally, a "White Elepehant" is an expensive, useless project.)
Why detonate a land mine with another explosive when you can use a laser! Lasers work nearly as well, and are merely many hundreds of times more expensive!
From the article: the operator will then switch on the main beam which will either explode or evaporate the explosives
Quick physics lesson. The explosive force of a conventional explosive is provided by the change-of-state to a gas. Air has a density of roughly 1 kg/cubic m. Most solids and liquids have a density of 1g/cubic cm, or 1000 kg/cubic m. So, when you vaporise something, you get a lump of gas which is compressed roughly 1000-fold.
The upshot? Vaporising the explosive = setting the explosive off! There is no way prevent landmines from detonating by vaporising them; they won't turn into harmless little poofs, they'll fucking explode. Unless they propose that this laser vaporises the landmine slowly/gently - which is patently absurd. So, you might as well set them off with a grenade.
Somebody with friends in the defense establishment has developed yet another practical (which does not mean useful or advisable, and certainly doesn't mean cost-effective) laser system, and they're trying to find some excuse to sell it.
This thing looks like the Crusader look like a good use of taxpayer money.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
America ... most land-mines were planted by them
I was rather sceptical of that statement so I did a very extensive google search. Tons of pages on landmines in each country, but I can't find a single damn refference to landmines used by country.
Can you (or anyone) post a refference to support or refute that statement?
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Actually, there's still a lot of UXO laid down by both sides in Afganistan, and in regards to Vietnam, we're not exactly sure where we left all of our crap, since a lot of it was dispersed by air.
The US position has been that we don't want to have to give up the flexibility mining gives us - to defend an area that you could mine requires personnel in depth, meaning a bigger frontline army and support personnel. I'm sure you'd want us to unilaterally disarm ALL of our nuclear weapons, but that aint gonna happen either.
If we're talking about mines that are visible from the surface, why would a laser be preferable to, say, a machine gun? Throw a few rounds at a live mine and I'm sure it'll go off. Gun and ammo would be much less expensive than a laser with sufficient energy to ignite a land mine. And hardening a mine against a laser would be much easier than making it bulletproof.
I wonder what other reasons there are for wanting a high-intensity laser mounted on a HMMWV?
... not that I would have, but since now I think it can be REALLY risky. Anybody else wants to blow in pieces just by getting into "spotlight"? :)
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
It's about time, I was starting to think that we'd never blow stuff up with light.
My grandmother did that for a living at one point. She worked at a photo studio. Photo labs have been using light to blow stuff up for a long time now.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
What I remember from Landmines.org and other sites is that the main US minefield is the buffer zone between North and South Korea. The mines here are supposedly well marked. But this field is the main reason that the US did not sign the recent global anti landmine act. I have to admit that Korea is a problem because the fields are part of a fragile piece, no-one wants it to be too easy to start Korea War II.
According to people who are working on landmine clean up in Afghanistan, neither the US nor the Taliban planted mines during that conflict. Apparently most of the mines are from the Russian and various tribal conflicts...predating the current war.
There is, however, a really big problem of unexploded ordinance. Things we dropped on the Afghans that haven't exploded yet.
I remember, the other complaint that the US had with the landmine ban (of 199?) was that it required destruction of stockpiles before the US could complete the environmental impact statement. Aparently, some anti tank mines have nasty things like depleted uranium, and you don't want to just blow them up...because of the damage to the environment.
The US has been playing a major role in the landmine ban, but did not sign the treaty. We have a habit of doing things like this.
Israel and the US have been jointly developing the Nautilus THEL (Tactical High Energy Laser) anti-missle system for some time now. It's been sucessfully tested many times.
I'm out of points, so someone please mod this up.
The Wattenburg method is a modern variant of the chain roller, an antique minefield clearing vehicle that had long chains attached to a horizontal roll rotating a few feet above the ground in front of the armored vehicle. The ends of the long chains would hit the ground with enough force to trigger their explosion, 10 to 15 meters ahead. So the concept is definitely proven.
If you really want to trigger a surface-laid mine or ammunition from far away, it is much cheaper to just fire at it using a 20-mm cannon. But of course that would be a cheap solution. Way too cheap, probably.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
I thought I said that (of course I tend to ramble). The US also wanted an extension on destroying anti-tank mines with depleted uranium for environmental reasons. This was only a minor issue compared to Korea.
Stop trolling and look at the facts.
Fact: The vast majority of people hurt by landmines are non-combatants.
In most cases, these innocent civilians are maimed or killed long after the fighting has stopped.
Fact: Landmines are the only battlefield munition that is incapable of distinguishing between friend, foe and/or innocents.
Landmines don't care who they kill. And, once they've been planted, all control over who the mines target is left to chance.
Fact: The majority of landmines are not safely removed after their ostensible purpose has been achieved.
Only rarely does the combatant responsible for laying the mines remove them - in most cases that's one buck that's passed onto someone else. And in all cases, the cost of safely removing a mine far outstrips the cost of laying it.
Fact: The US is the only western power that refuses to rule out the future use of anti-personnel landmines and, because of this US stance many third-world nations also refuse to stop using these munitions.
It's widely accepted that the pro-landmine position of the US is hampering worldwide efforts to curb the sale and use of anti-personnel landmines. Basically, lots of countries take the position that "if the US, that bastion of human rights, won't give them up then why should we?"
And, honestly, if your own government won't make that kind of commitment, the kind of commitment that every other NATO member has willingly made, then why should you expect others to do so?
Ask yourself this: How much would the combat effectiveness of the US military, the world's most powerful, most technologically advanced, fighting force be diminished if it didn't use anti-personnel landmines? I think you know the answer
It's all very well for you to say that words often don't mean a thing - thanks for pointing out the obvious - but your clear implication is that the American position on landmines is right. Well, frankly, you couldn't be further from the truth.
Sometimes, to achieve the results you want you have to lead by example. The US could join the majority of the free world and stop using these indiscriminate killing machines. It chooses not to. And as a result, directly and indirectly, thousands of people worldwide suffer, and will continue to suffer for the foreseeable future. Way to go USA.
I find it laughable that you even attempt to raise the issue of gun control here. Well, that's a big can of worms but I doubt that even the most liberal individual would equate the right to bear arms with the right to leave killing devices randomly scattered around.
Lastly, I think it's wrong of you to suggest that blowing up innocent people in bus stops and discotheques is wrong (which of course it is) while neglecting to mention that blowing them up from the comfort of your M1 tank, Apache helicopter or F-16 fighter (as has happened recently in both Palestine and Afghanistan, courtesy of Israel and the US*) is equally morally reprehensible. There are always two sides to every story and the side with the Stars and Stripes on their banner isn't always right.
(Moderators, before you mod this down as a troll, re-read what I've written. It's on-topic honest, accurate and far more balanced than the parent comment.)
(*These aren't isolated incidents, these are just examples. It's always nice to know that your taxes help to kill innocent men, women and children. It's even nicer to know that when it happens, nobody is ever held accountable.)
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Yeah that's what I'm talkin bout. Laser armed Hummer conversion. All we need is the automatic crushing death claw and turbo trash compactor.
Why are they spending the money to develop a laser for clearing surface mines? Clearing and destroying visable mines is the least difficult of all mine clearing problems. Current doctrine for clearing runways involves the use of snow plows or runway sweeping equipment that are already at airports. The number of mines visable on hard surfaces are only a small proportion compared to ones in the ground or hidden. In Bosnia even paved highways were not safe as mines were placed in pot holes. As the article said, removing only the surface mines do not help the farmers that want to use the land.
The problem with non-surface mines is that they hard very hard to detect. Modern mines have very little if any metal content. Battlefields usually are riddled with shrapnel/shell casings etc which make metal detecters useless even if the mine had metal.
The Canadian Defence Research Establishment(DRES) in Sulfield Alberta is a world leader in mine detection technologies. Their latest invention is the Improved Landmine DetectorProject (ILDP). The ILDP system consists of a teleoperated vehicle carrying three scanning sensors which operate while the system is in motion; a metal detector array (MMD) based on electromagnetic induction (EMI), an infrared imager (IR), ground penetrating radar (GPR), and a confirmatory sensor which requires the system to be stationary and near a target of interest, consisting of a thermal neutron analysis (TNA) detector. Each of the sensors provides information concerning the presence (or absence) of physical properties which accompany the presence of landmines. For example, IR provides a measure of thermal anomalies, EMI reports anomalies in electrical conductivity, GPR detects anomalies in dielectric and other electromagnetic properties, and the TNA provides a measure of nitrogen content.
One the mine is identified and marked the vehicle can move on and let the lifting or destruction of the mine to the engineers.
The US should rethink its use of cluster munitions. A 30% dud rate is not very efficient. Unless they can develop a self destruct timer(which should not be that hard) these mines are going to do more harm to the civilian populations than to the bad guys. Canada first proposed the banning of anti-personnel mines and the treaty is commonly refered to as the Ottawa treaty. They also set up the Canadian Centre for Mine Action Technologies which is coordinating research into new technologies from around the world.
Instead of spending millions on lasers with limited use, the US should recognize that anti pers mines have a limited tactical role and the human cost in civilian casualties is too great to justify their use. They should be working with Canada to ban anti pers mines and stop their production.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Very few (if any) organisms are able to eat raw plastic or pure metal {,alloys). They were happy enough to find something that could eat oil slicks.
Once you breach the case, you could get something to eat the explosives inside, but once the case is breached, the chemicals would probably be leached out and/or eaten by bugs, etc ...
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
I *know*!! That was the whole point. Geeze.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.