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U.S. Developing 100-Kilowatt Laser for Strike Fighters
redwolfoz writes "New Scientist reports that American defence contractors, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, are developing a 100-kilowatt infrared laser weapon for the F35 Joint Strike Fighter that may be powerful enough to blind people on the ground, even if they are relatively far from the target."
... as they like to say, meaning, "Stuff that the weapon did other than what it was supposed to do." Like the article says, this isn't a blinding weapon; it's an honest-to-god laser gun (as opposed to the laser targeting systems we've been using for quite some time.) It's designed to blow up or disable vehicles, artillery emplacements, etc. Might people nearby be blinded by reflections? Sure, and people nearby when a bomb hits might be blinded (or worse) by shrapnel. I think this is much ado about nothing, to tell the truth. Battlefields are dangerous places. No amount of tech is going to change that.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The Geneva Convention is something diplomats agreed to during peacetime. Once a real war breaks out, it goes out the window. Both sides blatantly violate it, but only the losing side gets prosecuted for war crimes. The Geneva Convention is a piece of paper, nothing more.
How ya like dat?
Argh. I hate wading through all the "jokes" from the peanut gallery.
:
Ignoring the legal ramifications (and frankly, nobody can stop a powerful country if it wants to ignore any convention) there are two interesting effects of non-lethal weapons
1) injuring one person removes at least two people from the battlefield, because one other has to care for him. This is why it's considered more desirable to maim than kill.
2) the effects of the weapon last for decades. If you blind 10,000 enemy troops, they will then be an economic burden on their country for the rest of their lives.
Nasty thing, the military mind.
This reads as FUD to me. A bunch of unverified concerns regarding a weapon that isn't off of the drawing board.
And FYI, the purpose of the laser is to attack electronics targets not to blind civilians. Blinding is a side effect everyone is afraid of (and, as FUD is want to do, implied to be the real goal of this weapon).
Also the US, a country that has shown that even it is unwilling to disregard the Geneva Conventions, wouldn't be so stupid as to blatantly break the GC.
I know there are going to be people asking why is blinding worst than death according to the Geneva Conventions. Well the gist of the GC is that combat should be a noble enterprise: weapons should avoid unnecessary pain and suffering. It would be nice if wars could be fought kill-less. If not, then if injuries would be simple things that just disable combatants for a period yet don't leave them scarred for life. But since neither of these are too realistic, it is best to make sure that we are not just going out and crippling people (combatants or civilians) en mass. That is why biological, chemical, blinding weapons, and non-Full Metal Jacketed ammunition are illegal under the GC.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Great, we've found a loophole to create a large scale blinding weapon. We call it a weapon for destroying hardware, but we are also embarking on sister program to create special protective goggles for our soldiers. Why on earth would we need those if the danger of blinding is so small?
Lets revive the microwave beam weapons while we are at it. We'll pretend they are for disrupting electronics or radar mapping, but they also do a great job of interfering with brain activity. (You only have to head the brain a couple of degrees.) We'll make protective headgear for our soldiers.
How about poison gas? I'm sure flourine and chlorine gasses do a great job of disrupting (corroding) electronics. We already have protective gear for our soldiers for that.
Or better yet, we could use tiny, indiscriminate robot devices that detect humans and explode and cripple anyone that comes near them for years to come. Oh wait, we already have that one and refuse to join in a ban on their production and use.
I'm glad we are the good guys.
get ahold of one of these babies and point it at our aircraft from some mountain valley in Upper Allahjallabadallastan? Don't these morons ever learn? "Gee, Dr. Schnitt, what can you build us that we can use exclusively against our enemies for two years before it falls into the hands of our enemies?" Of course, now the defense industry can justify the production of a $100 Billion "Metropolitan Shield." Don't want any of the poor school kiddies getting blinded by the Red Chinese version of this.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
It's the British spelling baby... smashing!
With modern computer aiming technology, you could take out an enemy plane with one shot of this sucker (assuming it's powerful enough). You get on his tail, get him in the reticle, and boom. 1 second later he's got serious airframe damage. 4 seconds later he's a rapidly expanding ball of vapour and titanium shards.
If it's powerful and accurate enough, you could hit him before he's more than a blip on your radar screen. Just like a missile, except that all the chaff and flares in the world won't save him.
War sucks. If we put half as much $ and effort into figuring out how to cure diseases and end poverty, as we do into these fucking Dr. Strangelove, penis-waving weapons systems...
Freedom: "I won't!"
My, my... quite the little tirade you had there.
First of all, anything on that list would be easier to do with conventional weaponry. If we felt like invading Iraq and taking all their oil we wouldn't do it with a plane-mounted laser that can only fire twice without a cool-down period. We'd roll over them with tanks and machine guns. It's tradition after all.
Secondly, providing that the link that you provided wasn't a sham (Which it probably is), bombs would -still- be a more effective way to go about it. The lasers could certainly -blind- everyone in the convoy, but killing them would be more difficult. And holding one on a manaquin for long enough to get that particular toasty look from the photograph would be damn difficult indeed.
Continuing on. Depopulating the west bank with lasers. Funny thing really, the world has these things called "Nuclear armaments" they would do a far better job of clearing out an area than a mere beam of light (So far).
Your last statement is just hilarious. If some little Chinese girl were making Nikes slow, they certainly wouldn't blind her. What use is a blind worker? Perhaps they would beat her, but that is another story.
So... all in all... you made a series of poorly thought out, stupid comments. Then you tried to use emotionally charged subjects (Chinese labor, West bank territory, terrorism) to support these stupid comments, but you really didn't even do a good job of that.
Come back when you have developed a brain.
With my dying breath, I curse Zoidberg!
I have a question: how practical is this, really? The article tells us that you get two four-second shots, spaced four seconds apart, and the laser then needs 30 seconds to cool down. This is hardly what I'd call a practical battlefield weapon, especially given the modern war methodology of one well-coordinated, completely overwhelming attack. Why use a laser with such poor fire times?
The first rifles were single-shot muzzle-loaders, mostly made of wood, that required the user to mess around with gunpowder, flint and small lead balls. They were effective only over very short ranges, and it took a well trained user to get out more than one shot per minute. In the grand scheme of things, it didn't take them long to evolve from there into the 20mm Vulcan cannon firing 100 explosive rounds every second.
Intentionally blinding people or building a weapon designed to blind people is against a treaty the US ratified way back in 1999. They're saying this weapon is designed to destroy vehicles, but also happens to blind people nearby. My first thought was, "It's a weapon, weapons are supposed to hurt people. So what." Then I started thinking about a) We're building a multi-billion dollar next generation strike aircraft that blinds people? That's not very impressive. And then b) If we're advertising ourselves as the Good Guys, maybe we shouldn't be finding loopholes in international treaties. But at least it's better than completely ignoring the treaty like we're doing for Star Wars.
-B
Think about it. You go in and you can drop, depending on the fighter between 6 and 24 500-pound bombs, in more or less one go, which is going to pulverize everything in the area... Or you can loiter around as a sitting duck for anti-aircraft fire and pop off two four-second laser bursts every thirty seconds.
Think "surgical strike." A laser-guided smart bomb is fairly accurate. Most of the time the bomb lands within a few yards of the target area lit up by the laser. A laser, on the other hand, hits exactly where the laser is aimed. You don't have to worry about winds and drifting.
You also have the advantage of a beam that travels at the speed of light, versus a bomb or a missle that may take a few seconds or minutes to hit the target. Ever seen a fighter plane dodge a missile with chaff or flares or fancy maneuvers? They can't dodge a laser.
Then there's the advantage of stealth. With an IR laser, you don't see it coming, you don't see it when it gets there, and you don't see where it came from. All you see is the "poof" when it's done.
How many laser-guided bombs can an F16 carry? Compare that to the number of potential shots you'd get with the laser weapon. You don't have to worry about running out of ammo. Sure there's a cool-down time of 30 seconds between shots, but you've also got the capability to neutralize four targets in the first 1:16, and two more every 38 seconds after that. Take a couple stalth planes with a laser onboard and you could do some serious damage.
Think of the reduction in payload. Would you rather have a single (or maybe dual) laser array that weighs a couple thousand pounds or 16,000 pounds of munitions? Less weight equals more speed and more maneuverabilty, not to mention more room for other weapons or a larger fuel load to increase range.
There's a whole stack of benfits out there.
At least I hope so.
So why do you expect /. users to be in favor of trying US citizens in an unaccountable court which is not bound to follow the US Constitution or observe rules of due process and does not even have a clearly defined set of laws it is enforcing, just because the UN says so?
If `the rest of the world' felt that US citizens in US courts should not have the protections of the US Constitution, we would not then scrap those protections on account of this. Why should we be willing to do so in any other court?
And FYI, the purpose of the laser is to attack electronics targets not to blind civilians.
Excuse me while I take no comfort in this. The purpose of your war in Afghanistan was meant to oust the Taliban and disrupt Al Quaida, only it's ended up killing more innocent civilians than were murdered on Sept 11th.
It's all well and good to say that the purpose of action X is result Y, but when side results P, Q and R happen all we get is a whole lot of hot potato out of the USian hawks.
Also, as a Canadian, who watched as more Canadian soldiers died at the hands of American incompetence than Islamic fundamentalists this past year, you'll understand if I think twice about advocating getting involved in any of your conflicts.
Thanks for helping repel Communism. We've been your economic serfs for the last three decades. Debt's paid in full -- time for the US to start acting like world citizens for a change.
and commonly referred to as a fuckhead.
Been looking in the mirror recently? Everybody was being civil - untill you decided to open your mouth.
Sigh. I guess the Chomsky classes diden't teach you civil respect, for yourself, or for others.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.