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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.
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.
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!"
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.
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.