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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.
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.
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...
Oh, we already know how to prevent plagues and famines. Why do you think they've been unknown in the West (including Japan and Australia) for centuries? Because liberal, democratic capitalism pretty much works. The countries that do suffer from plagues and famines on a regular basis are anarchies or feudal states (varies parts of Africa) or Communist (North Korea) or under some other form of totalitarian government (Iraq, Afghanistan, until recently).
The situation will continue until one of two things happen. One possibility is that these countries establish governments and economies like ours. The other is that one or more Western powers simply conquers them and establishes an Empire. The British tried this, and it worked remarkably well, it was only when they got bored and went home that the former provinces of the Empire reverted to poverty and neglect. The US is doing this in Afghanistan as we speak, and will probably do it in Iraq at some point too (to get back on topic, maybe using laser weapons).
There are no good answers to these questions, but a laser weapon would actually give the military a lot of new options for disabling targets without harming anyone. Let's say I want to stop a truck convoy from the air. Which do you think is the most humane approach:
1) Tear it apart with bombs.
2) Strafe it with high caliber automatic weapons
3) Systematically blow out the tires, with a small risk of blinding.
I'd take the small risk of blinding over being decimated by explosives any day. Of course this is just one example. There have many applications that can achieve military objectives while preventing risk of injury and death.
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.
Biological and chemical weapons are also banned, yet we issue gas masks and antidotes.
But more to the point, all weapons and all machinery and in fact just about everything in the world has unintended side effects. Guarding against unintnded consequences of using them is not a crime, even if the thing in question is a crime. What is wrong with that?
Zillions of actions are illegal, yet we have courts and police and jails. There are also all sorts of regulations and laws against government malfeasance, yet there are also regulations designed to punish transgressors, even to help find transgressors.
There is zilch wrong with issuing protective goggles, any more than issuing helmets and flak jackets.
And in case you still don't get it, these new lasers are not illegal, since their intended purpose is not illegal. Only their side effect is illegal, but only if it is the main effect, not a side effect.
The main effect of any weapon is to kill enemry soldiers, not civilians. Yet a side effect is to kill civilians. Shall we now also ban civilian ambulances near a war zone, or make their use illegal when responding to an unintended side effect of a war weapon?
Infuriate left and right