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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."
Does this blind them permanently or temporarily? And what about the pain beam that they were developing?
We're Doomed
blinding people violates geneva convention
Only if that was the intended effect of the weapon. If it's a laser weapon that is designed for use against planes, anti-aircraft installations, and ground vehicles that could accidentally blind someone standing nearby, it's considered legit.
whilst I deftly dodge the obvious "Real Genius" and Austin Powers references :) ...
;) sorry...hehe
any optical engineers in the audience care to comment on the likelihood of these accidental reflections causing blindness?
to be sure, if this 100KW NIR laser was fired into the cockpit of a plane, and some of the beam were reflected into the line of sight of the crew...don't we think they've got some more immediate problems than blindness? no more flight electronics...plane going down...ahem.
I think that the article fails to address that accidental reflection would be dependent upon the material being hit. Certainly most glass substrates would reflect some, but the power behind that beam is enormous!
my math regarding optical incident and accident angles is a little rusty...can we have some factual analysis here?
"Will you and the "laser" get a friggin room?"
^^ obligitory reference
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?
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.
Now, the other thing, and IANALS (I Am Not A Laser Scientist), my understanding is that solid-state lasers are a bit fragile at the moment. How is this thing supposed to handle the G-loads experienced by a strike fighter?
Also, maybe I've been watching Real Genius a little too much, but I was always under the impression that a kilowatt laser wasn't that impressive.
There's no reason to adopt laser technology of the kind mentioned in the article, when bombs are safer for the pilots to use, have proven reliability, and are more combat-effective. This leads me to believe that this is either another money-pit for the Department of Defense, or the capabilities of this laser are grossly understated.
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So lets get this straight, under the Geneva convention its against the rules to build a weapon that can only maim or mutilate somebody, but its all right to build a weapon if it has a reasonable chance of killing a combatant?
I remember a story from the early 90's where a helo pilot was flying in the Pacific and he flew over a Russian "fishing boat." He saw a red flash and was blinded(in one eye IIRC.)
Only if that was the intended effect of the weapon. If it's a laser weapon that is designed for use against planes, anti-aircraft installations, and ground vehicles that could accidentally blind someone standing nearby, it's considered legit.
It's entertaining, but a little worrying to see how military lawyers interpret things like the Geneva Convention and other documents supposedly governing the acceptable conduct of war. One example is the use of White Phosphorous, a powerful incendiary distributed over a target area using explosives. It comes in everything from grenades to mortars to bombs. Due to the horrific burns it causes, it is prohibited for use against personnel, but can be used against materiel, i.e. equipment. This is a matter of interpretation, after all, rifles and backpacks are equipment, they just happen to often be found in close proximity to enemy soldiers!
It's important to understand that the West is supreme in battle not because of divine right or objective moral superiority, but rather because our culture has elevated warfare to its most efficient. It is debatable whether wholesale blinding of enemy soldiers (and indeed, any civilians who happen to be in the vicinity) is more or less humane than the traditional form of battle, in which some individuals are wounded and killed, but the majority, even in the defeated army, escape more-or-less unscathed.
The point is the definition of "large". The article suggests that reflections from the laser could blind from several kilometers away, which in contrast is an unlikely distance to be struck by shrapnel.
"Surgical strike" won't look so good in the PR if even on a perfect hit you end up blinding everyone looking out the window of a hospital three kilometers away.
The enemies of Democracy are
Lasers are common in the military, primarily for range finding and illuminating targets for laser-guided weapons. Although these lasers are not powerful enough to destroy objects, they can cause serious eye damage. In at least one case they were used by a Russian ship in American waters to damage the eyes of a helicopter pilot observing the vessel.
Also, the US Armed Forces have researched this issue extensively, and most aircrew helmets and visors are now designed to protect the wearer from laser-induced eye damage - accidental or otherwise.
Might people nearby be blinded by reflections? Sure, and people nearby when a bomb hits might be blinded (or worse) by shrapnel.
You seem to be sugegsting that bombs are supposed to be surgical weapons designed to disable fortifications or weapons, people are just hurt if they're in the proximity. Yet you acknowledge that bombs contain shrapnel, which are metal shards intentionally added to bombs to fill the air with flesh-rending projectiles. Also, artillery was most certainly not invented for surgical strikes, and its most active use (during the Great War) was certainly primarily against people.
My point being that the concept of humane weapons is an oxymoron, whether it be poison gas, artillery, or landmines. Too bad geeks don't rule the world, we could settle our differences using more humane means. "The former Soviet Union took possession of Uzbekistan today in a tense deathmatch culminating in an amazing respawn telefrag!"
I don't believe that the laser will be used for anti-personnel activities though. Having a cool down period of 30 seconds pretty much religates it to a more anti-vehicular or air-to-air combat status.
However, if you happen to move in front of it at the wrong moment... well, the effect would be the same as the smart bomb that it is replacing anyway.
With my dying breath, I curse Zoidberg!
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.
This is a wonderfully humanitarian vision, most likely spoken by someone who has never been near a "battlefield" such as Beirut or Kosovo or Baghdad or anywhere else Big Daddy Warbucks has spent his excess ordinance. Be thankful that the current "battlefield" is not on your doorstep, as it is for so many peoples of the world (but that's why this is much ado about nothing for you, right?)
There *is* no "battlefield", other than perhaps the human consciousness. The real "war" is between your perception of reality and that of the self-justifying State. And if your point comes down to staying away from places where state violence is being perpetrated, then it's pretty obvious just how close the State has come to winning the war.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, The Histories
"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."
The US is one of the few countries in existence not to ban the use of landmines.
Ironically, we're usually the country that ends up cleaning them all up though.
-- Scientist: You aren't going to leave me here, are you? Boagh! Thump...
Only in the most tenuous sense that it's got a metal casing wrapped round the explosive. If you bother to do ten seconds of research you'll find that the BLU-828 (to which I assume that you're erroneously referring) has its effect primarily from the massive blast of the explosion, not from shrapnel. This is what makes it so useful for clearing forest (it flattens, not shreds trees), triggering mines, and (relevant to this discussion) causing crippling injuries to distant combatants even behind or inside fortifications.
You really couldn't have picked a worse example to use to make your point.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.