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More on JSF Laser System
An anonymous reader writes "Seems Lockheed Martin has won a contract to equip future versions of the Joint Strike Fighter with a 100-kW laser. Housed in a dome within the aircraft, the laser's turret would emerge for firing [sound familiar?], and the laser itself is spec'ed to achieve airborne and ground kills at a distance of more than six miles. The problem? According to this Aviation Week article, Lockheed Martin has to figure out how to dissipate 900 kilowatts of heat. Maybe the Finnish airforce could value-add to the OEM model." We mentioned this earlier.
laser weapons, fun for the whole family!
good and good for you.
Yah gotta love 'em!
Can I get mine with extra butter and popped from 6 miles away, please?
the plot of Real Genius than a star trek episode...
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
Val Kilmer needs to step up to the challenge.
Now all they need is a 2-ton bag of popcorn...
--
CPAN rules. - Guido van Rossum
I would bet that they could rig up some sort of Athelon style heat sink, the air flow over it at Mach 1 should be able to take care of the heat. That seems the be how much air flow is required in my Dual Athelon system here.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Friday night, time to spray a bunch of raid on my DURP and get so Fahahahahahaked up!
From the article:
"To dissipate the heat, cooling loops will be employed to take heat from the laser system and transfer it into the aircraft's fuel tank, where it can be burned away."
I'm no "nuclear genius" but that doesn't sound like the safest proposition to me. I wouldn't want to try dissapating 900kw of heat into my car's gas tank... but, best of luck to you.
-dc
This could be a hell of a weapon system, if they can get it to work right. Also, I wonder what the time period is for the 100KW to be transfered to the target? If this is a pulsed laser, that'd be great, but if its a continious laser, I wonder how well it'll really work against a manuvering aircraft. Still, 5 miles up and destroying ground based vehilces would be a nice way to do things.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
I guess they forgot about the "splash" dammage effet of a "laser". If this device were to hit any sort of reflective material, the potential to permenently blind large ammounts of people is great.
Can you hammer a six inch spike through a board with your penis?
..... wrong joke.
Damn
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
i noticed two problems with the cooling strategy:
1) Tom Burris sites the enormous fuel capacity of the fighter as the coolant for the laser, but they are utilizing an area "used largely for fuel storage in the other variants" to house the laser system, so they are reducing the amount of fuel that can be used to dissipate the heat.
2) you couldn't fire the weapon on a low or empty tank without overheating.
- ian ward
They can use whatever heatsink comes out for those 4 Ghz Pentiums...
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
The next-gen JSF would feature a mini-oven and a jacuzzi for the pilot and co-pilot.
1. Make 100-kW laser.
2. ???
3. Profit!!!
When do we get the models that fits on sharks?
As powerful as a 900Kw laser is, should they mayhap try focusing on making it produce less heat, rather than attempting to simply funnel it away?
I'm sure they already investigated it, but I'd be looking to more applied material sciences to come up with a cooler-by-design laser, rather than cooler-by-dissipation. Less of a power drain that way too.
I didn't want it on the aircraft,
I wanted them mounted on the sharks!
All I want are sharks with freakin laser beams on their head!
--Dr. Evil.
http://www.theMediaBunker.com
It's 2002 people. If we don't get laser weaponry and gauss rifles soon, all of my hopes for the future will be crushed.
if they are gonna put a huge warning sticker on the front of the figher: "Do not stare directly into laser"?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
a laser you should directly look into.
hah.
Can anyone here shed some light on such a compact yet powerfull system?
Race cars are rated about 700 hp. If they produce 700 hp, then they would be dessipiting about 1400 kW heat (assuming 25% efficiency). So if a tiny car can dessipitate 1400kw, why can't a fighter plane cannot do 900 kw?
Looks like someone skunked you, pal.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
In other news, The Department of Defense awarded a billion dollar contract to Intel Corporation to work on dissipating the tremendous heat generated by the lasers. "No big deal", said an unnamed engineer close to the Pentium IV project, "it's just a matter of using a bigger fan."
... of how hot this laser could get? I'm sorry, I'm not the guy you can throw kilowatts at and know exactly how powerful (or not so powerful) a laser like that is.
Don't get me wrong, it sounds cool, but I've yet to hear of a vehicle mounted laser that could do much damage other than filling people's houses with popcorn.
I think Trinity said it best... "Dodge this".
Perhaps somebody could fill me in on the efficiency of modern laser systems, but it strikes me that they're tackling the *side-effects* of a bad design, as opposed to fixing what's wrong in the first place.
Should they not be instead be aggressively persuing high temperature superconductors (and associated compact cryogenics) as a means to avoid generating this kind of heat in the first place? This should make for a vastly more efficient laser design and permit much greater transfer of the full 900kw input electrical energy to offensive energy output.
Why build a 100kw laser when you might be able to have closer to 800kw with a superconductive coil?
By the way, jet fuel doesn't just burn "like" kerosene: Jet A is kerosene. (Though it's my understanding that certain military aircraft use a different fuel mixture than standard transport aircraft; and light aircraft generally use something like 100LL avgas, which is 100-octane low-lead fuel.)
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Dr. Evil: "You know, I have one simple request, and that is to have sharks with freakin' laser beams attached to their heads. Now evidently my cycloptic colleague informs me that that can't be done. Can you remind me what I pay you people for? Honestly, throw me a bone here!" ;)
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
...is not the question as much as the answer: not right now ;-)
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
The legendary SR-71 (high altitude mach 3 spyplane) kept the fuel stored at an extremely low temperature in the tanks (sub zero initially I believe), then pumped it through fuel lines running throughout the aircraft. The fuel would absorb the heat from the various internal components of the plane before arriving at the engines.
Would anyone care to explain why they are giving out contracts to expand on an aircraft that has YET TO FLY. I have several friends on the project, and the government is STILL using northrups YF22 for the "test bed". Seems kinda premature to give out contracts to improve a design that still doesnt work.
They need a case mod for the JSF. I suggest one of the water-cooled systems; a second non-laser-firing plane can fly alongside with the radiator. Only a few hundred meters of tubing for the water would be needed to connect the two.
Alternatively, mount a gigantic fishtank on top of the aircraft.
I don't remember any of the other weird case mods that have been posted here, for which I'm sure all of you are thankful. :-)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I'd say we should wait and see how the ABL performs before getting rid of the trusty ol' AMRAAM.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
Lockheed Martin has to figure out how to dissipate 900 kilowatts of heat
Just a quick proposal here... perhaps it may be easier to dissipate 9,000 hectowatts of heat with current technology. Even better, I think they could probably dig up a cooling fan from a overclockers outlet that'll dissipate 90,000 deciwatts of heat with ease.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
You ignorant slut! Those are Phase Cannons, which use an entirely different technology than a laser.
Enterprise is NOT Austin Powers. They do not use "LASERs"
That's it! No Xbill for a week, Michael! You must suffer for your non-geekish ways, and suffer you shall!
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Housed in a dome within the aircraft, the laser's turret would emerge for firing [sound familiar?]
I find the suggestion of a Trek parallel humorous. Of course a laser turret that emerges to fire is somehow the visionary genius of a Trek writer. But, I guess whale penises do that too. Oh well...
-Sean
Oh come ON. Anyone with a brain knows this is a rip-off of Real Genius, not Star Dreck V'ger.
"The Crossbow Project--there's no defence like a good offense"
anyone else have images in there head of a joint strike fighter being sizzled with the black spy (insert terrorist of your choice) in a broken down mig one with a mirror hanging off the tail fin grinning in the for ground.
The problem? According to this Aviation Week article, Lockheed Martin has to figure out how to dissipate 900 kilowatts of heat.
Have they asked AMD for help yet?
Maybe I'm missing something really obvious, but I don't see how it can achieve "airborne and ground kills at a distance of more than six miles" unless the air is clear. Heck, they say they need to do special tricks just to get the beam through the aircraft's own turbulence.
If the laser is powerful enough I suppose it can evaporate the fog, but... let's see, World War II "FIDO" (Fog, Intense, Dispersal Of) installtions used 75,000 gallons of gasoline. I'm not sure just how long those 75,000 gallons lasted, but I don't think it was very long. Let's say an hour. One gallon of gasoline/hr = 100,000 BTU/hr = 30 kilowatts. So a FIDO installation while in operation might have been putting out about 2000 megawatts.
On a clear day, you can kill forever?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
As a member of the National Association of Hemp Workers and Marijuana Growers Union (NAHWMGU), I must protest Slashdot's support of joint strike fighters.
The right of Hemp workers everywhere to join together and protest for better working conditions must be preserved. If you are a Hemp worker, please contact your local chapter for more information on joining the Joint Strike. Don't let Slashdot keep you down!
"to get 100 kilowatts of light out, you've got to put a megawatt of electrical power in, so somewhere along the way you've got to deal with 900 kilowatts of cooling," This sentence means nothing to an engineer. Here's why: 900 kilowatts over 1 millisecond is 1/4 of a watthour. A trivial amount of energy to dissipate. Over 1 second, it's 250 watthours, no big deal, but not trivial. Over 1 hour, it's 900 kilowatt hours, a very big deal. Without time, it's just big impressive numbers for the ignorant masses.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
...Cause that's the difference between the good and bad guys.
...to rapidly dissapate heat by sending an electrical charge through a carrier that is gradually tapering into different alloys of metal? It cools one end while increasing heat in the other. Does anyone know wtf I'm trying to think of?
My blog can kick your blog's ass
I would think the simple solution would be to pump the heat directly to the afterburners so that after firing a laser would could be very easily traced back to your plane (just follow the straight line), you could use the burst of speed to flit away.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
It will be quite an effective weapon if put into use, though I think it will be far from what some people are thinking it as being a magic weapon that can instantly disable vehicles from afar. Depending on the type of vehicle, the laser would have to be fired for different amounts of time, possibly long enough to endanger the safety of the attacking aircraft more than usual. Clouds and fog would also absorb some energy if not completely obscure the laser (not to be confused with the refraction caused by air mentioned in the article, cured by adapative optics) at times.
Somewhat unrelated to my main post, I wonder to what degree they intend for the laser to damage vehicles? Are they talking softening of parts of the airframe of an aircraft allowing for aeroelasticity to take its toll, or ruptured fuel tanks?
maybe they should try water cooling.
SCREW FLANDERS
Now *that's* hot.
Well, in Sundiver, the book you remember, heat is absorbed and used to generate power for the laser - the key being superefficient power generation, which we don't have today.
air friction at high speeds is a big problem that is why titaninum is used because aluminim would melt
Take notice, all of you overclocking fanatics!
This is your golden opportunity to take that experience in getting an extra 8% performance from your CPU and putting it to use in a cool-as-hell defense application
Your knowledge of conduction, convection, peltiers, and liquid nitrogen cooling systems FINALLY has a greater purpose than bigger numbers at POST and on Sandra!!
"Lockheed Martin has to figure out how to dissipate 900 kilowatts of heat."
;-)
No problem, my overclocked Athlon produces about that amount of heat. Just buy a big CPU cooler
Along, along time ago, in a galaxy not so far away...
There was a small planet called Earth, and on that planet there was an even smaller country called USA that once signed an international treaty that agreed to outlaw the usage of lazer weapons. Do the America government ever honour their obligations?
Once again we have more of this U-S-A chanting. In about 10 years time every country in the world will just be another star on the American flag.
inventing new toys so that the alpha males can kill the innocent
OK - 1 Watt = 4.19 calories
.21 degrees Celcius.
So 900,000 W / 4.19 = 214,797 calories
1 calorie warms 1 gram of water 1 degree Celcius
So 900 Kw would raise 1000 Kg of water
Even if the fuel had half the heat capacity as water, it would still serve as a huge heat sink for the laser.
Pacifist paratroopers yell, "Ghandi!" when they jump.
This project is utter foolishness. If we figure out how to operate a 1mW 6.2 mile laser on a fighter, that makes it portable enough to fit on a truck or tracked vehicle. With a greater percentage of a groud vehicle being able to be committed to power systems, a ground-based mobile laser will be ablt to outpower an airborne version, and likely be a LOT cheaper.
Outranged outgunned outnumbered airplanes are NOT what we want. We are trading decades or our airpower in for a few measly years of SAM and ground strike invulnerability. This direction is NOT smart for us.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
be solved by flying faster and faster? And I mean really fast.
Take a look at the good old Concorde
I totally just got a flashback to austin powers there. I don't know why, it just seems apt.
Dr. evil and his obsession with "LAYSERS" (yes, I did the quote unquote finger thing when I wrote that).
kinda like in the new one where his son gives him the sharks with lasers on their frickin heads.
or the laser that he was gonna use to blow up the earth.
funny shit.
Or how about some food aid? Or what about sending over some real money to be used for education? Did you ever think of that you war mongerers
The JSF is designated as the F-35 Thought you'd be interested.
Double Kill!
Head Shot!
JSF is on a killing spree!
graspee
I had braces for 2 years and could pickup some FM radio stations when I was in certain places in town. Kinda funny for a bit, then REALLY REALLLY FRIGGING ANNOYING. I know that was off topic from the subject, but not to the post I am replying to.
Chemical reactions I think. I don't think there's any electrical system involved--it has to do with a chemical reation directly creating a laser light. But I could be right.
The answer? Libertarianism and the (related) abolishment of intellectual property. IP has limited all forms of science, and weapon control has stifled private research into weapons. Do you think the government has reason to do cool stuff? If these two things happened we'd have both these in a matter of months.
Same thing with the XB70 Valkyrie The Great White Bird
"Heat is the major enemy of speed. Caused by the friction of cutting through the air, heat has limited the top speed of modern aircraft (such as the F-15) far more than power. Beyond Mach 2.5, friction increases at an ever-growing rate (for comparison, an SR-71 operating at Mach 2.2 heats up to about 275 degrees, but at Mach 3.2, skin temperatures rise to almost 900 degrees!). The same aerodynamics that gave the XB-70 so little drag helped minimize heat buildup. The hottest portions of the Valkyrie, her nose and horizontal splitter, reached a temperature of only 625 degrees during Mach 3 flight, with the majority of the XB-70s skin at a temperature of just 450 degrees! Equipment was placed in the fuel tanks, which acted as heat sinks. As the fuel soaked up the heat from the fuselage, it was drawn into the engines and burned away, leaving the cooler fuel behind. At the same time, it had to be replaced with nitrogen gas. The temperatures inside the tanks were high enough that just two percent oxygen would have caused the fuel to burst into flames -- a decidedly undesirable event."
Just 450 degrees?
For some people, this is an acceptable way to relate to other people. If you don't like other people, just kill them. Preferably from a long way away.
It's profitable, too, for a small number of people, because the weapons are secret and therefore the profits can be kept secret.
It's an adult video game. Except that you don't get to play. You, if you are an American taxpayer, only get to pay.
There are a lot of people who would like to kill other people if it is free and they don't have to go to prison. It's a kind of mental illness. For more about this, see What should be the Response to Violence?
Violence tends to cause other violence. Mostly hidden elements of the U.S. government are causing the U.S. to be a target of violence. For example, the U.S. government (taxpayers) spend more than $900 every year for every man, woman, and child in Israel so that Israelis can buy U.S.-made weapons to kill Arabs. It's a way of transferring money from the taxpayers to the weapons makers. It seems likely that this will result in another holocaust; I doubt the Arabs are kidding when they say they will never surrender.
Every day in the U.S., it is possible to see American leaders on television calmly discussing the killing of other people. Of course, they have come to believe that they will never be the target.
I accidentally posted this anonymously before, so here it is now, with my name on it.
Perhaps a tin-foil hat would actually be some use here.
:)
It'll be amusing when finds that you can beat a frickin big "laser" with a fickin big mirror
All planes do. Temperature at high altitudes is usually below 0 C, and naturally they don't waste enegry keeping the fuel warm and cozy.
Fuel-oil and fuel-hydraulic heat exchangers are common and vital to cooling engine oil, gearboxes, and hydraulic systems. The F-16 is a good example of their efficiency since they make external radiators unnecessary. This technique is very old news. (BTW one reason for coloring hydraulic fluid is so that dilution is readily apparent in the reservior sight glass. The next step is sniffing a sample for fuel leaking from a cracked exchanger.)
how to dissipate 900 kilowatts of heat
That's easy. Screw the 100 kilowatts of laser, just nail them with a 900 kilowatts heat ray.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
"The Iraqi biochemical weapons factory is ray-shielded, so you'll have to use proton torpedoes."
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Star Trek, here we come... Mr Worf, arm phasers!
I think the best part about a country having powerful weapons is their ability to NOT use them. Keeps evil powers in check (of course, evil is a subjective term, but anyways...). Same with nuclear weapons. Einstein basically told U.S. representatives, "yes, splitting atoms will work, but don't do it. It has disasterous consequences." Well, they didn't exactly listen. But I hope the ability to develop new weapons comes with the mindset to not use them.
I would prefer to see these laser weapons go from fighter jets to medical surgery. Imagine the medical uses for this. Small, precise cuts, no sterilization necessary.
Actually, the more difficult problem is keeping the laser focused due to the turbulent boundary layer near the surface of the aircraft. Regardless of how powerful the laser is, if it is not focused, it will not be destructive. All the swirls and eddies of the air flow across the aperture for the laser distort, and therefore defocus the beam.
Actively sensing the state of the flow in order to correct for this is a major challenge from a feedback controls perspective.
Doesn't this new toy violate the Geneva Convention?
Aren't there provisions against blinding weapons?!!!
...really, really big heatsink/dual fan combo?!? It'll work, dammit!
Spread the RC luvin'
A 100 kw laser seems ver doubtful.
... when I was undergoing major surgery, under local anesthesia, during part of the procedure a medical laser was used. I asked the doctor how much power his laser output. His answer: I usually run about 5 watts, sometimes as high as 10 watts. Its capable of running up to 60 watts. He then said, "See that hole burned in the concrete wall?" of the surgery center, about a dozen feet away. I looked up. That happened when the service technician accidently operated the laser at the 60 watt setting and aimed it at the wall.
Consider
Unless the surgeon was putting one over on me, it does not seem to take a huge amount of power for a surgical laser to burn tissue, or for that matter, a concrete wall. It is a highly focused beam, of course.
A 100 kw laser seems like (bad pun) overkill. Besides, generating a 100kw worth of electricity is a bit of issue in an aircraft, as well as dissapating a huge amount of excess heat from doing that.
Seems doubtful to me.
But then, perhaps this started from a misquote in the media. Just last week, a Wall Street Journal report wrote that hair dryers run at "18 watts" (She should have said 1,800 watts). But you get the idea.
LFS. Have you built your system today?
Look to the people who make heat sinks for Athlons.
A med-laser? What's that, 5 heat per turn?
The XL engine alone has 10 heat sinks, enough to mount two of those beasts... ; )
</obligatory MechWarrior reference>
Sigh... I've been watching DoD pour money down these stupid projects for years now. While the Army has been chasing ridiculous mega-howitzers and us dumb jarheads have been forgetting to check the hydraulics on our Ospreys, we've managed to procure a strike fighter that doesn't satisfy any branch's needs.
There's a strange doublespeak going on in military procurement (yeah, I know, what else is new? But this is more than usual): OT1H, everybody is supposed to be stripping down for the "new wars" we'll be fighting -- the Army is re-strengthening the regiment; the Corps is retasking the brigade -- OTOH, we're still purchasing large, centrally maintained, slow, high-tech "warfighting solutions" that were really only supposed to prove our phalli were bigger than the Soviets'.
It makes a little more sense when you remember that procurement for all these systems began ~15 years ago, when it looked like JSFs and 200mm howitzers and Ospreys were a good idea (then again, a non-crashing Osprey would probably be great for brushfire deployments).
But regardless, every dollar that gets spent on Operation Crossbow Redux and other toys is money that doesn't get spent training soldiers how to comb Himalayan caves for crippled one-eyed fanatics on dialysis or Marines how to spot suicide bombers paddling towards battleships in stolen Zodiac boats. I know Marines who still have Korean war-surplus deuce gear... though at least they finally updated last year the 1969 vintage camouflage I mucked around in my whole tour.
Another example of why our decades-long military procurement process is broken.
All's true that is mistrusted
(* Or what about sending over some real money to be used for education? *)
Yeah right. Like the Taliban School of Terror.
The gun systems on the Comanche worked exactly the same way.
Prior art, bitch.
Thermal. Shutdown. Initiated.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Thats a lot of heat!
900 Kw? That's only about 1200 horsepower.
I wonder if they could dump it into the engine intake air, for a boost? Or just wrap an extra turbopump around a radiator to get an extra couple hundred horses worth of thrust (and a free fan for the radiator) whenever the laser fires.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The surgical laser may have done this, but it would have been at very close range. You have to remember that the aircraft laser would be operating over distances of 6 miles. That's a lot farther than the surgical, and despite laser focus, probably still a certain margin for losing power. If they want to melt tanks/troops from high altitudes at a distance, they'll need a little more than a high-power surgical laser.
RESTRICTIONS ON THE USE OF CERTAIN CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS.
o t4 .pdf
Plese read this:
http://www.unog.ch/frames/disarm/distreat/ccwpr
Does anyone give a F#$@ about this?
Usage of these weapons is actually restricted by international treaty. The reason is that high intensity light systems could be used to permanently blind the foot soldiers, and that is considered unsportsman like warfare. Sorta like the way nukes are considered unsportsman like too! But lasers, like any other bright light, does't just kill people. They can blind them, and permanently too. That is considered to be off limites. Now melting the armor on a vehicle is fair game, and if you happen to be looking in the laser and manage to not get your skin instantly burned (not likely), but you go blind; your fair game cuz you were sitting on an legitimate target (the armor vehicle). But swooping down on populated areas, and then sweaping the crowded areas with bright lights is bad.
The treaty was a bit unclear, and unfourtunatly I don't have the deatials, but as I recall it might be offlimites to use the laser to blind enemy pilots too. As in shining the beam inot he cockpit of the enemy jet! I guess it depends ont he situation, and the combat senarios.... but we are realyl treading new ground here!
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
why not just water cool the laser? have a continous flow of water like they do on industrial laser, the h2o could easily be cooled through the ram intake at speeds of a couple hundred mph.. just use thin copper pipes...
How superefficient does it need to be?
All nuclear powerplants are basically steam engines.
This could be a solar steam engine, where the steam is driving a series of turbines that power the laser.
I guess it depends how close to the sun they're getting...
conversely, If you look closely at rocket nozzles, you will see rings abound. these rings carry liquid O2 / H2 and heat them up (via the exhaust) before the enter the combustion chamber.
(back ot the subject)
as far as the laser is concerned, automobiles routinely rid themselves of that much heat via conventional radiators. I do not see this as a *big* problem, especially considering the atmosphere is about -40 where the aircraft operates. (granted, at a high mach the aircraft heats up due to drag -- in fact SR11 _extends_ 11 inches due to this heat!) -- to back up my claims: a gasoline engine is usually ~20% efficient. with a shaft output of 300HP (your regular sports car) your radiator / exhaust gets rid of ~ 1200HP of heat, which translates to just around 900kw.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Use a sterling engine.
oh wait thats a dumb idea.
> You can't negotiate with people who want nothing more than to see you dead.
:)
Yup, that is why divorce trials are such a bitch.
Now I might be a bit of a conservative scientist, but it seems to me in other situatiosn the chance to convert that heat energy into tangabel other forms of energy would be a good oportunity. For example, the heat could be used to warm he jet fuel just prior to it's insertion into the combustion chamber, thus increasing its efficiency of the combustion. Warm fuel burns more efficient than cold fuel!
There also exist gell packs that can absorb heat and convert it to electrical power. Not that the JFS is in short supply of electricity, with its turbo jet engines spinning shafts that then connect to static generators... but wouldn't it be possible to recycle some of the spent power back into the laser?
If heat is such a problem, it would seem to me the laser could only be used in shorts bursts. Like less than a second, and no more than 1-1/2 second.
Not to sound harsh, or critical... but 100 kilo-watts of laser isn't very impressive either. The fun lasers are in the giga-watt range. High megawatt, and gigawatt lasers are used for welding, so I don't see this being much use except to maybe disable the sensor systems, or blind the enemy troops. In fact, I doubt 100 kilowatt is the real spec being used. I would venture that a much more powerfull, and secret, version is being developed.
The best place to stick a laser is on C41 type plane. In other words a big plane that coudl house multiple laser mirrors, and not have to worry about the heat issues sicne they coudl just pass some of the thin air over the heat exchangers. That woudl be a good replacment for the giant gattlin guns used on the place, not to mention replacing all the ammo they need to carry. Laseres, after all, are very reusable!
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
I wonder how they're going to avoid friendly fire and by-stander hits. A laser will travel indefinately. If you miss your target, it's going to keep on going until it hits SOMETHING, be it a friendly tank, personnel, a forest, a city or innocent villagers.
It's like a gun that shoots nine bullets backward for every bullet it shoots forward.
Ah, you say, but they'll design the fighter to deal with the heat load. Yes, well, you could wear a bulletproof vest while using the nine-bullets-backward gun; that still doesn't make it a good idea.
There's no denying that lasers are more interesting than bullets and missiles, but I've seen no evidence that they're more useful.
"Real Genius." Rent it. Also, now available on DVD.
What kind of rate of fire and target acquisition rate will there be? If they're sufficiently good, this might end up as a point defense weapon(IE: a weapon designed to shoot down incoming missiles) as well.
-- juju_ben. "You dance just like the angels dancing on the head of the pin jabbed into my minds eye."
Yes, you are right. And if you want a very intense laser, you use a nuclear bomb to pump it. This was part of Reagan's "Star Wars" program.
Dude, all I want to do right now is fucking kill you.
Another solution would be to store a small
amount of super cooled Beer stored as a Bose-Einstein Condensate. (No matter that they haven't
yet cooled beer to a nano-kelvin yet..)
After you shoot the laser beam at the bad guys,
the heat is shunted to the Bose Einstein Condensate
which becomes Cold Beer!
It's Miller Time!
Ross Youngblood
Christianity is a religion of violence, historically spread through military conquest. The Catholic Church basically offers two choices for the "pagan:" conversion or death.
Jesus Christ can now take his place beside Charles Manson, another leader of a dangerous and bloody cult.
Jesus (and Mohammed) your grasp of religious history is awful. Islam's history of violence pales in comparison to the millions killed in the various heresies, pogroms and Inquisitions the Holy Roman Apolostic Cathlolic Church has either directed or tacitly supported since the Council of Nicaea. Men were burned alive at the stake for merely saying that Jesus may have been part human and part divine; entire cities were sacked and burned because the inhabitants dared to have a different definition of the Trinity than those in power. The rise of Islamic Fundamentalism dates from the late 1700s. The rise of Christian Fundamentalism can be dated from the end of the Roman Empire, when the academies of the ploytheistic religions were forced to shut down.
All religions have been turned to the uses of power and violence. Singling out Islam is part of the problem.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
But wait, just six months ago, didn't slashdot have a posting about Borealis, whose flagship product (CoolChips) was just tested by Boeing and was shown to be real? MMMMM.. 900 KW of heat, recovered at, oh, %50.. 450kw of power, with which one could do just about anything you like (diode laser array.. plasma manipulation of airflow.. pick something).
I am going to build a giant Laser Beam !
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
On a vehicle that uses heated gas expansion for propulsion (fancy name for a jet), It seems like 900kw of extra heat could be used in place of an afterburner.
Just find a fluid that does a phase change efficiently between the melting temperature of the laser's mechanism and say just a little hotter than the jet's exaust plume.
Liquid boron or sulfer ought to do the trick.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Yes, but the christians seem to have grown a bit in the last few thousand years. They dont seem to be killing people in the name of religion anymore, like the muslims are.
Now, the priests just rape little boys..... wait, what was the point I was trying to make?
Reflective material for traffic signs has pits shaped like the corner of a cube. 90-degree angles, but three of them instead of two. So, any incoming light makes three bounces and exits more or less exactly back in the same direction from which it came.
The same stuff is used for front projection visual effects as first seen in 2001. A half silvered mirror bounces a projected movie onto the scene, on-axis with the camera. The reflective material bounces the movie back into the camera aperture.
Right, except Brin seems to have this notion that whenever a large laser is fired, it just sorta sucks heat out of the surrounding air to power itself, even without being set up with any special heat-pump apparatus.
True, in Sundiver, he made it sound like there was a special heat-pump setup (though I don't recall him describing it in enough detail to be sure), but in Heaven's Reach, the terrans rediscover the same trick a few centuries later to get out of a vaguely similar situation (and it's strongly suggested that the Galactics hadn't come across it in a billion years). This time, he definitely implies that the laser is sucking up ambient heat, because the brainstorm follows a character saying/thinking something like "wow, that communication laser sure draws a lot of power -- you can feel the room temperature drop a few degrees when you turn it on." Uh, sure, dude.
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
Well, it's interesting you should mention whale penises. They "emerge to fire" for exactly the same reasons that this turret would. If they were sticking out all the time, they'd disrupt the animal's streamlined shape, and also could get damaged. Funny how effective natural selection is, really...
Freedom: "I won't!"
You are very sadly informed. Read the Old Testament. There are countless references to the Jews killing entire towns. that is everyone, men, women and children. And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword . . . (Joshua 6:21) Then Horam, king of Gezer, came to help Lachish; and Joshua smote him and all his people, until he had left him none remaining. And they took Eglon, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein. (Joshua 10:32-34) And they took Hebron, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and the king thereof, and all the cities thereof, and the souls that were therein; he left none remaining. (Joshua 10:37) For the indignation of the Lord is upon all nations, and His fury upon all their armies: he hath utterly destroyed them, He hath delivered them to the slaughter. Their slain also shall be cast out, and their stink shall come up out of their carcasses, and the mountains shall be melted in their blood. (Isaiah 34:2-3) But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, (Deuteronomy 20:16) yeah this is a group of people bent on peace, they worship genocide. And FYI, the state of Israel was forced upon the Arabs. It was created without their consent and against their will. But hell, it worked with the Africans, American Indians and dozens of other non industrialized people and they all accpeted their fate, why are those pesky arabs whining about.
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...
Or do I have it wrong here?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
It's like giving someone a nerf gun incase they decide to turn on you.
Islam is a religion of violence, historically spread through military conquest. The Koran basically offers two choices for the "infidel:" conversion or death.
Dead wrong.
Go find a copy of the Koran (hint, it's on-line several places) and find me a single passage that says unbelievers must be killed. Guess what: it ain't in there.
Quite the opposite. What you'll find is lots of statements about how Allah will punish the unbelievers, and quite a few that tell the believers to take care not to incite the unbelievers, but to live alongside them in peace, unless the unbelievers try to stop the Muslims from worshipping Allah.
And history bears this out as well. Historically, Islam is a far less violent religion than Christianity. For example, consider Moorish Spain. Although the conquest of Spain was violent (that being the accepted manner of expanding your territory), the Muslims at the time did *not* force the Christians and Jews to convert. In fact, from the point of view of the Jews, the Moorish occupation was a golden age, one of the few times that they were pretty much completely free of oppression. Not only were they not killed, or forced to convert, both Jews and Christians managed to gain high ranks within the government.
When the Christians finally managed to eject the Moors, *they* gave all non-believers three choices: convert, leave or die. And they often neglected to offer the second option. You may have heard of a little bash called the "Spanish Inquisition".
I'm not slamming Christianity; I'm Christian. I'm making the point that the teachings of Islam are *not* inherently violent. Everyone knows that Christ preached turning the other cheek, and yet supposedly Christian people have repeatedly perverted his doctrine. Islam teaches that violence against another man is only permitted when that man is trying to stop you from following Islam.
There are a some violent and despicable people in the world who happen to be Muslims and have chosen to use the rhetoric of "Jihad" (specifically, the lesser Jihad, which is the fight for freedom from religious oppression) to justify their hatred and their murders. The term doesn't fit the application, but that has never bothered propagandists.
You can't negotiate with people who want nothing more than to see you dead.
True, but keep in mind that the number of Muslims who feel that way about Israel is small relative to the Muslim population. Don't try to smear all Muslims with that same tar. Most of the Arab world has sympathy for their Palestinian brethren, but that's a far cry from wanting to see all Israelis (or all non-believers) dead.
As for the Israel/Palestine conflict, neither side is totally right, and neither side is totally wrong. The Palestinians have a legitimate beef about wanting their land back, but they should have figured out by now that they're not going to get all of it back and been content to accept some of the numerous offers to share. Their use of terror tactics is despicable in the extreme. On the Israeli side, their deep hatred ensures that there will never be any kind of peaceful settlement, and they're guilty of frequently applying excessive and indiscriminate force. Israel was the embattled underdog, trying to pull something good together after thousands of years of oppression but they've turned into a bully that causes many of their own problems by overreacting.
In short, it's a mess caused by hatred and selfishness on both sides, and although the debate is often wrapped in religious clothes, the core problems are racism and land, not doctrine.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
isnt it ironic, that the israelies are treating the arabs the same way the germans treated the jews? You would think that the jews would be the ones with the utmost wisdom and knowledge and super forsight from history to know that what they should do is intermix, and be as one.
Its all really quite sad, and to hell with it all, its their problem and not ours, and its up to them to fix it. Give the arabs a state, just like the world game the jews a state. If they cant understand it then they are as bad as AH. him self.
Hey, just give a a few E's and LSD to every one and party one that would fix it all.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
There is a very good reason for the ban on weapons which intentionally blind soldiers and it is exactly as you say in your joke-it IS a humane ban.
This kind of bans originally stem from the horrible scenes during the gas attacks during the first world war. During this time chlorine and mustard gas were used in and attempt to break the stalemate in the trench war. As a result large numbers of soliders who survived became crippled or blinded. A number of these solider had to stay blinded and with severe skin and lung damage among the dead in the battlefield before being found, many starved to death before they were found.
Being blinded and left alone in a battlefield filled with enemy soliders, landmines, razorwire and many other threats will often be a death sentence. Compared to being killed instantly by a bomb being blinded without immediate rescue will often be the equivalent of a quick execution compared to torture followed by a random or slow death.
All in all intientionally blinding weapons are not something a civlised society should use even on the few occasions when it is forced into war.
Whether tihs affects the mentioned airplane is another matter.
"The problem? According to this Aviation Week article, Lockheed Martin has to figure out how to dissipate 900 kilowatts of heat."
All they need is an eximer frozen in it's excited state. It's like lasing a stick of dynamite.
Very large power? Portable? Limited firing time? Unlimited range? All you'd need is a large spinning mirror and you could vaporize a human target from space.
Just dump the excess heat into the aircrafts fuel
//Pingo
via a heat exchanger.
Preheating of fuel gives a really awesome boost to the Jetengine.
--- Linux or FreeBSD, it's like blondes or brunettes. I like both. ---
I assume the technology is based on well understood
nonliner optics where a laser can be pumped by a lower frequency beam. At high photon concentration ad double photon absorbtion event can take place where the photons are halft the wave length of the one required for single photon absorbtion. This is normally explained as one photon causing excition to a "virtual" very short lived state which can then absorb the second photon. Note it's still quantinized its just that
most people don't know that the absorbtion frequencies are actually as set 1 1/2 1/4 etc.
Ive never heard of the 1/4 absortion being triggered since that requires 4 photons to be absorbed almost simutanously. I do not know if higher frequences can be halved say double frequence absorbtion I suspect they can.
Any after that long arguement
Infrared is frequency doubled to visible light then dissipated via laser cooling.
What's the point of using an F-35 to pick off infantry troups one by one?
Well! Maybe this will answer that question!
The stuff you wrote above is pure nonsense. Here's my proof.
How many countries did Japan invade before and during WWII? How many people did they torture, murder, experiment on? How many women did they rape until they bled to death?
Now, ever since we took up the sword, and made it our business to kill as many Japanese as we could, and ever since we destroyed their navy, their colonies, and turned two of their industrial cities into smoking glass, how many countries have they invaded? How many people have they tortured and murdered and experimented on? How many women have they raped?
In fact, today, wouldn't you rank Japan as one of the most peaceful societies in the world -- perhaps even more peaceful than the USA? Gee, I wonder why that is... Just 60 years ago, they were considered by all of their neighbors as blood-thirsty conquerors and barbarians. Now they are a peace-loving and kind nation. What happened? Violence happened, in an unprecedented scale.
See, violence IS the answer in certain situations. It was the answer in the Revolutionary War, it was the answer in the Civil War, it was the answer in World War I and World War II, and it will be the answer to some of the world's worst problems in the future. Violence is also the answer to Al Qaeda, Saddam Husseim, and dare I mention it - Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists. Violence -- or the threat of it at least -- brought down the Berlin Wall, and violence is a force that brings North Korea to the tables, and is making China rethink its foreign policies.
Ever since ancient times, man has known that you literally have to fight fire with fire. If a man is terrorizing someone, the best way to handle it is to kick the crap out of him, or to end his life. That is all still applicable today. You couldn't negotiate with bloodthirsty tyrants then, and you still can't today.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
You misunderstand the bible. Do you know who or what Molech is?
Let me describe for those of you who don't know.
Molech is a brass idol that is hollow inside. He has outstretched arms. You are supposed to build a fire inside until the entire statue becomes very hot. The way to worship Molech is then to take a baby, preferrably a male, and "pass it through" Molech. That means to put your baby on the searing brass. The baby then is burnt up into charcoal.
There are other gods the natives worshipped, but Molech is the most disturbing.
When God gave Moses and Joshua, and later leaders of the Israelites orders to murder and destroy whole cities, he did for the same reason he flooded the earth: they were beyond help.
You can't convince someone who loves to burn his babies up to change his ways. If you can't change him, what chance does their children have of becoming much better than their parents?
And so, you have to start over, with a clean slate.
Remember, when the Israelites began to serve Molech and the other gods, God sent down disease, destruction, and ultimately brought the Babylonians in to remove them.
Sounds fair to me. God didn't favor the Israelites because they had a cool name -- he liked them because they were a good people. They enjoyed raising their children and building farms, and they despised murder, rape, and baby-burning. When that all changed, God didn't seem to care whether they died or not. In fact, he encouraged foreign leaders to bring their armies down and purge the land from the Israelites.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
It seems to me that what you said is not proof, but it is interesting to think about.
The situation with Japan was unusual, it seemed to me, because of General McArthur. He used his power to help Japan rebuild. (My father was one of the U.S. military people who helped in the re-construction.) Basically, General MacArthur was Japan's first democratic leader.
Japan has been peaceful, not because of war, but because of an amazing amount of creative and intensive charity after the war. Also, the Japanese are culturally pre-disposed to accept one strong, fatherlike, leader.
Notes from Google: General MacArthur, the founder of today's 'prosperous' Japan says "... he had achieved countless reforms such as educational reform, farmland reform, zaibatsu dissolution, dissolution militarism, promotion of democracy and tax reform tax reform as well as signing on battleship Missouri. It is no exaggeration to say that he was the founder of today's prosperous Japan."
This article tells a little more: Japan Under American Occupation.
The cultural disposition of the Japanese to accept an older leader helped them accept W. Edwards Deming, an American quality control expert. See History of Japan's Quality movement which says,
"The quality movement in Japan began in 1946 with the U.S. Occupation Force's mission to revive and restructure Japan's communications equipment industry. General Douglas MacArthur was committed to public education through radio. Homer Sarasohn was recruited to spearhead the effort by repairing and installing equipment, making materials and parts available, restarting factories, establishing the equipment test laboratory (ETL), and setting rigid quality standards for products (Tsurumi 1990). Sarasohn recommended individuals for company presidencies, like Koji Kobayashi of NEC, and he established education for Japan's top executives in the management of quality. Furthermore, upon Sarasohn's return to the United States, he recommended W. Edwards Deming to provide a seminar in Japan on statistical quality control (SQC)."
See also, Japan's Secret: W. Edwards Deming.
As I said, the charity toward Japan after the war was extensive , amazingly so.
Christianity should be given some credit here because the idea of being charitable to Japan apparently came from Christian principles. (This is not meant to be a religious statement. It is only a cultural statement.)
The charity was even more remarkable because Japan had had a really, really rotten outbreak of mental illness that causes Japanese to be disliked in countries surrounding Japan even today. There were certainly many reasons why people would allow themselves to feel negative toward the Japanese.
OK, we have now wandered far, far afield, but...
A year ago, I would have agreed with you completely. In fact, your reply is so reasonable and lucid, I still have a hard time disagreeing with it.
And I will agree that my reaction here is born more from emotion than logic. I teach at a college in Japan, where I watched the exultation of the Muslim community after 9/11. Maybe it was the assorted bomb threats that got phoned in to the registrar's office in Arabic-accented Japanese that pushed me over the edge. (It's a secular college that was founded by Christian missionaries long, long ago.)
Having lived abroad for almost ten years now, and marrying a woman whose native language is not English, I've lost that subtle racism that most liberals, and I am one, have -- the idea that people born in the third world somehow have an excuse not to behave in a civilized fashion.
Looking at my own history, my grandparents lived in Appalachia, without benefit of indoor plumbing or electricity. Possums formed a staple of their diet. Somehow, I don't recall them chanting in the streets for anyone's blood.
France helped my country throw out the British, and they did it for purely selfish reasons. Without the French, it's entirely likely that Washington would not have survived. After 1776, France didn't stick around and send aid and workers to help us "nation build." With their purposes accomplished, they got out. You know what? I'm still grateful for the help. Left to our own devices, fractious and quarreling colonies somehow managed to have a meeting and come to an agreement about how to live together. We did it, France did it, England did it. Australia did it, India did it.. We're not unique. The list of people who have found themselves in chaos, had a meeting, made agreements and lived by them is quite a long one. When they do, we refer to it as a "civilization."
Afghanistan could have done the same thing. We built the mujahadeen purely so the Soviets would have a thorn in their side, and then we left. Fine. There's not a reason in the world that the Afghani people couldn't have had a meeting and worked it out.
Instead, they chose to run around the streets beating their women and staging public executions. They wasted time in pointless feuding and religious nonsense that threw away their one chance at a viable nation. They submitted to the rule of the Taliban, despite the fact that they had just ejected a far greater power, the Soviets.
Currently, the provisional government of Afghanistan has a myriad of problems. No agriculture, no utilities, no infrastructure of any kind. They apparently can't do anything, but theyve somehow managed to reinstitute the Office of Vice. Once again, religious police walk the streets of Afghanistan making sure women wear their veils.
Sure, Cletus, we ain't got no food, no water, no plumbin', but dammit, them wimmen are wearin' them veils.
The original poster argues that this is somehow America's fault, that the 3,000 dead in New York deserved to die.
Complete and utter bull. The Arabs are not the only people with grievances. If anyone should be bombing American cities, it should be the Cherokee and Lakotas. Somehow, I don't see the Native Americans doing anything more violent than holding sit-ins at Alcatraz. Furthermore, historical grievances do not excuse atrocities. If they did, then by all rights my family should start bombing London and assassinating anyone named "Campbell."
But the Arabic world in general is hardly a charity case. They've been flooded with oil money for almost five decades now. A reasonable people would have taken the oil money and built prosperous nations.
I still can't get over the fact that the first request of the Kuwaiti ruling family from the Army core of Engineers was to rebuild the royal palace, complete with solid-gold faucets, even before basic life-saving services had been restored.
I'm sorry. Muslim behavior has pushed me over the edge on this one. The dancing in the streets after 9/11. The joy that I saw among the Muslims here at the sight of people jumping from windows. The utter and complete lack of condemnation from the Muslim community until only recently. The meeting in London last month "celebrating" 9/11 and vowing to bring England under Sharia law. The fact that the Daniel Pearl murder video is reported to be a best-seller in the Arabic world. The Palestinian infant dressed up as a suicide bomber. (I don't care if the black-oil aliens from the X-Files have taken over. There is no excuse for the babarism of teaching children to blow themselves up.)
I look at the Middle East and I see Isreal, with no oil money but significant American support. I see a democracy with reasonable people who have gone from decimation to prosperity after WWII. I see Taiwan, with greater problems, accomplishing the same thing.
Then I see the Arab countries, awash in oil money, ruled by feudal lords, stricken by poverty, beating their women, chanting in the streets for blood, supporting people whose main goal in life is the death of civilians.
I use to make excuses for these people, but no longer. It's long past time for these people to grow up, let their women come out from under the rock, and step into the sunshine. It's time for the Muslim community to live like human beings and quit making excuses for the homicidal maniacs in their midst.
Imagine the response from the pulpits across Christendom if Jerry Falwell had blown up the great Buddhist Temple in Nara, claiming he was following the Old Testment instruction to smash idols, claiming he was drawing vengeance for the thousands of martyred Christians here, including the American pilots who were vivisected just up the road from me in WWII. I'd begin every day here by saying: "Hi. I'm from America. I'm a Christian. Falwell is a monster. He's completely wrong." CNN would be one nonstop show of Christian ministers lining up to denounce him.
I have yet to hear the same response from Islam. Bin Laden appears to be a popular hero in the Middle East, a modern-day psychotic bloody version of Robin Hood. I've heard a few qualified, mealy-mouthed responses from the Muslim community here in America about how "violence is not the best solution." What I have not heard is the shocked thundering raging denouncement and the commensurate police activity coming from Islam if the situation were truly what you say it is.
I'm sorry, but the Muslim community has burned through their "benefit of the doubt." Until they start acting like civilized human beings, I'm not going to pretend that they are.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
very well said, couldn't agree with you more.
The fundamental issue in the Israel-Palestinian war is land. Not religion.
The land in question was taken. There was no negotiation.
If you think
As an American Christian, I whole heartedly concur with what you said. Islam has been defaced by a few so-called muslims and more-so from ignorant people on this board who are too lazy to understand what Islam and Koran teach. There is nothing but peaceful life lessons within the Koran. Anyone who tells you different either has an 8th grade reading comprehension level, or has not read a page of it.
Vent the steam. The F-35 is suppose to be stealthy. Leaving a con trail of vented steam does not help the stealth characteristics.
Neither does a hundred killowatts of laser light. When the laser lights up you're not stealthy - unless you count blinding any light-sensitive sensors nearby as "stealth". When the laster ISN'T lit, you're not generating steam - except for a short time right after you turned it off. With the right design, "short" can be a matter of seconds.
Meanwhile you're already venting a BUNCH of steam - the combustion product of the hydrogen in the jet fuel with the oxygen in the air. Dump a little extra water vapor in the exhaust (mixed with an equivalent amount of input air) and all you've done is slightly increase the amount of your exhaust and reduce the proportion of carbon and nitrogen oxides (of which your steam cooler produces zero, unlike your engines).
You're not going to get rid of your "steam contrail" unless you turn off your engines. The flight characteristics of a fighter jet with no power have been compared unfavorably with those of a manhole cover.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
According to this Aviation Week article, Lockheed Martin has to figure out how to dissipate 900 kilowatts of heat.
Popcorn?
Loook Ma! It's snowing!
Ed Wedig
Graphic design services
docbrown.net
Historically, Islam is a far less violent religion than Christianity. For example, consider Moorish Spain.
OK, then, consider the Ottoman Empire. Christian churches and monasteries were regularly attacked, Christians forced to change their names to Turkish names, Christian children taken from their families as infants and converted into fanatic Muslim soldiers, Christians and Jews treated as second-class citizens. It was hardly a golden age for the Balkans.
True, but keep in mind that the number of Muslims who feel that way about Israel is small relative to the Muslim population.
I assume you have some sort of proof of this? I hear a consistent refrain from Arab Muslim news outlets that they won't rest until Israel and its inhabitants are no more. How are they, and I, expected to take this - as a practical joke?
Note that I'm not a Christian (I'm a fence-sitting agnostic). However, when I compare the number of mainstream Christian bigwigs calling for the blood of Muslims (or Jews, or for that matter anybody) to the number of mainstream Muslim imams making the same calls, I can't help but notice that the data is pretty much entirely one-sided. How do you explain this?
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
I find it hilarious that Lockheed Martin - at least on their site - positions it's world class hardware and totally lethal vehicle systems (such as the F-22, the JSF, and the F-117) as 'products'. I was looking for an order form and a credit card # line. Would you like a 100-KW laser with that?
Sorry for the very long delay in replying... I've been traveling and very busy. Rather than dashing off a reply in five minutes I thought it better to wait until I could answer thoroughly.
OK, we have now wandered far, far afield, but...
That's a slashdot tradition ;-)
Awesome post, by the way. You made me think, which is always a good thing.
Having lived abroad for almost ten years now, and marrying a woman whose native language is not English, I've lost that subtle racism that most liberals, and I am one, have -- the idea that people born in the third world somehow have an excuse not to behave in a civilized fashion.
Just so we're clear on where we both stand, I'm a conservative, with strong libertarian leanings, driven primarily by the years I spent living outside of the U.S. (in Mexico).
Possums formed a staple of their diet. Somehow, I don't recall them chanting in the streets for anyone's blood.
Agreed, poverty is no justification for violence. That's an old liberal argument that holds no water whatsoever with me.
After 1776, France didn't stick around and send aid and workers to help us "nation build." With their purposes accomplished, they got out.
France really had nothing to offer us, and nothing to gain by helping us further. I think we have plenty to offer Afghanistan (more on that below) and I think we stand to benefit by helping.
Afghanistan could have done the same thing. We built the mujahadeen purely so the Soviets would have a thorn in their side, and then we left. Fine. There's not a reason in the world that the Afghani people couldn't have had a meeting and worked it out ... [instead ]
they submitted to the rule of the Taliban, despite the fact that they
had just ejected a far greater power, the Soviets.
Right. I'll go ahead and snip the rest of your examples about the Islamic countries' inability to establish stable and properous lives for themselves.
I think there is a fundamental reason for their repeated and widespread failures, and that it *is* religious in origin: Islamic doctrine does not approve of separation of church and state. Personally, I think one of the most profound things Christ ever said was "Render unto Caesar that which is of Caesar and unto God that which is of God." That, plus his repeated affirmations that his "Kingdom is not of this world" provide the Christian scriptural basis of secular government.
Clearly, religious government is fine if the leaders are righteous, benevolent and tolerant, but it becomes very bad when they're not, because a religious government cannot be questioned or criticized -- one does not question God. This, incidentally, is exactly where Europe was five hundred years ago -- God "chose" the King and the King was not to be questioned.
By the way, as I understand it, this issue touches directly on the difference between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims. Sunnis are generally considered by the west to be more peaceful and progressive, and Shi'ites are more hardline. The real, doctrinal, difference between the sects is their interpretation of the reliability of their leaders -- Shi'ites believe that their Imams are perfect and infallible, whereas Sunnis believe that they are men who may make small errors. Neither believe that their leaders can make large errors, however.
the 3,000 dead in New York deserved to die... Complete and utter bull.
Clearly. There is no justification for intentionally killing innocents.
But the Arabic world in general is hardly a charity case. They've been flooded with oil money for almost five decades now.
Parts of it, anyway. Afghanistan doesn't have any oil. But Turkey doesn't have much either, and they're building a reasonably decent country (and are rabid church/state separatists -- Turkish military officers are *required* to drink alcohol, for example).
I'm sorry. Muslim behavior has pushed me over the edge on this one. The dancing in the streets after 9/11. The joy that I saw among the Muslims here at the sight of people jumping from windows. The utter and complete lack of jeko> condemnation from the Muslim community until only recently.
Here I believe you're just factually wrong. The Muslim community *has* condemned the attacks; they did so immediately and strongly, and not just American Muslims. Even the radical, anti-American organizations did it (you can argue that they did so out of self-preservation, not sincerity, but the fact that they did publically condemn the attacks remains).
A quick google search found this, this, and particularly this, among many others.
One interesting quote:
The fact that the Daniel Pearl murder video is reported to be a best-seller in the Arabic world.
I'd be rather cautious about "facts" like this. What constitutes a best seller? Who counts the sales? Who reported it? What other factors might there be? The "Faces of Death" series of videos are rather popular in the U.S. as well.
The Palestinian infant dressed up as a suicide bomber. (I don't care if the black-oil aliens from the X-Files have taken over. There is no excuse for the babarism of teaching children to blow themselves up.)
Absolutely. Those parents are sick and twisted. However, the American parents who forced their children to drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid were also sick and twisted. Bad people exist everywhere, but that doesn't mean that the majority of any people are bad.
Imagine the response from the pulpits across Christendom if Jerry Falwell had blown up the great Buddhist Temple in Nara ... I
have yet to hear the same response from Islam.
That's the fault of the western news media (and apparently the Japanese media as well), not the fault of Islam. There have been people in the U.S. complaining that the Islamic leaders of the world haven't apologized for 9/11, and I think that is very misguided. Why should they apologize for what they didn't do?
Stories I've read in various places have mentioned that many people in the middle east find the 9/11 attacks so horrifying that they simply cannot believe it was carried out by Muslims. Conspiracy theories blaming it on the Jews or saying that Bush knew about it and yet stood idle so that he could build anti-Islamic sentiment abound. The theories are ridiculous, but it's worthwhile to note that they exist primarily because the Muslims don't want to believe their brethren are capable of such a heinous act.
I'm not saying that any inaction on their part is justified by these misguided theories, I'm just pointing out that far from rejoicing in it, most Muslims want to divorce themselves from the act and blame someone they already hate for other reasons, because accepting it themselves is too painful.
Similarly, many German citizens during WWII refused to believe that all of the Jews being shipped off were being systematically slaughtered, in spite of logic and evidence.
Bin Laden appears to be a popular hero in the Middle East, a modern-day psychotic bloody version of Robin Hood. I've heard a few qualified, mealy-mouthed responses from the Muslim community here in America about how "violence is not the best solution." What I have not heard is the shocked thundering raging denouncement and the commensurate police activity coming from Islam if the situation were truly what you say it is.
I feel like a conservative nutcase for blaming this on the media, but I really think they're at fault. They, in fact, did not publicize the Islamic condemnations, or the candlelight vigils, or the letters and faxes of support and sympathy, preferring to show the dancing in the streets.
That's not to say that there aren't people who rejoice to see the U.S. taken down a notch. There are, and while it's understandable that they enjoy seeing the U.S. take a punch, their ability to overlook the thousands of *innocent* lives lost is very, very sad, and betrays the low value they place on human life.
I'm sorry, but the Muslim community has burned through their "benefit of the doubt." Until they start acting like civilized human beings, I'm not going to pretend that they are.
I agree. Although it's funny that much of what we consider civilization to be was created by Arabs, I think you're right many Islamic countries are not what we now consider civilized people. And that's a big problem.
As I said above, I think the core problem is that religious government locks a people into a feudalistic, tribalistic system that causes individual oppression and halts progress. It's not the people, because people are pretty much the same everywhere, it's their system. That's okay, they have the right to govern themselves as they choose, even if it's stupid.
What they don't have the right to do is to come here and kill us. To my way of thinking, if the government of a country supports terrorism, then that government loses its right to govern. If the people of that country are unable or unwilling to remove that immoral government from power, then we have every right to do so, and we have every right to make sure that a similarly immoral government doesn't rise up in its place to continue the destruction.
It does not give us the right to turn the region into a nuclear wasteland, nor does it give us the right to arbitrarily attack other Islamic countries who may not have had a hand in supporting the terrorists, nor does it give us the right to revile or abuse people who follow their own peace-loving faith.
If you want my solution to the 9/11 problem, here it is: We should establish a policy (it would probably go down in history as the "Bush Doctrine", if it were to happen) that states that any government that supports terrorism, or even any government that doesn't take reasonable actions to stop terrorism, loses its right to rule its people. If necessary, the U.S. will militarily remove the offending government, under UN auspices if possible. If the nation doesn't seem to be capable (in the estimation of the damaged party) of establishing a more civilized government, then the region should become a protectorate until a stable, secular and democratic government ruled by law can be established and thoroughly entrenched.
In this particular case, I think Afghanistan should become a U.S. protectorate, that we should impose a constitutional, democratic government modeled on our own, and that we should stay involved and enforce the rule of law for at least a decade. We should allow the people to retain their own culture, except where it conflicts with our view of civilized government. We could just leave, as you say, but that will not prevent a repeat which may endanger us yet again in the future. This process will be expensive and will require us to help rebuild the physical infrastructure but, IMO, we can afford it because it's the most effective way to prevent another 9/11.
In the case of Iraq, we need to make clear to Saddam Hussein that he has already proved to the world that his regime is uncivilized, by his attacks on his own people, the terror attacks on Israelis and the invasion of Kuwait. In spite of that fact, we are kindly offering him a chance to prove that he is not preparing to employ weapons of mass destruction. To that end, we will send in teams of skeptical inspectors to whom he must prove that he has no weapons of mass destruction. His failure to do so would invoke the consequences of the "Uncivilized Nation" policy, namely invasion and replacement of the government with one which *we* consider to be civilized, with establishment of a long-term protectorate if necessary.
In short, if a government shows itself to be evil, then we will replace it with one of our choosing. If people want self-rule, then they should make sure their government behaves. I think this policy would not only be moral and logical, it would also be a really serious threat. The biggest, deepest reason why the Islamic countries' leadership fears the U.S. isn't the overt actions that we might take, it's the creeping influence of our immoral ideas and ways of life. The threat here is that if they choose to support terrorism, our subtle, creeping influence will suddenly turn into complete, overt control of every aspect of their government and society.
The biggest problem I see with this sort of policy is that it will require the U.S. to come clean about its own terrorist past and commit to never again participate in terrorism, or be subject to accusations of hypocrisy, which would undermine the moral high ground the policy attempts to take. Americans understand that it was previous administrations that supported terrorism, and that it was in the context of the very unique situation of the cold war, but the rest of the world may not, so we should just apologize, point out that we have replaced that previous government and promise never to permit it again.
I look forward to your comments.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
You, Swillden, are a reasonable person, and if the world were filled with reasonable people, then wars would cease, brutal poverty would disappear, and the only trouble in the world would come from those times when Mother Nature tried to kill us with earthquakes and avalanches.
... is dominion. While the West cues up speeches from Martin Luther King and fights court cases to extend Jefferson's legacy, the Muslim world dreams of bringing Sharia law to all, one world under the crescent, one world bowing to Mecca.
And I am profoundly uncomfortable being on this side of the argument. I want to live in a John Lennon/Paul McCartney "Ebony and Ivory" world. I want to believe in the Brotherhood of Men. I want to believe that conflict comes from misunderstanding, that the majority of the Arab world basically want to spend their days raising their kids, planning barbecues and scheming for a pay raise.
Unfortunately, I no longer believe that, and that's where you and I disagree. Painting in ridiculously broad strokes, I believe the Arab world is filled with embittered people scapegoating the US for all their problems. While I don't believe the US has clean hands in this part of the world, and I would cheerfully send dozens of CIA agents to prison for the support of the Shah and other crimes, I believe the scapegoating has gone beyond all reason. I believe the leaders of the Arab world encourage this scapegoating because it distracts the populace from their own incompetence.
I don't believe the average Arab male is interested in such concepts as equality before the law. I don't believe the average Arab male is interested in the idea of "tolerance," instructions from the Koran about "People of the Book" notwithstanding.
And though it disturbs me greatly, I have come to believe that if the Arab world were strong and the US were weak, if the situation were reversed, that the Arab world would oppress my people beyond description.
You, of course, disagree with me here. I, in fact, want to disagree with me here. I am fully aware that all I have to support my position is anecdotal evidence and a subjective point of view.
Furthermore, since I have a brother-in-law in Manhattan who saw the towers fall with his own eyes, and I had to watch my dear mother-in-law wait a few hours wondering to hear if her only son were still alive in a faraway land, I am no longer a detached observer.
I'm tainted, I'm biased and I am fighting to hear "It's a Small World" in the background.
Of course, what we really need to settle our argument, is for an organization like Gallup to go and take a statistically rigorous poll of the area. Publish the results, get an open debate, watch the polls, sift through the tea leaves of the election results.
I notice this sort of thing happens in Isreal all the time.
But, oddly enough, this doesn't happen in Saudi Arabia. Nor Syria. Nor Iran. Nor any other "moderate" member of the Arab world. I'll spare you the straw men of such extreme elements as Libya. I will grant you that Turkey is the brightest picture going.
Hmmm. The Arab world doesn't seem to have much in the way of a "free" press. Reporters Without Borders reports that expressing an unpopular opinion in the Middle East is a good way to find yourself imprisoned or worse. Reform movements in Iran have found brutal opposition from the clergy, and will require a full-blown revolution now to survive.
Ah, but Islam is the religion of peace and justice isn't it? Isn't justice one the the Pillars of Islam? I see a woman in Pakistan sentenced to be gang-raped for simply being seen with another caste member. I see a woman in Nigeria sentenced to being buried up to her neck in the dirt and then having her skull bashed in with rocks.
Now, yes I know that both cases had intervention after the fact in the face of international disapproval. I just don't believe these are anomalous points on the graph. These were not cases of Rodney King being beaten by cops or some poor man being shot to death by bigots in blue. These were the considered, debated decisions from jurists on the bench after time for deliberation. I think it's reasonable to believe that these decisions reflect community standards for the area.
If you want to know a man's character, look at how he treats those below him. If you want to measure a business associate, watch how he treats waiters. If you ever find yourself at a disadvantage to him, that's how you'll be treated.
How does the Arab world treat its women and children? In the hottest places on Earth, the women are draped under curtains appropriate for Alaskan climates. When asked why, the gentle members of the Arab world reply that it is to protect them from rape, that a woman in a mere business suit invites attack. In the face of bared knees, it is apparently unreasonable to expect men to restrain themselves.
To further this protection, paid policemen in many Arab countries wander the streets and attack women who aren't properly shrouded. Even our "ally" Saudi Arabia insists that American combat soldiers should wear these curtains to protect them from assault by their own religious policemen.
But beyond clothes, the Arab world buys and sells their daughters in a way that would not seem out of place in the Antebellum South. Girls are told who to marry. They are routinely left uneducated and segregated in public places. Speaking their mind is an open invitation to part with their teeth. Women are property.
And that, I'm afraid, is their vision for us. Bought. Sold. Told where to go. Told what to do. Forbidden to speak. Beaten at will. What the Arab world wants
And for those who disagree, Daniel Pearl stands as a warning and admonition.
I don't want to believe this, but Islam has left me no choice. They outlaw the free press that might bring hard numbers to our discussion, forcing us to duel with unreliable anecdotal evidence. They oppress their women and lower castes in ways that make me blanch, and that example promises me that if they ever gain influence over my life, I can expect the same.
They follow callow, corrupt leaders like Arafat, and when men like Sadat appear on the scene, they assassinate them. They take hostages like Terry Anderson and use them as tools of statecraft. They send their children out strapped with explosives and nails into civilian centers. They use jetliners as weapons and target international places of business.
The Arab world is aware of its reputation. They watch Hollywood movies. They know what we think of them. Where have their leaders insisted Hollywood was wrong? Where are the fierce denials about the status of women? Why haven't the religious police been dismantled? Why aren't the girls sent to school? Why is it that the only exchange students from the Middle East I've met have been men?
But you're right. I really don't know what I'm talking about. I've never lived in the Middle East. The soldiers and roughneck oil workers I've talked to who have are perhaps not the most scholarly of observers. It's probable that the journalists are just chasing the most juicy stories.
You and I are walking along a hot highway in West Texas, and we come upon a box dropped off a truck. We can't see directly into the box, but when we listen to it, the box rattles.
I reach for a shotgun. You tell me I'm overreacting, that the box most likely is filled with toys or clocks. Put the gun away before you blow your foot off.
You're right, of course.
But that box is still rattling.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
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