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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.
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;
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!
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.
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.
I would imagine that the fuel is stored in a sealed tank, with no oxygen in it. Making it much safer. Sure jet fuel burns like kerosene, but like kerosene, it needs oxygen to burn. So, put it in a sealed environment, with no air, and you can heat it up without risk of combustion.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
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.
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
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
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
Actually, the F22 and probably at least some other modern fighters use bellows tanks in it's fel tanks to cool engine oil. Basically you pump hot oil from the engine into the tanks which are surrounded by thousands of gallons of fuel in order to cool it down.
Along the same lines it is very common for automobiles to have their fuel pumps inside the fuel tank for the same reason. If you live in a hot area there is a pretty good chance that people who run their cars frequently near empty go through more fuel pumps than those who don't.
Yes this is true. Modern aircraft carry inert gas supplies or have Onboard Inert Gas Generation Systems (OBIGGS) which fill the empty space in the tank with nitrogen. It's considered an essential feature.
... 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.
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."
...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.
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
How much more likely is the craft to explode if it is shot up? Would one shot that penetrates the tank be a decisive victory in battle? I understand that current military aircraft can withstand quite a beating and still make it back to base. Are these gas-tank-heat-sinks a weapon that can be used against the pilot?
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
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.
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!
"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...
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!"
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.
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 ___________________________________
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.
Actually the international treaty just banned the use of lasers designed for no reason other then to blind soldiers.
It is ok to make lasers that kill or destroy objects.
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
I know, the point was simply that using fuel as a cooling system is not uncommon.
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.
"So 900 Kw would raise 1000 Kg of water .21 degrees Celcius"
per second
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.
LFS. Have you built your system today?
Check it out:
;)
Specific Heats:
Water: 4.196
Kerosene: 2.100
Whaddya know? I sure wouldn't have thought of it, but then again, I don't design fighter planes.
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
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>
OK - 1 Watt = 4.19 calories
A watt is a measurement of power (joule/sec).
A calorie is a measurement of energy.
You can't equate them. Alien Being's on the right track...
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
You seem to be forgetting that water is heavy.
A laser will travel indefinately. If you miss your target, it's going to keep on going until it hits SOMETHING....
Um. Believe it or not, we have the same problem with missiles. If a missile misses, it just keeps going until it finds something to run into.
Strangely enough, we keep using them.
Guilt. These weapons are used to kill the guilty. Try to remember that, okay?
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.
Because water is heavy. Planes are best when light.
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.
Actually, missiles self destruct at a predetermined range if they miss the target.
Also if you put the same energy into a shorter burst, that increases the power.
I hereby inform you that I have NOT been required to provide any decryption keys.
1 Megawatt is a less impressive amount of power than it sounds. It's only about 1340 horsepower. The engines of the F-22 can generate about 30 MW of power standing still, and much more than that at supersonic speeds.
One other point, if this system uses COIL (chemical oxygen-iodine laser), the laser beam is produced by chemical exitation, not electrical like in a HeNe laser. So the megawatt of energy comes from the laser medium itself, and not any external source of electricity.
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?)
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.
The next-gen JSF would feature a mini-oven and a jacuzzi for the pilot and co-pilot.
Right... I can see it now:
Pilot: I need to use the laser Slider... time to fire up the oven.
Copilot: Shit Maverick, this is the 15th batch of hot pockets I've had to eat this flight - can't you use a fucking missile or something?
_sig_ is away
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.
Right, a STOVL strike fighter is a waste in the new era of low intensity conflicts and rapid deployment.
Because air power was not an absolutely critical factor in winning the war against the Taliban with fewer than *200* U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan at any one time.
You should really check out the Frontline special on that war, in particular the part where one of the spec-ops soldiers says his team didn't really win over the warlords they were working with until they pointed lasers at some Taliban strongholds and made them go away (with Paveways or somesuch).
Give me a break. The JSF will be able to operate from very, very short landing strips in the middle of nowhere and deliver the sort of smart munitions that have become a critical part of modern LICs -- and more (eg the laser).
The JSF hasn't reached its final form, much less deployed. How can you say it won't work? Did anyone predit the F-4 Phantom II would be so useful to all branches, or that the UH-1 would, or the A-4 (navy/mc/israel), or the FA-18 (navy/mc/australia/canada/etc), or that the British would retake the Falklands using only Harriers?
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."
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
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.
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