Homing In On Laser Weapons

Bloodmoon1 writes "I just came across this article at GlobalSecurity.org that gives a very good summary of the current status of solid-state lasers as weapons. It gives you a good idea of where the JSF Laser system is at and just how much time, effort, and money has went into this project. Also has some basic, but very sufficent, explanations of some of the science behind the technology."

Comments

Missile

[e8johan]

I still prefer a good old missile! It feels more destructive to fire a rocket at your enemies instead of just flashing (a really *big*) light at 'em. :-)

Re:Missile

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats unless the know morse and you beam them a goatsx link, even better long range irda-net them it ;-)

Re:Missile

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, the D-Day invasion "destabilized" the Vichy government in France.

"Stability" isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Re:Missile

[Helter]

The Feudal period or the Cold war are perfect examples of what happens when there isn't an established pecking order.
It may *seem* destabalizing to develop these weapons, but it really isn't. The world isn't destabilized by one country having great weapons, the world is destabilized by more than one country having the same weapons.

Re:Missile

[DroppedPacket]

Which part of the world wants to live in peace?

The Muslim "Convert or Die!" world?
The African "Kill everybody not in our tribe!" world?
The Environmentalist "Do what we want or we will burn down your house!" world?

Re:Missile

[RallyNick]

If you look back into history you'll probably see that every time some nation though they were strong enough to overpower the world they tried to do it sooner or later. History also tends to repeat itself.

There are only two ways we can have a stable wold peace:

1. The whole thing is just one big country (e.g. if someone succeedes in becoming untouchable and dictates world rules).
or,
2. The only entity that is strong enough to overpower anyone is a majority of the world nations combined.

Trouble is the US seems happy with aiming for the first alternative, which is exactly what sparks arms races, cold wars, etc. Another thing which worries me is that Americans got used to the idea that they can go to war without suffering any casualties. So they don't really care what the govt is doing. Like in: if we can drop oil prices by going to war then why not? That's very very wrong if you want to have world peace, war should be something you think more than twice before comitting to it. Not the case any longer.

As for the muslims et co. you take care of that as described in (2).

Re:Missile

[Anonymous Coward]

Another thing which worries me is that Americans got used to the idea that they can go to war without suffering any casualties.

the fact that US goverment have the biggest and coolest weapons don't change the basic fact that all the rest of the world understand: US goverment are a bunch of cowards with the coolest toy in town.

Re:Missile

[Anonymous Coward]

In the American "Convert AND Die!"

Re:Missile

[Maradine]

One word.

Macross.

Re:Missile

[Hellkitten]

The Environmentalist "Do what we want or we will burn down your house!" world?

No no no.

"Do what we want or we will tear down and recycle your house"

Burning down houses contibutes to the greenhouse effect

We`ll have to

[MrFredBloggs]

keep quiet about the whole light and mirrors thing, I guess...

Re:We`ll have to

[caveat]

if you hit a mirror with a powerful enough beam of laser light, the small fraction of light that's absorbed (no such thing as an ideal reflector) will rapidly ablate the mirror coat, and then you're screwed. we have problems with this with our pulsed IR laser at work - we need solid polished aluminum mirrors with heatsinks on the back, ad that's for a 500mJ, 500ns pulse; they don't last that long, either. a 100KW IR laser will vaporize pretty much anything that's not *perfectly* reflective, i.e. anything we can build with current technology.

Re:We`ll have to

[MrFredBloggs]

"a 100KW IR laser will vaporize pretty much anything that's not *perfectly* reflective, i.e. anything we can build with current technology."

yeah, but if you need to prevent this sort of thing from happening to keep your planes/boats/trucks up and running, then its worth looking into solutions. Who knows what`ll be effective? Perhaps some sort of sand/concrete which will degrade pleasantly? Layers of shiny foil which peels off revealing more foil below. Also, non/slow moving lasers will be the perfect target for counter-weapons to lock onto if they`re active for a few seconds at a time - usually you`d just get a flash as the weapon was fired - now you`ll have `I am here!` flashing lights (& heat).

Re:We`ll have to

[Enocasiones]

that's for a 500mJ, 500ns pulse

a 100KW IR laser will vaporize pretty much anything

But your laser is actually quite powerful!

500mJ/500ns=500*10E-3J/500*10E-9s=1*10E6W=1MW

That's 1 Megawatt, 10 times more powerful than the 100KW one! Its not strange that you have problems. Not much energy because of the short time interval, but the intensity is tremendous.

Re:We`ll have to

[Moofie]

What kind of laser is it? I'm working on a micromachining project with a SpectraPhysics Hurricane. Pretty cool stuff.

Re:We`ll have to

[Moofie]

Which is the point of the exercise. We use a similar laser in the lab to do cold machining of silicon. The pulse interval is short, so the laser destroys its target point, but doesn't heat the surrounding material. Ultimately we're going to be focusing the beam onto a point about 1 micron in diameter. Very high energy densities.

Re:We`ll have to

[!splut]

Perhaps some sort of sand/concrete which will degrade pleasantly?

Perhaps by playing a Bach concerto and releasing a soothing lavendar fragrance as it melts to form a replica of Rodin's The Thinker.

Re:We`ll have to

[IDStewart]

yeah, but if you need to prevent this sort of thing from happening to keep your planes/boats/trucks up and running, then its worth looking into solutions.

Can you say New Arms Race?!

And just when the feds were running out of reasons to tax us into oblivion. How very convenient

Re:We`ll have to

[noxavior]

Your sig. La Rochefoucauld.

Re:We`ll have to

[Sabalon]

Well...hopefully this perfect mirror stuff will filter down to the consumer and I can have a bitchin telescope. Damn 91% reflectivity.

Re:We`ll have to

[Physics Dude]

As many have pointed out, even very efficient mirrors may not last too long under such intense laser radiation, but ... there could be other strategies.

Imagine mounting a high precission set of corner cube reflectors on a decoy target. (corner cube reflectors reflect incoming light back toward the source). With 90%+ reflectivity, you may be able to destroy the laser bearing vehicle with it's own beam even if the reflector is ultimately destroyed.

Just an idea. :)

Re:We`ll have to

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a question of reflecting light, it's a question of getting rid of heat. I would like to see a type of foil deal with a few thousand degrees C pumping into a second. Aircraft and missles (atmosperic types) are made out of nice heavy duty aluminum, in other words, flying beer cans. They tend to store fuel in integrated fuel tanks just under the skin. You don't have to vaporize your target just damage it to make it useless. All of this is going to happen in less than 30 seconds. There are no weapons systems I have heard of that can detect the laser, lock in on it, maintain the lock after the laser is turned off (IR will disappate rapidly as well), and then deal with a small stealth target that can drop to the deck and sneak out of the area.

Re:We`ll have to

[DickScratcher]

100 KW focussed onto what sized area for how long? You'd need pretty large active optics to create a small spot at a couple of miles through turbulent, dirty atmosphere. These weapons are not photon torpedoes: their main use will be to disable the sensors on missiles and humans (eyes); both will be blinded by a quick scan with a 100 KW laser. Forget star wars, these are anti-personnel and anti-sensor devices. The other issue is the laser tracking mechanism itself. This will rely on sophisticated and sensitive sensors : even a basic reflective mechanism might return enough energy for the laser to blind itself.Think 3 orthogonal mirrors, reflective bubbles etc.

Re:We`ll have to

[WhiteKnight07]

How about water mist? Thousands of tiny water droplets could eaisly refract the beam all over the place. Sure it would vaporise the water, but that would just make more smaller droplets which would still refract the beam. It would basically make a cloud of water vapor, which is one of the hardest things for a laser beam to get through. How hard could it be to spray water mist around a vehicle or other potential target with a sprinkler system? I think it will end up being just as it has always been with the armor vs firepower thing all through history.

Re:We`ll have to

[caveat]

i want to say CO2 Tek, but i know that's wrong - all i can tell you off the top of my head is that it's a scottish job about the size of a 3lb coffee can. continuous flow CO2, water coole pulsed.

Re:We`ll have to

[lommer]

"Also, non/slow moving lasers will be the perfect target for counter-weapons to lock onto if they`re active for a few seconds at a time - usually you`d just get a flash as the weapon was fired - now you`ll have `I am here!` flashing lights (& heat)."

Well, not really. You see, it's incredibly hard to tell where a laser is coming from because it is such a focused beam. (unless it's in the middle of the desert and there's a really obvious laser-station shooting at you). Though there might be a little heat (likely not so much that they can't baffle it down to the heat signature of an internal combustion engine), there most certainly won't be big flashing lights saying "shoot me." All that there will be is a small hole developing in your tank's armour. Then, before you realize it, the laser will have penetrated to the magaizine: boom!

Re:We`ll have to

[mrbnsn]

Iridium mirrors, stupid.

There's a company in Russia that will build them to order for you.

Re:We`ll have to

[elvum]

Water vapour is transparent to visible light, as demonstrated by the fact that you can still see when the weather gets humid. Things are a bit worse for IR and UV light - the absorption coefficient of water increases (up to a point) the further you get from the visible spectrum, but stay close to it and you're fine.

correction

[Anonymous Coward]

That should be "honing in." Homing is something else.

Mirrors

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't a couple of mirrors ruin the whole thing? I mean seriously. Cover a missile in chrome and the laser would just bounce off harmlessly, wouldn't it? Wasn't that one of the main stumbling blocks to SDI?

Re:Mirrors

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on if the mirror can stand up to the heat that is produced by the laser.

Re:Mirrors

[briggsb]

"We have a visual on the missile...er...wait...we're being attacked by a flaming disco ball!"

Re:Mirrors

[YrWrstNtmr]

and leaving it very vulnerable to other forms of detection/destruction.

Re:Mirrors

[Ariane 6]

Well, as any astronomer will tell you, no mirror reflects 100 percent of light, and making mirrors that even come reasonably close is extremely expensive. Shielding the entire survace of a combat vehicle with such a mirror would be impractical in the extreme under battlefield conditions.

Given the powers at which these lasers operate, I imagine that the mirror would be effective shielding for a few tenths of a second before the energy not reflected built up enough to scorch the silvering. Once that happens you're dead.

Re:Mirrors

[Zathrus]

Not really.

Most mirrors are only about 95% reflective. The other 5% is transmitted through the mirror and absorbed (either by the mirror itself or the backing). Really good mirrors are about 99% reflective.

Now, let's assume that somehow you manage to "chrome" a missile such that it's 99% reflective (not bloody likely in real life, but we're talking theory here). Someone targets a 100 kW laser at you. The mirror reflects/scatters 99 kW of the energy, while 1 kW is absorbed by the missile itself.

It takes 216 kWs to heat 11 kg of steel by 10 deg C. Certainly you're not going to be able to keep the laser on the mirror for 216 seconds. But, that's ok, that's not the point. All you have to do is melt the mirror at contact point, degrading its reflectance so you can effect the missile itself. So how long does it take to boil the mirror into vapor? Probably a couple seconds. After which you have no effective defense and the 100 kW beam will boil off enough of the missile to render it ineffective. After all, you don't have to destroy it -- just alter the aerodynamics enough so it's incapable of targeting correctly.

You could spin the missile to reduce spot heating, but that's going to complicate guidance considerably. And, frankly, I doubt that you'll get more than 80% reflectance on this sucker, which changes the equation drastically. And, of course, your maintainance crew didn't leave any oil, grease, or fingerprints on the missile casing right? Uh huh.

The main stumbling block to SDI was tracking, targeting, and blasting a laser through several miles of atmosphere - all in about 10 seconds after launch. That or you wait until the ICBM is in space, in which case you now have to destroy (not merely damage) a dozen warheads and a couple dozen dummys. Which means you now have 20-30 targets to destroy in 30 seconds instead of 1 target in 10 seconds. Fun!

Re:Mirrors

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's not completely trivial, because a typical chrome finish does not necessarily reflect infrared wavelengths very well. But yes, there do exist passive (and active) defenses against this thing.

But you might as well argue that flares make heat-seeking missile pointless, or that chaff ruins the effectiveness of radar. Countermeasures are never 100% effective, and they always come with a cost.

Basically, it's still a bit early to tell how well this thing will work. It all depends on what kind of intensities they will actually be able to put out.

Re:Mirrors

[Idarubicin]

Wouldn't a couple of mirrors ruin the whole thing?

In principle, yes. In practice, no. If you were to put a very high quality coating of silver (for visible wavelength lasers) or gold (for IR lasers) on your missile, in principle you could reflect 95 to 98% of incident light. Special optical coatings can result in >99% reflectance, but only over narrow wavelength ranges.

In other words, if the enemy knows the wavelength at which your laser operates, he can reduce the effectiveness of your laser weapons. For ground based installations, this still isn't a big problem--you just need a laser that's an order of magnitude more powerful, and you can cook even the reflective coatings on the other guy's missiles. I've done research work involving lasers in both physical chemistry and medicine, and I've seen a number of purportedly highly-reflective optical elements get toasted by a powerful enough beam. Also, high-quality optical coatings usually aren't meant to handle the stresses (physical and thermal) experienced by your typical missile (ballistic or tactical).

Re:Mirrors

[quick_dry_3]

After all, you don't have to destroy it -- just alter the aerodynamics enough so it's incapable of targeting correctly

the ABL's tactic is to heat the fuel tanks of the missile, exploding it from inside.

A massive alteration of aerodynamics ;-)

Fortunately they're not thinking these things will be a silver bullet - its only one stage. All targets (and launch sites) discovered that aren't destroyed are automagically passed on to other fighters, bombers, laser destroyers, etc that can take out the targets.

Apparently you need a launch of over 40 simultaneous launches to break through a two aircraft ABL 'shield'.

Re:Mirrors

[Zathrus]

Apparently you need a launch of over 40 simultaneous launches to break through a two aircraft ABL 'shield'

Well that or you just launch enough things -- the chemical batteries are only good for so long (I seem to recall an early prototype/design having 100 1 second burns, but I could be wrong).

Of course, if they're manned fighters then you're going to have an awfully hard time convincing those first 200 or so to launch.

Re:Mirrors

[owke]

What I am interested in is: If you bounce off the beam, say 90% of it, where will the rest of it go to ? If you shoot at the surface perfectly vertical for example (not very likely, I know), won't you essentially fire at yourself ? Or fry some innocent citizen below ? Owke

Re:Mirrors

[Anonymous Coward]

I brought this up in the 80's when i worked for
a "research institution" Chromium plat the missle!
Have you ever seen the video archives of the cold war era? Russian missles have the warhead covered in chromium. I saw this on the TLC.
They never mentionioned chromium, but you can tell the warhead was reflective. And the original star wars system took out the warheads at apogee, so all you would need to do is make your warhead relfective. So.. the laser would have to be pretty powerfull and the shorter the wavelength the better.

Re:Mirrors

[GT_Alias]

All the talk of reflective missiles sounds great (even though it sounds like it won't prove that effective)...but what about the issue of making a "chromed" or reflective missile? That would look really cool, but it seems that it would be excessively difficult/expensive to manufacture. Not to mention the fragility of it...it would be next to impossible to keep the coating perfectly reflective over the entire surface. Smudges, scratches, contaminants would be unavoidable since we're talking about weapons that are meant for remote deployment to harsh environments.

Re:Mirrors

[Anonymous Coward]

Most mirrors are only about 95% reflective. The other 5% is transmitted through the mirror and absorbed (either by the mirror itself or the backing). Really good mirrors are about 99% reflective.

But a mirror is probably less than 1% reflective towards a missle.

Spend the money on peace, not waepons.

Re:Mirrors

[TekProphet]

Spend the money on peace, not waepons.

Tell that to the WTC/Pentagon victims.

Re:Mirrors

[mikeee]

Not if they use a Beowulf Cluster of Lasers.

Re:Mirrors

[Anonymous Coward]

And to Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda, and the savage regime that's currently in charge in North Korea.

Re:Mirrors

[mikerich]

Have you ever seen the video archives of the cold war era? Russian missles have the warhead covered in chromium.

I believe they actually used a platinum alloy, which has much higher protection against re-entry temperatures than chromium.

Still I have no doubt the Soviet missile scientists knew what they were doing, so it might be a viable protection.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Re:Mirrors

[mikerich]

Smudges, scratches, contaminants would be unavoidable since we're talking about weapons that are meant for remote deployment to harsh environments.

Remember this is military spending here, normal sensible economics no longer apply. Remember the special air-conditioned hangers for Stealth aircraft?

A lot of incidental damage could be prevented by shipping any weapons in a protective sheath that could be removed when the weapon is either ready to fire or installed on the plane. Doesn't the cruise missile already come in a sealed cannister?

But if anyone is interested I'm planning on putting a bid in to develop nanotechnology mirrors. I've no idea how they would work, or if they're even possible, but they sound really cool. Going on yesterday's story about nanotechnology, I have about as much of a clue as real military researchers.

I think I'm up to squandering a couple of billion USD before unveiling a can of silver spray paint.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Re:Mirrors

[s.fontinalis]

"the ABL's tactic is to heat the fuel tanks of the missile, exploding it from inside."

The tactic is actually to ablate away the missile's casing over the fuel, leading to a weakened casing - which then in Solid fuel rockets leads to uneven propellant burn (which is what happened to the shuttle challenger)

Re:Mirrors

[s.fontinalis]

More importantly - your silvering (or whatever) would have to survive the high (a couple thousand K) tempteratures produced from air resistance. This in and of itself would be difficult.

Re:Mirrors

[Anonymous Coward]

1KW should be relative to dissipate when you are moving at missile speed. Also at that speed, it would be hard to aim the laser on the same spot on the missile.

Re:Mirrors

[overunderunderdone]

You could spin the missile to reduce spot heating

I don't remeber this all that well but I seem to recall that back in the Reagan SDI days a congressman asked Weinberger(?) about spinning a missle as a defense against x-ray lasers -. Weinberger said that would be about as effective a defense as a spinning ballerina against a machine gun.

Re:Mirrors

[flend]

So how long does it take to boil the mirror into vapor?

I think the vapour would prove a problem for the laser as well. Presumably we want to focus our laser nice and tight on the target to get a high power per cm^2. Now, if we have a layer of vapour, this is going to be differentially heated by the laser beam and act as a diverging thermal lens. This breaks our nice focus and reduces the effective power of our beam.

Re:Mirrors

[overunderunderdone]

Remember this is military spending here, normal sensible economics no longer apply. Remember the special air-conditioned hangers for Stealth aircraft?

Even if another nation goes through this much trouble & expense it is still a "win" for the US to have made them do so. Now they can only afford a fraction of the missles they could have made absent this technology. You probably knock most of the nations currently developing ICBM's completely out of the game (N. Korea, Iran, Pakistan) and severely limit the number of effective weapons more advanced nations can build & maintain(Russia, China & all our allies for that matter) - instead of China building 100 ICBM's they have to spend more money on just 10 and have to spend even more in maintaining their perfect reflective state.

Re:Mirrors

[Capt. DrunkenBum]

If you get the big fat cheque from the .mil, can I have a researcher job?

Re:Mirrors

[mikerich]

Good point, although that assumes the cost of this technology doesn't start hurting the American economy. At some point it has to be asked if these programmes are making Americans safer or if they are great ways of subsidising companies.

The US already spends more on defence than the next 26 countries combined. With the Bush administration saying that they will not allow any country to challenge that superiority things could get VERY expensive VERY fast.

But then I'm talking from a country which is unlikely to be able to work on laser weapons or threaten anyone. The British military can't even stop combat boots melting.

Still, one ray of hope. We can hope that Saddam Hussein is using lots of British military equipment; that'll stop his armies - largely because their boots have become welded to the desert.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Re:Mirrors

[WNight]

Not really. Imagine how close to perpendicular the mirror would need to be, to the laser beam. A beam reflected back two meters to either side is likely to miss and a beam reflected back even 10cm to either side is going to hit armor instead of the laser aperture. Even the smallest misalignment is going to cause a miss.

Then we've got imperfect mirror. Making a perfectly flat, large, mirror is very hard. If it's not perfectly flat, you couldn't reflect the beam back even if you had a ton of time for aiming and alignment.

Then, you'll only get 1/100th of a second to reflect the beam back before your mirror is totally destroyed (less, perhaps). If you used solid polished aluminum, with huge heat sinks behind it, you might get a bit longer protection but it's going to lose its perfect optical qualities pretty quickly.

If you shot at a ship, for instance, and hit a mirrored gunmount, you might cause serious damage to the nearby sailors, but the imperfect mirror and the motion of the attacking plane (meaning the angle of the beam is always changing) is going to keep a reflected beam, even from a nearly perfect mirror, from causing any distant collateral damage.

Re:Mirrors

[jrwyant]

Eh, isn't the armor from the US battle tanks a joint development with the British military? I thought I saw on Discovery Channel that the "Chobam" (don't recall the spelling) armor was the best yet, developed by the British...

Re:Mirrors

[prator]

Which means you now have 20-30 targets to destroy in 30 seconds instead of 1 target in 10 seconds. Fun!

I think this is one of the new mini-games in Mario Party 4.

-prator

Re:Mirrors

[mikerich]

Chobham?

Yep, invented by us Brits. Its fortunate that our tanks are quite so well armoured as they spend a lot of time sitting perfectly still having broken down.

And of course we now have our top-secret weapon - an inflatable tank. If anyone spots one flying over, can we have it back?

Re:Mirrors

[quick_dry_3]

I was going on information straight from the October Aerospace International journal article i'd just finished reading.

Re:Mirrors

[narkotix]

where can i get one of these for the bar i dj at? makes me even think i mite be able to do mass laser surgery...come for the music...stay for the renewed vision!

Get out the Popcorn

[Ececheira]

Anyone ready to blow up a house from too much popcorn? :)

Re:Get out the Popcorn

[TheSync]

Looks at the facts: very high power, portable, limited firing time, unlimited range. All you'd need is a big spinning mirror and you could vaporize a human target from space!

But seriously, I propose that all dictators be given 60 days to establish multiparty democracies. Failing this, aircraft and space based lasers will be used for the vaporization of all remaining dictators. Should they be replaced by other dictators, then the replacements should be vaporized as well.

Re:Get out the Popcorn

[Anonymous Coward]

What movie was that? I remember seeing it, and that was the only scene I remember.

Re:Get out the Popcorn

[Anonymous Coward]

The movie you are thinking of is Real Genius with Val Kilmer.

Re:Get out the Popcorn

[ohboy-sleep]

I'd love to help, but I'll be busy submitting all these entries into the Frito-Lay sweepstakes. It says you can enter as often as you like. I expect to win 46% of the prizes, including the car.

Is it just me...

[danro]

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "is hot on ... the notion of zapping people,"

Is it just me, or does this make someone else worried.
That man is kind of scary...

Re:Is it just me...

[rovingeyes]

BART: Well it's offical. Donald, you make the coolest guns man! They look even better than that Ultramax Laser Uzi I bought on ebay a few days ago. HOmer: Why you little @#$!&##

Re:Is it just me...

[BabyDave]

I was scared from the moment I read

Donald Rumsfeld "is hot"

Re:Is it just me...

[Sn4xx0r]

It is certainly better zap a person with a shoulder-mounted anti-aircraft missile, than to take a 1000 pound bomb to blow him up, and the couple of houses next to him.

Reading the comment as if Rumsfeld would be some wannabee massmurderer just for kicks and grins is a disgrace to one of the few people in the US cabinet that actually has a brain and uses it. Hope he doesn't click my sig.

Re:Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

in the US cabinet that actually has a brain

Yes, but it's an EVIL brain!

Re:Is it just me...

[Anonymous Custard]

Reading the comment as if Rumsfeld would be some wannabee massmurderer just for kicks and grins is a disgrace to one of the few people in the US cabinet that actually has a brain and uses it.

I really hope that article was hyperbolizing or sensationalizing Rummy's sentiment on laser-weapons, because anyone who gets "hot" or happy over killing someone does not belong in a position to do so. And yet we're sitting here, on the brink of war, with a bunch of war hawkin republicans whose only concern is that they beat the jones' in the weapons race.

The DC sniper guy had a brain, a pretty clever (and evil) one too. But unfortunately it's what you DO with your brain, not just having it, that matters.

Re:Is it just me...

[Znork]

He's also a complete moron. The next sentance:

"Lasers are in line with Rumsfeld's idea of transforming the military, which is to come up with wonder-weapons that other countries can't emulate."

Uh, yeah. Guerillas, the Taliban, etc all have these huge stinger factories and AK factories, because they're really actually making them themselves.

Riiiight.

Just like everything else it'll take a year or two and then it's out on the weapons market and in five years more people like Saddam and the Taliban have laser batteries slicing and dicing US bombers into teeny weeny metal squares.

Other countries dont emulate weapons. They buy them, steal them, smuggle them or are given them. One thinks that a defense secretary would know this, but apparently learning requires actually having a brain. Maybe he can buy one on the black market.

Re:Is it just me...

[T5]

First off, understand that we're reading quotes from John Pike. A little Googling will clearly reveal his politics to be somewhat at odds with the current administration. However, for Pike to admit that these solid-state lasers are moving
into the "engineering" phase (second phase of weapons development - research, engineering, and production) is quite revealing. For him to acknowledge publically any high-tech weaponry as making significant advances is, to me, quite shocking.

Also understand that the arms race, which has existed throughout human history, is exactly that: a contest to see who can come up with the most effective weaponry the quickest. In this era of asymmetric warfare, nukes are useless. We've got a rapidly growing asymmetrical threat against which our current best practices and tools are less than ideal. New weapons and tactics are needed to counter such a threat.

As to the open market availability of weapons for terrorists, sure, there's scuds (pun intended) available. As long as there are countries such as Russia and China producing cheap, reliable low-tech weapons, and other countries willing to act as brokers for these groups, there will be a channel. This, however, is a poor argument against transformation of our armed forces to respond to such threats, including development of new weapons that give our military another advantage. And, given the technical sophistication of the level of some of these new weapons systems being developed, it'll be years before opposing forces can produce clones in sufficient quantity to be worrisome. Case in point: look how long it's taken many countries to become nuclear capable. That technology is nearly 60 years old! Lasers have been around since 1954 (microwave, 1960 for an optical laser) and we still haven't been able to weaponize them to any significant degree. And much of laser theory and practice is in the open press, unlike many aspects of the nuclear weapons programs.

Re:Is it just me...

[EvilBudMan]

--Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "is hot on ... the notion of zapping people," Pike said. "Lasers are in line with Rumsfeld's idea of transforming the military, which is to come up with wonder-weapons that other countries can't emulate." --

No.

The rest sounded pretty scary too. "Wonder Weapons". That's what the Nazi's had, wasn't it?

Re:Is it just me...

[Znork]

Nuclear arms are, however, not generally of the kind that are really easy to smuggle, nor are they generally carried by ground and/or air forces, nor are the raw materials very easy to obtain or handle.

Weapons like portable lasers fall into the same category as rifles, stingers etc. You dont need to raid an ICBM silo to obtain one. Shoot down one plane or helicopter using conventional means or take some ground troops and if you're lucky you've got yourself a laser. Which is probably not a one-shot per unit weapon.

These weapons wont help the US. They'll equalize the playing field even more as dubious regimes obtain them by making the US air force so much flying target practice.

Re:Is it just me...

[BurritoWarrior]

Don't forget how much damage the Taliban did with their M1-A1 tanks, Stealth Fighters, Cruise Missiles, smart bombs and Aegis cruisers.

Yep, technological superiority on the battlefield is moot.

Re:Is it just me...

[n-baxley]

Sooooo... You're basing your assumption of Rumsfeld's inteligence as a military planner not on something he himself said, but on a qoute from some guy who obviously doesn't like Rumsfeld?

Riiiight.

Sheesh

Re:Is it just me...

[Bill the Cat]

Buying a weapon is fine, but doesn't get you much unless you know how to maintain it.

Iran bought some pretty neat toys back in the 70's, most of which became useless once their sources of spare parts and maintenance knowledge (the US) became the enemy.

Re:Is it just me...

[Znork]

The point is, tanks, stealth fighters, cruise missiles, etc are rather harder to obtain than armaments that you can carry around. They also require a fair bit more infrastructure to support.

Portable lasers that wont be much harder to obtain than stingers or similar arms _and_ are unlikely to be one-shot weapons ensure that pretty much any little dictator to be will have access to unlimited charge weapons that can easily slice dice and chop the stealth fighters and cruise missiles into small pieces.

It's a great way to level the playing field so that anyone and their little dog will be able to shoot down US planes en masse, but I somehow doubt that's the idea.

Re:Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Portable lasers that wont be much harder to obtain than stingers or similar arms

Sure. They'll just whip them up in their garages.

Does the fact that despite 40 years of well-funded research we STILL don't have a man-portable laser weapon in use mean anything to you?

The idea of Taliban-types creating something like this is ludicrous.

Re:Is it just me...

[FeloniousPunk]

These weapons wont help the US. They'll equalize the playing field even more as dubious regimes obtain them by making the US air force so much flying target practice.
On the contrary - this is exactly the sort of weapon that helps us and is useless to them. First of all, these weapons won't be portable anytime soon, so terrorists/ guerillas/ etc. aren't going to be able to use them if they were to loot them from the battlefield. Secondly, it's a safe assumption that this weapon, like many cutting edge weapon systems, requires tremendous logistics to put into practical use. Very high power consumption requiring lots of fuel and powerful generators; heavy maintenance requirements with spares being effectively impossible to get; requirement for specially trained personnel to operate and most importantly maintain the weapon - all of these make the sort of laser weapon envisaged effectively impossible to be looted on the battlefield and turned against the former owners.
Above the small arms level, modern weapons are weapon systems that require mature, sophisticated and well-financed military/technical organizations to operate. Take a look at the typical Arab army with Western weapons to see what sort of effectiveness you get when you have modern systems deployed in militaries that don't have necessary technical moxie to service them.

Re:Is it just me...

[Stonehand]

I don't think a G.I. is going to be toting around a ship-based anti-missile laser anymore, even if he's taken more 'roids than a Major League Baseball hitter.

Re:Is it just me...

[DJ Uptime]

You can't hug a child with nuclear arms.

Re:Is it just me...

[mikerich]

No, its definitely not you. He's like Doctor Strangelove's less appealing older brother.

The BBC has The Donald Rumsfeld Library of Quotations - some weird, some funny, some just plain scary. You even get a real British Broadcasting Corporation introduction to some of them!

I just love knowing my licence fee is going to fine causes like this.

Enjoy!
Mike.

Re:Is it just me...

[aminorex]

> These weapons wont help the US. They'll equalize the playing field

And this is a bad thing how? The US needs its wick trimmed big-time.

Re:Is it just me...

[Ariane 6]

Wünderfaffen, yes - I noticed that too when reading the article. The most famous of these were the ME-262 and the V-2, neither of which had any equivalent* in the allied arsenal.

Thankfully, the most important wonderweapon was built in New Mexico.

*Technically incorrect, but the Glouscter Meteor was really no match for the 262 performance-wise.

Re:Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "is hot on ... the notion of zapping people," Pike said. "Lasers are in line with Rumsfeld's idea of transforming the military, which is to come up with wonder-weapons that other countries can't emulate."

Does anybody else see parallels to Imperial policy? "Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battlestation."

Re:Is it just me...

[EvilBudMan]

--*Technically incorrect, but the Glouscter Meteor was really no match for the 262 performance-wise.--

Actually, I think the Meteor had a more reliable engine, but the air frame of the 262 was superior.

You gotta have something that works in many conditions. I just seems like the power level of the laser would have to be very powerful indeed to penetrate bad weather.

Those V2's would still be hard to stop today. If we build lasers someone else eventually will too, but if we don't someone else might. Tough question.

Re:Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't shoot what you can't see or find. It's not like the movies where you see the fighters/bombers swoop in low all pretty like for the cameras. These days they sit back twenty thirty miles at 30,000 feet and drop conventional weapons. And as the Taliban found out this is a very effective weapon against jerks hiding in caves. Let's even give them the laser of the JSF. It requires a vehicle to move it and a jet turbine engine to give it enough power to fire, and you have to have line of sight to use it. On top of that it's effective range is still only 10km. The Iraqis also found out how effective sitting in the open was. They would never even hear the aircraft that dropped the weapons on them. Everything would just start exploding around them. It's not just the weapons you have, it's the way you use them. So unless the Taliban have some new king of donkey we don't know about I don't see those kinds of opponents being much of a threat even with captured weapons on the battle field.

Re:Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never even seen a child with nuclear arms!

Re:Is it just me...

[Cplus]

But really the idea of them buying one isn't so ludicrous. The weapons market throughout the world is quite open. If they're made, they're available.

Re:Is it just me...

[Cplus]

The DC sniper guy was a moron, did you read the ransom note? It was terrible, asking for money to be deposited into a Bank of America account, come on. The scariest part of the whole sniper deal was the fact that it was perpetrated by an idiot and a child.

Re:Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if the Dems could stop wholesaling everything under the sun (including the Lincoln bedroom) to the communist chinese, the time-to-3rd-world-markets for high-end defensive gear would decrease substantially...

Re:Is it just me...

[Bloodmoon1]

You do raise some good concerns, but really there's almost zero chance any other countries, freinds or foes, will get ahold of working laser weapons (Not to mention, there is a big difference between Stingers and AKs and JDAMs and Apache choppers). And the reason? The almighty dollar. In the article, one Air Force official says the Air Force alone has spent $4.5 Billion dollars on developing a high powered laser weapon. And that's just the AF, who knows how much the Army and Navy have put in, or how much has went in covertly under a black project. Now for the U.S., $4.5 billion is a drop in the pan. Our defense budget for next year is going to be $355.4 billion. So that $4.5 billion is only about 1-1.5% of our defense budget. Not much. But our defense budget is about 10 times more than any other country. The country that spends the second most on defense is China, and they might spend upwards of $60 billion a year, but most countries that can afford to spend a good amount on defense spend around $30 billion, and on average, whatever they spend comes to around 3% of their GDP (The US included).

I get the following numbers from the CIA World Factbook 2002. Just to give you an idea, our $355 billion budget is, combined, more than:

• China: Officially spends $20 billion but actual defense spending more likely ranges from $45 billion to $65 billion. So we'll just say $65 billion for ease of use.
  
  
• United Kingdom: $31.7 billion
  
  
• France: $46.5 billion
  
  
• Germany: $38.8 billion
  
  
• Italy: $20.2 billion
  
  
• Spain: $8.6 billion
  
  
• Canada: $7.8 billion
  
  
• Japan: $40.7 billion
  
  
• Australia: $9.3 billion
  
  
• Brazil: $13.4 billion
  
  
• Argentina: $4.3 billion
  
  
• Columbia: $3.3 billion
  
  
• Mongolia: $24.3 billion
  
  
• Israel: $8.8 billion
  
  
• Iran: $9.7 billion
  
  
• Egypt: $4.4 billion
  
  
• Iraq: $1.3 billion
  
  
• South Africa: $1.8 billion
  
  
• Pakistan: $2.5 billion
  
  
• India: $12 billion
  
  

And about $1 billion in change from our U.S. budget minus all the above named countries. And the moral of the story? We can afford to spend more on just one weapon project then some countries can on their entire defense budget, and this is why we don't have to worry about this falling into the wrong hands. That's why there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of dirt cheap assault rifles in the mid-east and south-east Asia, but the only place you can find an entire bomber wing of $2 billion dollar B-2 Spirit stealth bombers is in Missouri. An AK-47 in America can sell for between $300-$1800 depending on what shape it's in and how good it is, and I'm sure one can be made for much less and purchased for less than that in countries where they are legal to sell brand new. If laser based weapons do live up to the hype, they will essentially be the new nuclear weapons. Everyone will want them, but due to the cost and technology involved, almost no one will be able to have them. This is what Rumsfeld really means when he talks of weapons other countries can't emulate. Of course they can't, they can't afford to. To make these weapons, they would have to inflate their defense budgets so much they would crush their economy and countries. So with these weapons it will probably be, as another poster noted with nukes, another 50-60 years before most countries can afford them, and by then, this will look like stone age technology to us.

Just remember, Iraq once had the 4th largest military in the world. On paper, they should have put up a good fight. However, we had vastly superior technology (and people, IMHO), and, well, you see where they are today.

Re:Is it just me...

[Bloodmoon1]

I see your point on this, only this is a long way off. Right now the closest thing to portable lasers being looked at and researched is laser systems on planes and tanks. And good luck carting off a 5 ton laser weapon. I'm sure if a plane got shot down and it looked like our precious technology was about to get captured, we'd bomb it to hell. I'd imagine it would probably be another decade before we'd see laser systems for the infantry man. And hell, by then we'll have probably came up with something really witty like orbital bombardment.

E = mc?

[Cutie Pi]

"The technology turns atomic particles into light with enough radiation to damage an object it encounters."

Umm... anyone know how that is supposed to happen?

But seriously, I'm sick and tired of science related articles being written by journalists with no clue about the science they're writing about. These articles should be checked for accuracy by the people the story is about.

Re:E = mc?

[ksw2]

I'm sick and tired of science related articles being written by journalists with no clue about the science they're writing about

Perhaps you should clarify your argument with the journalist's statement, and post your own facts to illustrate the point for those who don't know any better. Who knows, you may even help educate a future journalist.

Re:E = mc?

[nihilvt]

Umm... anyone know how that is supposed to happen?

Magic.

Re:E = mc?

[ksw2]

Flamebate my ass, you shithead moderators. Any idiot can say "that story is bullcrap" and get +3 Informative, but ask the dude to clarify his point and get modded down.

Re:E = mc?

[skeedlelee]

Yeah, I saw that too...

If it could be done, it would be a weapon of amazing destructive force... Wait that's the BOMB!

My guess is that the author actually tried to their research but got confused. As far as having the articles checked by the people the story is about... probably not... most interesting stories are about interesting people who might not have that much time.

Generally, I'm willing to cut some slack to the journalists on getting thing right. However, I'd say its reasonable to expect two things from a science reporter (especially one from a paper as large as the LA Times, where the article originated): (1) at least have a grounding in science and (2) the initiative to at least refer to say an undergraduate level text book. I mean sheesh, I imagine pretty much any undergraduate physics text would do a better job summarizing the way a laser works. I pulled mine out and it did a reasonable job in one paragraph. If you're really clueless in physics and chemistry though you might conclude that they are talking about using the conversion of particles into light. Afterall, the first (and often only) laser discussed is probably a He/Ne laser, which actually uses the collision of particles to prepare the Ne for emission. So maybe that's the origin of the confusion.

And speaking of fact checking, I can't tell, is E=mc sarcasm or a typo?

I have a bunch of friends in nucleic acids research and they get great pleasure (and annoyance) out of catching the ~50% of the NYT articles with an illustration of DNA that gets the helical twist wrong. Again, any intro bio book would clarify it, but if you don't know anything about biology or chemistry you're unlikely to realize that it is even important.

Re:E = mc?

[Soul-Burn666]

Sorry for being nit-picky, but shouldn't that be E=mc^2 ?

Re:E = mc?

[Anonymous Coward]

The technology turns atomic particles into light with enough radiation to damage an object it encounters."

While not strictly true, well not true at all, I can see what the journalist was trying to say. The first step in Laser emission is the spontaneous emission of light. Carriers (the "atomic particles"), electrons in the conduction band, drop to lower energy levels releasing the difference of their energies as photons (the "light"). These photons bounce around the mirrors releasing more photns via stimulated emission blah blah blah...

It's not a nuclear process, matter is certainly conserved. All in all though, a very poor attempted explanation of part of a laser's operation.

Smoke and mirrors

[wiggys]

I suppose the ideal enemy defence would consist of a mirror which could be adjusted to redirect the laser to a target of choice, along with a decent magnifying glass to add that extra bit of punch!

Fancy a game of real-life Deflektor anyone?

Re:Smoke and mirrors

[isorox]

Hmm ,set up a network of one way mirrors and lenses, storing the power of a 5 minute laser burst, then release it all at target of choice

Re:Smoke and mirrors

[vasqzr]

I bet you think you can "Catch a fart in a jar", too?

Re:Smoke and mirrors

[clarkcox3]

I suppose you think that you can hook an electric generator up to the wheels of an electric car, and drive forever. (hint, neither are possible in any universe governed by the laws of thermodynamics ... like ours).

Re:Smoke AND Mirrors

[default luser]

This is coherent light we're talking about playing along a convex surface ( for example, a missle warhead ).

A small portion of the light inherent on the missle will be reflected directly back at the aircraft shooting the laser. However, thanks to 2x the distance plus the spreading of the light caused by the convex reflective surface, the power density inflicted upon the aircraft would be very low, even near the laser.

Basically, to harm the shooter with his own beam, you'd need to capture the beam perpendicular to a flat reflective surface. Not only is that damn near impossible in flight, even for a fraction of a second, but it would screw your aerodynamics :)

So then they just shoot your slow ass down with an AMRAAM.

Re:Smoke and mirrors

[isorox]

No, however if you put the set the mirrors up correctly, You'd pump 1MW of laser into the system for 5 seconds (5MJ), then fire it in 1/10th of a second (50MW) - sort of like a capacitor.

Even if the system is only 90% efficent, you get a 45MW pulse for 1/10th second.

No laws been broken here.

Re:Smoke and mirrors

[clarkcox3]

Still, no. You'd never get such a device to be that efficent. Take for example, two 99.999% reflective mirrors (better than anything available with our technology), placed a meter apart.

That would mean that the beam of light would hit the surface of a mirror about 300,000,000 times per second, which means that in 1/10 of a second, it would hit a mirror 30,000,000 times, which means that the final amount of energy in the laser could be calculated as follows:

(I = input energy)

(O = output energy)

O = I * (0.99999 ^ 30000000)

And this is assuming that you only need two mirrors, you aren't losing any energy because of the air, and you don't need any lenses.

Re:Smoke and mirrors

[isorox]

have a network of mirrors in high orbit arround the earth with arround 100,000km between each one :)

I can imagine.....

[Chardish]

The warning labels on the outsides of laser weapons:

CAUTION: DO NOT STARE DIRECTLY INTO LENS

-Evan

Re:I can imagine.....

[markom]

Yes, yes, "this side facing enemy" sign should be there, too.

Re:I can imagine.....

[CPIMatt]

No, no. You have to add 'WITH REMAINING EYE'. If you want to do the joke, do it right.

-Matt

Re:I can imagine.....

[sql*kitten]

CAUTION: DO NOT STARE DIRECTLY INTO LENS

Heh, like Claymore mines are labelled "FRONT TOWARDS ENEMY".

Re:I can imagine.....

[danro]

I have actually seen that sign on a live weapon, and whats more, it makes sense to have that much rediculed thing there.

It was a directional mine, and the front and back was reasonably similar except for the sign (that was in embossed so you could feel even if it was to dark to read it properly).

Someone deploying it while under stress might concievably have turned it the wrong way and as a consequence taking out his entire squad if it weren't for that sign.

Sure they look stupid, but those signs actually serve a purpose.

That said, i don't like weapons.
Not even if they include a big friggin' laser.

Re:I can imagine.....

[Anonymous Coward]

not exactly something you want to get wrong in the heat of the moment now is it. Regardless you don't want to be behind them either, they can go up to 30ft backwards at high speed, newton's law and all..

Re:I can imagine.....

[gillbates]

Or better:
Do not look at laser with remaining eye

Re:I can imagine.....

[ErikZ]

You don't like weapons?

Considering a weapon is just an extention of human will, don't you really mean you don't like people?

Re:I can imagine.....

[Anonymous Coward]

or, on a swedish laser: 'The laser can damage the eye. The beam is dangerous, too'

targeting system?

[sczimme]

A Navy ship could use the laser, with its beam traveling at the speed of light, to fend off even the fastest missiles. And ground troops could use a Humvee-mounted version of the weapon to instantly knock out incoming enemy artillery and mortar shells.

I would like to know how such a weapon will acquire/track/target an incoming projectile. (That was not sarcasm; I really would like to know.) Mortar rounds generally travel in a high parabolic path - think of the St. Louis arch. Larger artillery shells - such as those fired from a battleship - follow a flatter trajectory. The targeting system would have to acquire a small incoming object, predict the path it will follow, and fire within a few seconds. That looks like a daunting task.

Re:targeting system?

[Cirvam]

I think the AEGIS cruisers can already find and start firing off decoys and other such coutermeasures at incoming projectiles. I guess they could just take the technology that they use there and replace whatever fires off the decoys with the laser and it would work the same, assuming the laser could charge up fast enough to catch more then one target.

Re:targeting system?

[FeloniousPunk]

The answer to your question is called AN/TPQ-36 and AN/TPQ-37 "Firefinder" target acquisition radars. We've had them for 20 years - the -36 is designed to track mortar shells and the -37 other types of artillery (though IIRC, the -37 has all the functionality of the -36).
They are very effective. They calculate the location of the firing tubes, and that information is passed to artillery units tasked to provide counterbattery fire (usually MLRS rocket artillery). This all happens very quickly - 30 seconds to a few minutes' time.

Re:targeting system?

[Unipuma]

The advantage of a laser system is that you do not need to calculate the trajectory. Since you are firing at the object with the speed of light, the object will be (almost) in the same location from the moment you fire till the moment the beam hits.

Re:targeting system?

[mikewas]

A daunting task, but one that has been solved by systems such as Aegis. Presently, systems must track an incoming threat which may either be an umguided weapon traveling in an arc such as a mortar round, a guided but unpowered weapon such as a bomb that uses fins to alter it's ground course as it drops, or a powerred guided weapon such as a missile which can turn in any direction at any time.

Present systems not only have to aquire the target, catagorize the target, determine the best weapon to use in response. Then there's the same problem with the weapon you use to retaliate -- it also doesn't travel in a straight line so you must compensate not only for the threat's non-straight-line behaviour but also your own countering weapon's non-straight-line behaviour.

Is you use the LASER, the second half of the problem goes away!

BTW: Aegis solves the problem in a manner that is elegent or brute force, depending on your point of view. It uses an electronically steered RADAR to track incoming targets, shoot a gattling gun in the direction of the target, then tracks both the incoming target & the outgoing rounds, uses this data to modify the direction the guns are pointed. Elegent in the simplicity of its concept, brute force due to the fact it applies massive processing power to allow it to track an enormous number of targets.

Re:targeting system?

[beowulfcluster]

Maybe they'll use laser tracking? Err, I'll get my coat.

Re:targeting system?

[sql*kitten]

I would like to know how such a weapon will acquire/track/target an incoming projectile. (That was not sarcasm; I really would like to know.) Mortar rounds generally travel in a high parabolic path - think of the St. Louis arch. Larger artillery shells - such as those fired from a battleship - follow a flatter trajectory. The targeting system would have to acquire a small incoming object, predict the path it will follow, and fire within a few seconds. That looks like a daunting task.

It's a solved problem. The Sea Wolf point defence system can shoot down 4.5-inch shells as well as supersonic missiles. Sea Wolf was first deployed in combat in 1982. Of course, you are likely to run out of missiles before they run out of cannon ammo, but maybe you can buy enough time to hit them with an Exocet.

Warships are expensive, so a lot of money has been spent on ways to protect them!

Re:targeting system?

[bheilig]

You're right. I used to work on the AEGIS weapon system's SPY radar. Once a projectile is completely ballistic it's trajectory is easily predictable. It's more difficult to determine the trajectory of a missile that is still burning fuel. In this case the radar must determine the type of missile.

In AEGIS we would fire an interceptor missile at a threat. The interceptor has mid-course guidance capability with a window of opportunity, so you can't fire the thing in the wrong direction and expect it to still hit the target. Therefore, your predictions must be highly accurate, accounting for wind, earth coriolis (the earth is moving underneath the projectiles), non-constant heterogenous gravity (weaker as the projectiles move further away from the earth, not in a straight line, and different for different parts of the earth).

The equation for filtering in this case is quite a mess. I'd imagine predicting for a laser is much easier because your interceptor is much faster, more stearable, etc.

If you're really interested in how it works, get a book on the Kalman filter. By the way, this technique is also useful in enemy AI development for games!

Re:targeting system?

[sczimme]

They calculate the location of the firing tubes, and that information is passed to artillery units tasked to provide counterbattery fire (usually MLRS rocket artillery).

Okay, but that is targeting the entity that fired the round; the article about the laser weapon describes it as targeting the round itself. These are very different concepts: the tubes are essentially stationary [compared to the projectile], and a near miss with return [artillery] fire may be good enough. The inbound projectile projectile is moving quite fast and a near-miss from the laser probably won't be good enough.

Re:targeting system?

[quick_dry_3]

Is you use the LASER, the second half of the problem goes away!

Not quite, well, maybe for a ship and very close threats, longer range targetting (such as the ranges the ABL will have) do need the laser to 'lead' the target by a bit.

Those Aegis systems are rather impressive in action.

Re:targeting system?

[FeloniousPunk]

The radar actually detects the projectiles in flight; it analyzes the location, trajectory, and speed of the projo, accounts for atmospheric factors and determines where the artillery must be in order to fire a projectile with that flight path. What is being detected and tracked is the projectile; all the bits about targetting the firing battery is derived from that. If a radar beam can track a small projectile that accurately, so can a laser. And with a laser weapon, acquisition/ tracking and firing are essentially the same act.

Re:targeting system?

[Anonymous Coward]

The St. Louis Arch is not parabolic. It is a hyperbolic cosine. (i.e., a catenary)

Re:targeting system?

[quick_dry_3]

as a few others have posted in regards to the shipboard Aegis systems currently in use - basically a fast tracker and a gatling gun - here is the method used by the ABL.

Sensors detect a target (e.g. infra-red senssors pick up exhaust plumes or radar picks up missile)

Kilowatt class Active Ranger System laser acquires and tracks target.
Tracking data goes to the Tracker Illuminator Laser, which locks onto the missiles body and determines the best position to hit the missile.

A third laser the Beacon illuminator bounces light of the laser to determine atmospheric interference.

Interference data allows the optics to be altered to 'correct' the COIL's beam so it is properly focused when it arrives on target.

Then the COIL (Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser) fires, and hopefully burns a hole in the target. Destroying it ouright, disabling it, or blowing its fuel tanks.

Re:targeting system?

[Jester99]

The US Navy already has something like this in the form of giant guns mounted on some of its ships called "Phalanx" units. The thing fires thousands of bullets per minute, and it's all computer controlled. The purpose of this weapon is to track essentially anything that gets too close to the ship, and blow it to kingdom come. Missiles, planes, etc, are all valid targets. And it works, too.

More info is available. If you poke around online, you can also see some sweet movies of the thing. It just turns, tracks for a second, unleashes a wall of lead, then returns to the 'ready' position like it wasn't a big deal.

War is a daunting task. Fortunately, we've got some relatively clever folks thinking things like this up! :)

Re:targeting system?

[Anonymous Coward]

It just turns, tracks for a second, unleashes a wall of lead, then returns to the 'ready' position like it wasn't a big deal.

Reminds me of the "auto sentries" in the Aliens (DVD version, not in the theatrical version).

Extremely cool scenes with autonomous twin guns firing into masses of aliens and running eventually out of ammo.

Re:targeting system?

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI.

I believe everyone who is referring to the "Aegis" system, really mean to refer the CIWS (pronounced "See-Wiz"), or Close-In Weapon System. That's the R2D2 system with the 20mm(30mm?) gatling gun. Aegis refers to a phased array radar/missile combination that is employed on our guided missile cruisers. CIWS are found on lots of different classes of ships. They are extremely cool to see in action, of course.

Re:targeting system?

[glesga_kiss]

They are extremely cool to see in action, of course.

Provided you aren't relying on them to down a real inbound threat!

Re:targeting system?

[Anonymous Coward]

So far, these haven't worked too well, have they? I can name at least two cases -- the USS Stark (hit in the Persian Gulf by a missile) and the USS Cole (hit by a rubber dinghy loaded with explosives).

AFAIK, both vessels were equipped with point defense weaponry. In the case of the Stark, it was claimed the system needed at least fifteen minutes to warm up. In the case of the Cole, nobody recognized the raft as a threat until far too late, so the PD system couldn't be brought to bear.

I think the Phalanxes *could* work if given the proper conditions, but I sincerely doubt those proper conditions will ever exist for a ship under attack. The Navy needs to work on making these things better.

Re:targeting system?

[ErikZ]

Who still has battleships in service?

Re:targeting system?

[Anonymous Coward]

This all happens very quickly - 30 seconds to a few minutes' time.

Yeah, considering that most bullets and missiles travel at least at mach 3 I don't think you have 30 seconds to calculate the trajectory, rotate your laser turret, and power up the laser. ICBM's are even worse traveling at upwards of mach 15 with a VERY chaotic trajectory that require the dissection of recursive function systems.

Re:targeting system?

[CSZeus]

Actually, all projectiles follow the same basic formula for motion - gravity and air resistance being constant and easily accounted for. The only reason battleship shells follow a flatter trajectory is that they have a different initial velocity, so they take less time getting to their target. This means that gravity has less time to affect them, so they don't have to aim as high to compensate. As far as only taking a few seconds, given all the information (and knowing the right formula) you can predict the correct path fairly accurately with a TI-83 in that amount of time, provided your hands are moderately fast.

Re:targeting system?

[afidel]

The Cole's system was intentionally not active as they were in what was considered to be a friendly port, so enforcing a no access zone using automated weapons was not an option. Like most defense systems Phalynx is designed for use during active combat where the threats are obvious, not against sabotage or sneak attacks during non combat times. The lack of clear threats is one of the most difficult things for the military in our "war on terrorism", gurilla fighters are hard to combat, ask the russians.

Re:targeting system?

[tellezj]

The problem has really already been solved. The Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL) was designed to destroy Katyusha type rockets (the ones that the PLO and Syrians use to terrorize Israeli population centers) midflight. It has sucessfully demonstrated that capabality against multiple targets.

Now, how does it do it. (I've been involved with Airborne Laser advanced tracking research for several years, so I do know what I'm talking about.) Basically, if you can see it, you can hit it with a laser. Usually coarse aquisition of the target occurs through the use of some sort of radar. Based on this information, some sort of optical tracking device is aimed in the general direction of the target (think of it as a gimballed telescope that turns quickly and accurately). A camera behind the main aperture then picks up the image. At this point the target is probably less than 1 pixel big, but distinct enought to track. It then uses a fast steering mirror (FSM) to center the image on the camera. Next, it hands off image tracing to a fine track camera that can see more details of the image, which then controls the mirror to center the image even better. The laser, having been boresighted with the cameras during calibration, bounces off the same mirrors used to track and goes straight back at the target. The obvious problem is that the target will have moved a little bit, approx 2vr/c. Here v is the relative tangential (ooh big words, but should be unambiguius(sp?)) velocity, r is the distance to the target, and c is the speed of light. Using the appropriate algorithms (usually some sort of extended Kalman filter) you can predict pretty accurately where the target will be so that you can hit the part of it you want. There's a lot of other stuff going on (adaptive optics, stabalization, etc.) but that about sums it up.

Re:targeting system?

[nullgel]

I just started at Raytheon as an engineer a few months ago, and one of the first things I locked onto was this Phalanx system. It blew me away the first time I saw it. (heh) I wish you could see some of the other video on it that I have access to, it really is an awesome sight. The software that controls it is also equally awesome. It reminded me of a LEGO Mindstorms/3Com Webcam project I did a while ago.

Re:targeting system?

[Ronin Developer]

1. CIWS does not unleash a wall of lead...it'd depleated Uranium. This makes the projectile far more effective against inbound targets.

2. CIWS classifies targets based on the potential target's trajectory. If the parameters for the inbound do not meet the threat criteria or fall outside of the weapons field of fire, it will not fire.

This means that CIWS is not intended to target boats, mines, or personnel. It will target and destroy inbound missles or planes that meet the threat criteria. It does this quite effectively.

To deal with other potential attacks, ships are equipped with other weapons, .50 Cal machine guns or 25mm chain guns and personnel who are supposed to be alert.

The only known case I am aware of where a CIWS was used in an anti-personnel manner was an CIWS test excerise that went terribly wrong. The CIWS tracked a drone right into the path of another ship ripping the bridge of the other ship and killing the ship's navigator.

RD

Re:targeting system?

[Anonymous Coward]

If a radar beam can track a small projectile that accurately, so can a laser.

The radar beam doens't have to strike the projectile accurately. It's not a pensil thin beam. The laser has to be very thin, or the energy is too dispersed. That's not a problem for radar.

Re:targeting system?

[andcal]

They are extremely cool to see in action, of course.

Provided you aren't relying on them to down a real inbound threat!

Actually, if you were counting on them to down a real inbound threat, I would argue that you would consider them extremely cool when they did so!

Re:targeting system?

[vigormortis]

People tend to focus on the Phalanx system when speaking of USN missle defense systems. Well....

The point of AEGIS is not to allow a threat to get close enough to have to use your Phalanx CIWS (Close in Weapons System). The target (be it missle, gunboat, or jumbo jet) should have already been engaged by your air cover or long range missles long long before it's in range of point defense systems. If you have inbound missles or aircraft leaking through your perimeter defense and are forced to light up CIWS, you're in bad shape. Assuming that the inbound whatever it is is hit by the CIWS, be prepared to have your bridge and radar masts sprayed with hot shrapnel ...if not large pieces of aircraft and whatever ordinance it was carrying. There's a reason its considered a "last ditch" line of defence.

Re:targeting system?

[Rich0]

I just started at Raytheon as an engineer a few months ago, and one of the first things I locked onto was this Phalanx system. It blew me away the first time I saw it. I wish you could see some of the other video on it...

You locked onto it, or did it lock onto you? I'm sure the video of that probably wasn't suitable for public broadcast...

Re:targeting system?

[mcgoohan]

[pedant on] Not quite. The Gateway Arch is an upside-down catenary curve (the shape of a suspended chain). Since the curve has weight at each point, it can't be a parabola. The catenary is narrower.

Now when that guy parachuted onto the Arch (mumble) years ago, and slipped down its side, he may have deviated toward a parabola and splatted a short distance from the foot of the Arch. [pedant off]

Re:targeting system?

[commonchaos]

Links to pages with (blah, avi) movies:

http://www.marpac.dnd.ca/gallery/movies.htm
http://www-acala1.ria.army.mil/LC/cs/csa/aagatlin. htm

Re:targeting system?

[nullgel]

Naaa. It wasn't turned on, unfortunately. And the gun was in pieces on the floor at the time.

Re:targeting system?

[mikewas]

Yes, you must lead the target by a bit because of the motion of the target, assuming they were moving across your field of view, in 3d it is somewhat more complex. This is a portion of the first part of the problem.

I was considering the two parts to be calculating corrections due to the target's behaviour (part 1) and corrections due to your own weapon's behaviour (part 2).

What you don't have to do is also raise the muzzle of your gun to compensate for your rounds' drop between you & the target. They also have a parabolic path, assuming an unguided round. The LASER is straight line, for all intents, so this second compensation is not necessary.

In actuality, the LASER is rather fast. Since your round is moving at the speed of light, you might be able to neglect the motion of the target -- it's so slow WRT c that it may be neglected.

Re:targeting system?

[GlassHeart]

I[f] you use the LASER, the second half of the problem goes away!

No, it doesn't, and you point it out yourself:

It uses an electronically steered RADAR to track incoming targets, shoot a gattling gun in the direction of the target, then tracks both the incoming target & the outgoing rounds, uses this data to modify the direction the guns are pointed.

If you replace the gun with a laser whose beam you cannot track, this method is missing a data point. Put another way, everything in the current system is working in the same coordinate system - the radar's. If you use a laser, then you have two disjoint coordinate systems - the radar's, and the laser's - because you do not have radar feedback of where the laser is pointed. The laser must be kept in perfect calibration with the radar, in order to convert its coordinates into radar coordinates. Basic trigonometry tells us that any error will be multiplied over distance, and negatively impact the effective range of the weapon.

There are other problems. A gun has a simple maximum range, so your software can ignore all "friendlies" outside that range. A powerful laser may effectively have infinite range (destroys everything within line of sight, whatever altitude). You'll then need to make sure that you don't end up shooting down your own fighters and missiles.

Point is, technical problems don't "go away" so much as they are replaced by other technical problems.

Re:targeting system?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also the Shortstop system to protect ground forces from artillery shells. The majority of artillery shells use an RF fuse. Shortstop creates a field that triggers these fuses at a safe distance. It's proven to be 100% effective, but only against this particular type of fuse.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/syst ems/gro und/an-vlq-9.htm

Re:targeting system?

[Maverick2219]

While we're correcting, the Phalanx no long fires DU rounds. We're using Tungsten now.

Re:targeting system?

[Maverick2219]

The Phalanx would never have targeted the boat that attacked Cole. Phalanx is designed to counter hostile aircraft (missiles/planes) and not boats. They are also totally automated so no manual targeting of the boat would have been possible.

Re:targeting system?

[Maverick2219]

As effective as Phalanx is, it's important to remember that the system is a last-ditch form of defense when everything else (RIM-7, RIM-67, SM-2) fails.

Re:targeting system?

[mikewas]

No shit.

The Aegis example was just that -- an example. So you use an optical sensor instead or RADAR.

Yes, new solutions also generate new problems -- engineering is tradeoffs -- but the post wasn't about Intro Engineering 101.

Yes, you have a boresighting problem in both cases. It exists in just about every targetting application known to man starting with throwing a rock at a rabbit.

Yes, war sucks, people get hurt, sometimes the wrong people. The best weapon to build is the one so damn good that nobody will fuck with you & you don't have to use it -- oh yea, we tried that, several times, I hope we survive.

Re:targeting system?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Phalanx system has shot at more random stationary objects in its service history than legitimate threats, including nearby US warships.

In most US warships you will find a hole or ten caused by Phalanx hitting THE SHIP IT IS MOUNTED ON either during practice shoots or just when it gets bored.

It's a last ditch defense and even then nowhere near as good as it should be.
For a more effective system check out Goalkeeper as fitted to a number of NATO vessels.

Re:targeting system?

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW: Aegis solves the problem in a manner that is elegent or brute force, depending on your point of view. It uses an electronically steered RADAR to track incoming targets, shoot a gattling gun in the direction of the target [...]

The gatling gun system you speak of is known as the Phalanx, and is sort of the 'last line of defense' for the large ships that carry it. The Aegis is a cruiser that shoots missles and engages threats from a much greater distance. And where the Phalanx attempts to defend a single ship, the Aegis is tasked with defending a whole group of them.

Re:targeting system?

[ThaReetLad]

Targeting a laser would be a simple job. What you need to know is the position of the target and its velocity. The difficulty is getting the position sufficiently accurate, but this should be a trivial job using millimeter wavelength radar (as found on the Longbow apache)or possibly even lidar (laser radar). The only other problem is that your laser pulse would heat the air through which it traveled which would then distort the beam and seriously reduce the effective laser power on the target.

Re:targeting system?

[Anonymous Coward]

One sniper fuck You with all your weapon, lasers, ICBMS. Lasers or other super puper weapon will not save the USA.

Re:targeting system?

[BgJonson79]

Though it's somewhat different, the Phalanx system can lock on to incoming missiles. Instead of one shot, I know it does something into the several-thousand rounds per minute range, but I understand it to be rather effective.

Can this be right?

[seosamh]

The article states that

"The technology turns atomic particles into light with enough radiation to damage an object it encounters."

That sounds more like a matter-antimatter reaction than anything else. IANAP, but turning particles
into light sounds like matter to energy to me.

Is there a physicist in the house?

Re:Can this be right?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not a plumber either but we could sure use some antimatter in here to unblock our drain.

Re:Can this be right?

[JJPS]

A Laser works by taking a group of like particles (usually a gas) and exciting them up to an energy level usually several notches above their standard ground state. I'm not sure what they do to excite the particles, but I believe that it is usually accomplished by using another light source or electric fields. Particles being naturally lazy then promptly drop back down to their ground state emitting a photon of a particular wavelength (this being governed by the type of gas and to what energy level it had been excited too). What makes a laser unique is that most of the particles are working in tandem, which allows a unified wave front being of course the "kick" of the laser. I have never heard however of a laser that was strong enough to destroy anything at a distance. Is this another star wars program that is doomed to failure because no one bothered to sit back and seriously look at the physics? (Though I have heard that that program was a dummy to get the soviets to bankrupt themselves trying to do the same thing when we knew there was no way it would work)

Re:Can this be right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lasers have been made that are strong enough to destroy things at a distance.

Ob Austin Powers

[Anonymous Coward]

When are they going to attach these to sharks?

Oh yeah, isn't using these against people a violation of the Geneva convention? No, I didn't read the article...

Re:Ob Austin Powers

[quick_dry_3]

The October edition of Aerospace International journal touches on this problem.

Yes, Geneva Convention bans blinding weapons (what party poopers), but accepts that combatants may be blinded as a side-effect of the use of a normal weapon.

So, while you can blind someone with it (e.g. a pilot) at a much longer range than the range you could destroy missiles/planes/etc, once you are within that lethal range blindeness created by the weapon would be a side-effect, not the main effect.

Bit of a grey area.

Re:Ob Austin Powers

[utunga]

Yes, Geneva Convention bans blinding weapons (what party poopers), but accepts that combatants may be blinded as a side-effect of the use of a normal weapon.

So let me get this straight. The Geneva convention makes it illegal to blind someone, but its perfectly legal to shoot them outright, blow them up, or simply maim them horribly for life ?

--

Re:Ob Austin Powers

[ThaReetLad]

So laser may not be banned, but they're really unethical for use against ground targets. People have talked about using lasers to avoid collateral damage in built up areas or for use against terrorists. They seem to forget that anyone within several hundred meters of the target or possibly more could be blinded and/or seriously burnt by light reflected from anything in the target area. The target needn't be a reflective surface either. A laser of with more than around five hundred milliwatts of power can blind even if you only see the beam incident on a rough surface like a wall or a piece of paper. There's no way you could use this weapon anywhere near any of your own personnel unless they had all been issued with special protective gear.

Tactically Flawed

[BoBaBrain]

The big disadvantage to large laser weapons is that they give away their precise position since laser beams travel in perfectly straight lines.
<br>
<br>
Once their exact location is determined (in a matter of milliseconds) they can be targeted and destroyed.
<br>
<br>
<br>
Cool, but expensive one-shot toys.

Re:Tactically Flawed

[FeloniousPunk]

Military lasers do not lase in the visible spectrum; you're not going to see the beam. And they would fire a pulse of energy lasting only a fraction of a second.
If the target had a laser sensor, it could figure out where the fire is coming from, but I suspect the target is going to be having other concerns once it receives the laser pulse.

Re:Tactically Flawed

[BoBaBrain]

Even if the laser is not visible this is still a viable tactic.
Remember, the initial targtet need not survive for it to determine the direction of the laser as these readings can be taken in a fraction of a second.
Also remember that the initial target may not be the one which returns fire.

Just my 2 cent.

Re:Tactically Flawed

[JKR]

But the laser is mounted on a supersonic strike fighter... it's not like you can fire back along the straight line and expect the fighter to still be there. The best you could do is use the reverse path as a starting point path for (probably more than one) smart missiles, and hope they can find the source before they run out of fuel.

Re:Tactically Flawed

[jandrese]

How is this different than firing a missile, mortar, or even a bullet? Once you start firing on a group of people, they usually figure out where it's coming from in fairly short order. Lasers are line of sight only. Unless they're seeing a laser shoot down a missile overhead, they're going to be able to see the unit anyway. Shoot and scoot will still be the order of the day, even if you have a laser. Besides, if they're busy shooting down missiles, then they've already been spotted anyway.

Re:Tactically Flawed

[quick_dry_3]

From October edition of Aerospace Internation journal (strange this gets posted just after i'd finished reading this article)

"beam is expected to take anywhere from five to ten seconds to burn through the casing"

That was from an article about the ABL mounted on a 747.

But as you said, if you're getting hit with a megawatt laser beam, you've got bigger problems than finding out where it came from.

And when that something firing is the size of a 747, finding it probably isn't such a huge problem.

Re:Tactically Flawed

[FeloniousPunk]

Thanks for the info!
Some things further complicating returning fire against the laser:
* unless you have a laser of your own, you'd have to attack the aircraft with a missile, which is vulnerable to being shot down by the laser.
* the other point that comes to mind is that the sort of technology to acquire and target and engage at great range these flying lasers are going to be available to very few countries, possibly even only to the US for some time. Certainly against the sort of enemies the US is likely to be fighting in the near-ish future, there will probably not be a way to fight back.

Re:Tactically Flawed

[sql*kitten]

The big disadvantage to large laser weapons is that they give away their precise position since laser beams travel in perfectly straight lines.

You might think so, but tracer ammo has been around since WW2 and it's still in use today. That suggests that being able to locate a weapon that is firing at you while it is firing isn't as big a tactical advantage as it might first appear.

Re:Tactically Flawed

[BoBaBrain]

A moving source/target would not be that much harder to track. Calculating the exact position (and velocity) of the source and firing back could all be done in less than a second.

Re:Tactically Flawed

[danro]

It depends, the right tool for the right job and all that.

Things they are good for:

Tracers are used to direct the fire of rapidly firing weapons, like a machinegun. (ie. instant visual feedback)
Or to point others to a certain target. (ie. squad leader has tracers and direct the squads fire)
The point here is to quickly overwhelm the target with your firepower and destroy them before they fire back effectivly.

Things they are not so good for:

Well, you don't see snipers using them for obvious reason. If you are a soft target and don't have overwhelming firepower you are very much interested in consealing your location, giving it away is suicide, you could as well use the tracer to shoot yourself to save time.

Anyway, as I stated before, I don't like weapons. Not even those with big friggin' lasers that would otherwise be the very definition of coolness ;-)

Re:Tactically Flawed

[sayerofno]

"they can be targeted and destroyed"

Well, that depends on what you're targeting and destroying with. If you're targeting and destroying with conventional weapons, what's to keep the laser from just shooting them too?

If you're targeting and destroying with another laser, then there are other things to consider.

If the laser is surface based and is shooting targets in the air, then you either have to take out the surface based laser with an air born laser, or you have to be closer than about 25 miles or the curvature of the earth will get in the way of your shot.

Re:Tactically Flawed

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest issues would probably be: how fast your weapon can slew to the target, whether said target is within the field of fire, and finally, after being smacked by the laser, can your weapon still fire?

Re:Tactically Flawed

[BoBaBrain]

Exactly. Although it may not be your weapon which was smacked by the laser.

Re:Tactically Flawed

[afidel]

line of sight is different for a laser system at 60K feet then it is for most weapon systems. For instance artilary will have no chance to reach you if you and with the ABL system you could even be out of the effective range of most missle based AA systems. ABL is a theater weapon, it will stay well back from the front lines and provide tactical support much like an AWACS.

Re:Tactically Flawed

[default luser]

Impossible.

The target fighter has one point of reference. How are you suppsed to discern a line in space from one point?

IF the figher knew the power of the beam incident on itself, it could be possible to calculate the elevation angle of incidence by how much power is absorbed by the plane's skin.

The fighter could also calculate the angle of incidence from the longest length of elliptical-shaped burn created by the incident beam. But to measure this requires that the beam not move at all, and to USE it requires that the target fighter know both the attacking beam's aperture and distance from source.

IF the fighter knew all the above, it could analyze the elliptical-shaped burn created by the incident beam to find the azimuth.

With elevation and azimuth we have a target.

But let's be honest; distance, water vapor and smart pilots will guarantee you never know the exact power or configuration of the originating beam. So at best, you get an intelligent guess at the direction of origin.

Re:Tactically Flawed

[BoBaBrain]

Why only one point of reference?

Imagine "double glased" armour...

The future

[Kj0n]

In the future, this will give great opportunies to remove "unwanted" persons from society. Just launch a few satellites, containing a powerful laser, and bye, bye Saddam (if he is stupid enough to show his head).

(This also reminds me of Ant City.)

Re:The future

[Anonymous Coward]

The preoblem is that for the sake of humanity it should be: bye bye Bush, but since he would be the one to launch them....

Re:The future

[Anonymous Coward]

Allegedly, the military is already working on a laser built into a large plane that will be able to pick a person out of a crowd and kill just them, leaving everyone around them unharmed.

I'm too lazy to look for links right now, but google around and you'll find it.

Re:The future

[Anonymous Coward]

Crazy people in the crazy world.

You about unwanted person: Remove "unwanted" person from society. Just launch a few satellites .. blah, blah, blah

"Unwanted" persons about You: ... Remove "unwanted" person from society. Just sniper shot or suicide bomb or ...

Re:The future

[Boingy the Boingster]

Just wait till you do or say something that makes *you* the unwanted one.

"But they'd never target me! I'm not a $ENEMYTYPE_OF_CURRENT_ADMINISTRATION" you say...today.

Wavelength?

[Cutie Pi]

Does anyone know what wavelength these lasers are operating at? The article mentions that the lasers have a hard time piercing through clouds. It seems to me that an infrared laser would be more effective at piercing clouds than a visible one. Infrared solid-state laser technology definitely exists (the laser used in green laser pointers is in fact a 1064nm IR laser diode that is frequency doubled to 532nm).

Re:Wavelength?

[caveat]

yeah, but true IR lasers that can heat things well (ie cutting lasers) are usually CO2 lasers, which emit at 10.6 microns, 10600nm...1064 nm is IR, but it's not really effective thermally.
(yes, i do work with lasers. 532nm, in fact - diode-pumped frequency-doubled Nd:YAG 100mW CW lasers from CrystaLaser...fun stuff :P)

Re:Wavelength?

[ErikZ]

Wavelengths for chemical lasers are easy to look up.

I'm actually puzzled about this article. It says "Solid State" but I think they're talking about the free electron laser. Which I was told has a theoretical max efficiency of 40%

Which I guess can be considered solid state, if by solid state you mean "Not chemical".

If it is the free electron laser, then it's impossible to tell you the wavelength, because the wavelength is adjustable.

Re:Wavelength?

[David Roundy]

...but I think they're talking about the free electron laser.

No way they can mean free electron laser by solid state laser. It could only mean an every day diode laser (except really big...).

Re:Wavelength?

[drinkypoo]

Water is actually fairly efficient at storing infrared. Contrary to popular belief water does not generally reflect infrared; It absorbs it, and then radiates it in all directions. This is the reason why high humidity will diffuse IR.

Re:Wavelength?

[ErikZ]

Why?

Re:Wavelength?

[David Roundy]

There is no solid involved in a free electron laser. How could it be called a solid state laser? There is such a thing as a solid state laser, and it is also called a diode laser.

But what the world really wants to know is . . .

[Pike65]

"When can get my own light saber?"

Killing people

[Jump]

What is great about to have yet another way to kill people? It's not about killing people who deserve it but all about money and imperialism. Killing people with lasers is not better then by bullets.

Re:Killing people

[Cyno01]

yeah, but lasers come in pretty colors

Re:Killing people

[AAAWalrus]

>What is great about to have yet another way to kill people?

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I never read anything that said solid state lasers would be used as anti-personnel weapons. I read that they would be used for defense, with the abilty to remove live missiles and mortars. Which, if you think about it, is a way to reduce the risk of loss of human life going into war.

Basically, these would be used as a defense mechanism in conventional war. Contrary to popular belief, military objectives during conventional war are not to inflict human casualties, but to eliminate the threat in the most efficient way possible. Loss of life does happen, however, and any effort to reduce the loss of life during war would be applauded, I would think.

-AAAWalrus

Re:Killing people

[Anonymous Coward]

Very funny.
You go to the war. You use laser. You shoot all the missiles around and just go home from the war (after shotting all the missiles around).
LoL.

"... reduce risk of loss of human life going into war."

The best method to reduce risk of loss of human life is NOT goint into the war.

Re:Killing people

[Jump]

Your argumentation is ok in theory, but in practice there was a balance between east and west. Now Bush argues for a "preemptive strike", which in my opinion is just a result of not having to consider the back-strike. So if laser weapons make it impossible to attack the US with missiles, will the US then throw away all it's own missiles? No it won't, it just will feel more comfortable in the next war.

Soon (wrings hands)

[velcrokitty]

I'll be able to walk into a store and ask for: "Phased plasma rifle in 40-watt range. "

Excellent... Oh wait. 40-watts isn't very much. Is that what the Terminator really asked for? 40 watts? Sheesh. I could just hook up a light bulb and start shining bright lights in people's eyes. Perhaps the idea is to convince them to stare into the bulb for hours on end (like several of my classes that I attended) and eventually go blind-ish...

I will be back...

Re:Soon (wrings hands)

[JKR]

A 40W laser could weld steel plate - it all depends on the beam spot size. Think about it - a 10 mW laser pointer isn't eye safe; a 40 W laser focused to a 2 mm spot would burn a hole straight through the eyeball and out the other side.

Jon.

Re:Soon (wrings hands)

[Anonymous Coward]

phased plasma rifle doesn't sound like a laser to me. Sounds more like a rifle firing material in a plasma state with an applied electrical charge (phase). 40W sounds like a pretty decent charge for this purpose. I suppose you could use the Wattage to see how big a charge of plasma could be charged, and hence the "calibre" of the weapon.

This of course assumes that they somehow manage to "bottle" plasma. I suppose the charge might be to keep the plasma in a blob on course to the target. (Sort of like high tech rifling).

But hey, this is fiction anyway.

Re:Soon (wrings hands)

[dr_db]

um, I've heard that you can etch a bar code into glass with a 10 watt laser. You put a stripe of black marker on the glass, pulse it, wipe the remaining marker off.

40 watts of coherent light is alot!

Re:Soon (wrings hands)

[Anonymous Coward]

Hope it will not my eyeball and not yours. It will eyeballs of "unwanted persons", terrorists and all bad people. Right?

You're right...

[doru]

Roughly, a laser works by changing one form of energy (provided by a "pump") into another (coherent light radiation). No "atomic particle" is turned into anything.

High-Tech vs. Low-Tech

[BShive]

This is going to be another case of a low-hech solution will be able to beat the billion dollar high-tech toy. What do you think a good old-fashioned smoke bomb is going to do the effectiveness of a laser beam? Any kind of dispersed particles are going to hamper it - they've spent this long needing to jump the power enough just to not disperse too much in the atmosphere.

Re:High-Tech vs. Low-Tech

[ceejayoz]

And how are you going to know when to let off your smoke bomb? If the plane is undetected (Stealth bomber, perhaps) the laser hits instantly - boom. If you detect the incoming plane and let off your smoke bomb, it can wait the 2 minutes it'll take for the smoke to blow away.

So um...

[acehole]

What happens if someone just gets a really really big mirror?

Re:So um...

[Waab]

What happens if someone just gets a really really big mirror?

I think it would really depend on the quality of the mirror. Granted, I'm not an optics expert, but I believe any mirror constructed to deflect the laser is still going to absorb some of the energy. I doubt if your everyday bathroom mirror is going to save you from more than one hit from the kind of laser weapon being discussed, if it even saves you from the first hit. How many nations do you think would be willing and able to equip their military with Hubble quality mirrors?

Nice use of our tax dollars

[bazzert]

"$4.5 billion" of our hard earned tax dollars so over grown schoolboys can play with their toys ... great ...

Re:Nice use of our tax dollars

[goldspider]

Better than dumping it into a multitude of failed social programs. Personally I'm glad that at least some of our tax money is being spent on something the founding fathers actually considered a role of government: providing for the national defense.

Re:Nice use of our tax dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, yeah. Right. I completly forgot that we are currently under siege. All the evil doers are after us. The sky is falling and that's why we need to pour billions of dollars into fancy war toys instead of feeding the hungry and healing the sick.

Now I understand it!

Re:Nice use of our tax dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

Feeding the hungry and healing the sick is not a role or responsibility of government.

Re:Nice use of our tax dollars

[Gruneun]

That's the same kind of logic that neutered our intelligence programs in the last 20 years. Suddenly, a couple planes get flown into our buildings and people like you start asking why the CIA didn't know about it. There was a time when our defense community had all the money it needed and we were on the cutting-edge of everything, with superior weaponry over everyone. We still do have superior weaponry, but with all of their budget cuts, we don't have the same volume of current research projects to stay on top. Go ahead, voice your "it's too expensive" point and neuter the US military, too.

History repeats itself... and those who don't learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them, too.

Re:Nice use of our tax dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

For a civilised government it is.

Are you suggesting that people should just be left to die in the gutter? Not everyone who drops below the poverty line is a slacker. Some of them may be really stupid, but that's not a reason to abandon them.

And no. Charity won't work. It didn't work in the post industrial revolution UK and it cannot replace a government run welfare system now.

If you don't like paying taxes, you're welcome to leave the society. Just don't come asking for the police, roads, schooling, rescue services or the use of transportation and medical infrastructure of the nation.

I'm sick of the warmongerers using my tax money on non-essential crap purpose built to blow other people apart for their own glory and ego tripping. Fuck them. I'm proud that I refused to serve in my country's conscription army and spent 6 months in jail for that.

Re:Nice use of our tax dollars

[Hard_Code]

Please explain to me how a more high tech military could have prevented the INS and airports not catching the terrorists, and prevented them from slamming civilian planes into buildings. Go ahead... I bet if we only had SDI that would have never happened! Damn you tree huggers! Damn you all to hell!

"History repeats itself... and those who don't learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them, too."

Indeed it does. As long as we continue to install illegitimate leaders into countries and play them off against each other, we will always be the enemy of the people ruled by those leaders (or in fact, the leaders themselves...).

I've said it before and I'll say it again...an open society will always be prone to such attacks, by the very nature of being an open society. That is the price we pay for the freedoms we have 99.9999% of the time.

Re:Nice use of our tax dollars

[ErikZ]

I'm curious, when was the last time the US installed a puppet government?

Re:Nice use of our tax dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of people like to quote our founding fathers, so permit me to do the same:

"Wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, {and} shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own persuits." -Thomas Jefferson

Socialism does not work. It punishes the hard-working and rewards mediocrity. I understand that sometimes people fall on hard times, but it is not the government's responsibility to force us to throw money at them.

"Fuck them. I'm proud that I refused to serve in my country's conscription army and spent 6 months in jail for that."

The military men who died defending your liberty are honored by your sacrifice.

Re:Nice use of our tax dollars

[Stonehand]

That *fwoosh* was the sound of his point completely going over your head. Note that he referred to intelligence programs...

Prior to Sept. 11, the intelligence agencies were remarkably unpopular with numerous politicians, in particular the more left-leaning Democrats who had some influence due to eight years of administrative control under Pres. Clinton. Human intelligence, in particular, suffered -- hell, the attitude was that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was time to reap the "peace dividend" and focus on domestic issues rather than security. The Clinton administration also proved remarkably optimistic in foreign policy, for the most part giving only the occasional token Tomahawk to bin Laden, pretending that the Palestinians and Israelis actually had a meaningful peace process (bringing back Arafat from exile in Tunis, in the process), pretending that the IRA/Sinn Fein and the UK had peace (the IRA refuses to disarm, and Trimble threatened to withdraw; basically the whole shebang there is in danger), and so forth.

Unfortunately, "optimism" and "security" aren't compatible, unless you include the word "imbecile". The FAA, for instance, for quite some time optimistically let people bring in 3" knives past "security", and if you forgot to bring one, the airlines often had metal steak knives on board just in case. Hmmm. The same attitude (screw security, it's not going to happen) showed itself in the incredibly slow takeup of bomb-detection machines (because false positives from nitrogen-heavy products would cause delays and weaken the bottom line), unsecured cockpits, flight attendants instructed not to resist...

Re:Nice use of our tax dollars

[ceejayoz]

Afghanistan. Karzai. This year.

Re:Nice use of our tax dollars

[Cervantes]

Actually, I'm sure the military men who died defending his right to choose are glad he had the balls to do so.

Re:Nice use of our tax dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the same kind of logic that neutered our intelligence programs in the last 20 years

Yeah because you know the poor CIA just can't possibly be expected to do it's job with a measly 3.5 billon dollar anual budget. Right!

Lets see 3.5 billon divided by 365 days a year what is that like 9.5 million dollars a day. And that's JUST for the CIA. I mean wouldn't economics suggest that at some point there is a diminishing return on investment here. If they can't solve the problem with 9.5 millon dollars a day what makes you think throwing more money at it will help?

Re:Nice use of our tax dollars

[ErikZ]

Well, heck, if that counts, I'm all for puppet governments!

Re:Nice use of our tax dollars

[NathanielSamson]

One has to look at what that 9.5 million dollars a day is being spent on. Since the late 1970's the humint (Human Intelligence) was scaled back and new rules were put in place that dictated what type of assets, human that is could be used. No assets with questionable credentials were allowed, even though these exact people are the ones able to get the best information on groups such as Al-queda. Our reliance on sigint and satellite imagery only allowed us to see large areas of interest, ie camps, bases and such. We had no information about what activities were actually taking place in these camps. So while 9.5 million a day is alot,it is spent in the wrong areas, I would accept an increase if a larger proportion went to humint source development and the recruitment and training of field case officers.

Re:Nice use of our tax dollars

[bazzert]

what the hell are you talking about... we are talking about fricken *lasers* here. The failures of intelligence seem to come mostly from bureaucratic failures in communication. Not a lack of money.

I'd sooner raise the abysmally low rate of pay for serving men and women than blow ridiculous amounts of money on these hare brained schemes.

Re:Nice use of our tax dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

Strange logic.
How lasers can help in the war against terrorists?
Intelligence programs can help. Lasers not.

Money from the "our intelligence programs in the last 20 years" was spent on the stealth bombers, submarines and etc... Now these money will spend on the lasers. That can't do anything with new treats. It's just another good method to steal your money. Sorry, steal my money and get yours.

Afterthought

[doru]

Here is some background on lasers.

Interesting, but is it legal?

[suman28]

I thought that according to one of the provisions of the United nations, it is not legal to build any lasor guided weapons, isn't it? I am sure that there are loop holes, but it would be interesting to see how the U.S utilizes those loop holes

Re:Interesting, but is it legal?

[goldspider]

I believe you are grossly misinformed. What do you think brought all those bombs to their targets in the Gulf War (as was so wonderfully seen on TV every day)?

Re:Interesting, but is it legal?

[Jaysyn]

What are you smoking? The U.S. has had laser-guided bombs for years. Just ask Saddam or Ossama.

Jaysyn

Re:Interesting, but is it legal?

[jandrese]

I certainly hope not. Almost all of our smart bombs these days are laser guided. That provision wouldn't make sense anyway. Laser guided weapons tend to be much more accurate than their dumb counterparts (you can't radar or IR guide a bomb on cold ground building), so they tend to reduce civilian casualties by letting the military only blow up military targets. The system isn't perfect (especially when armies hide behind their civilians), but it's certainly a lot better than carpet bombing.

Re:Interesting, but is it legal?

[cduffy]

Anti-personnel lasers are illegal -- not laser-guided weapons or weapons meant to be deployed against shells, missiles, aircraft or what-have-you.

Re:Interesting, but is it legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think an antipersonnel laser is illegal. It's only illegal if it's main function is to permanently blind enemy troops. Something like a "laser blaster" from sci-fi action movies would be OK.

Re:Interesting, but is it legal?

[Malc]

You're getting confused. I believe things like lasers designed for blinding enemy pilots are considered illegal. It's interesting, I read a piece in the National Post the other day about law suits by a Canadian and US pilot as they claim they have had vision problems after being attacked by a Russian laser from a "spy" ship. Is anybody familiar with situations where lasers have been deployed in this capacity? I've heard rumours the British tried them in the Falklands War... but I haven't heard how successful they were.

Re:Interesting, but is it legal?

[ceejayoz]

The Geneva Convention outlaws the use of weapons specifically designed to blind humans (it's considered inhumane - can't maim people, only kill them).

Being able to blind enemy troops wasn't the purpose of the laser, thus it's perfectly legal... the blinding is just an added bonus.

Like you said - loopholes.

Re:Interesting, but is it legal?

[cduffy]

That's the intent, yes. However, one friend of mine was in a unit which happened to posess a laser-like system capable of causing only temporary blindness, and they were forced to detune it (and use it merely for illuminating targets) for legal reasons. Hence, I'm inclined to believe that the actual law is in effect a bit more extensive than its intent would allow for.

Re:Not a feasible weapon

[FeloniousPunk]

Read the article. These are not going to be weapons carried by soldiers on foot like rifles, but mounted on aircraft and large vehicles.

Re:Not a feasible weapon

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahem? Why don't you read a physics textbook.

Where does E-mc^2 come into it?

Unlimited use in battle!

[jaredcoleman]

This would be the first weapon mounted on aircraft/heavy machinery that the pilot/operator wouldn't have to worry about running out of ammo in combat! That's a pretty serious advantage, no matter what other shortcomings the weapon may have.

Re:Unlimited use in battle!

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean? The batteries can still wear out, or else it uses up fuel. But I suppose that's less limited than you are with bullets :)

Re:Unlimited use in battle!

[sql*kitten]

This would be the first weapon mounted on aircraft/heavy machinery that the pilot/operator wouldn't have to worry about running out of ammo in combat! That's a pretty serious advantage, no matter what other shortcomings the weapon may have.

Assuming he has an infinite energy source on board too, of course. Otherwise firing the weapon will decrease range/endurance by increasing fuel consumption. Currently the opposite it true, because it reduces weight.

Re:Unlimited use in battle!

[afidel]

Ummm, ABL on a 747 with the entire body filled with laser and chemicals is expected to have a 100 shot capacity, far from unlimited. On the other hand it is a heck of a lot more then you would get from the same volume of conventional interceptors (though possibly less then a railgun, not sure on energy density)

Obligatory Real Genius Reference....

[shftleft]

Are those they?

--a big mirror, makes a big beam

Re:Obligatory Real Genius Reference....

[justruss]

I like:

"To put it simply, in deference to Kent, it's like lasing a stick of dynamite."

justruss

Re:Obligatory Real Genius Reference....

[Anonymous Coward]

who modded this offtopic! The whole movie is about _lasers_!!

Re:Obligatory Real Genius Reference....

[Anonymous Coward]

Offtopic? *The Whole Movie* is about laser weapons!!!!

Re:Obligatory Real Genius Reference....

[AyeRoxor!]

"--a big mirror, makes a big beam"

Real genius, huh? Then WHAT THE FUCK is that comma doing in the middle of an otherwise perfectly good statement? HUH?

*sigh*

Now I know how Plato must feel when people quote him.

Re:Obligatory Real Genius Reference....

[shftleft]

Actually... there is a pause between those statements, please don't flame about something that is beyond your knowledge.

Re:Obligatory Real Genius Reference....

[AyeRoxor!]

"Actually... there is a pause between those statements, please don't flame about something that is beyond your knowledge."

I know very well the context of the statement. YOU need to learn how to use a comma.

You dont put a comma, everywhere there is a pause.
(That was an example of a DON'T.)

If you want, you should put one after an if clause.

But just because you pause, doesn't mean you put a comma.
(Another DON'T above.)

Got it?

Re:Obligatory Real Genius Reference....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Actually... there is a pause between those statements, please don't flame about something that is beyond your knowledge."

Of all the places to put a comma... :-P *sigh*

You NEVER put a comma anywhere in a statement phrase.

Commas are only to join phrases and clauses. The phrases and clauses themselves MUST be intact.

I could take a pause wherever I wanted in the preceeding sentence, possibly after "themselves." That doesn't mean I put a comma there.

Sheesh.

BTW. The "beyond your knowledge" part was a flame. So, apparently you were flaming about something beyond your knowledge. Oh, the irony...

Re:Obligatory Real Genius Reference....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Actually... there is a pause between those statements, please don't flame about something that is beyond your knowledge."

You are a fucking moron. You just seperated the "Actually" clause with an elipses inSTEAD of a comma, and proceeded to joinetwo totally seperate sentences WITH a comma, instead of ending the first sentence with a period and capitalizing "Please."

Whatever language you speak, you should speak it instead of english.

Please don't tell me english is the only language you know and this is the best you know it. It just might make me cry.

Re:Obligatory Real Genius Reference....

[shftleft]

I'm sorry, for not brushing, up on my elementary, grammar... I didn't know, you had to proofread your, quotes before posting, them to /.(because everyone, does, of course). I MUST be in the wrong, if three people, go out of their way, to correct my grammar. My sincerest apoligies sir.

P.S. Get a friggin life.

Re:Obligatory Real Genius Reference....

[Anonymous Coward]

"My sincerest apoligies sir."

Apology accepted.

Aww, mommy's little boy is becoming a man....

Re:Obligatory Real Genius Reference....

[shftleft]

All, growed, up.

Asteroids

[Doug Neal]

Instead of spending public money on researching new ways to blow each other up, I wonder if this technology could be put to better use, perhaps mounted on satellites as an asteroid defence system?

It's not entirely impossible that a large asteroid will head straight for us at some point... and somehow I don't think a re-enactment of Armageddon would work!

Re:Asteroids

[jandrese]

Ah, yes, I can see it now. A large (Texas sized) asteroid is headed for Earth. Our satellite laser system springs into action, burning small holes and heating up the asteroid a fraction of a degree before it slams into Earth. Lasers work on missiles because they have gobs of explosive and fiddly electronics packed in a small space, whereas an asteroid is a big dumb rock that doesn't care if it's 1% less massive when it hits the Earth.

Re:Asteroids

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually if we can vaporize enough particles in one particular spot they should be in an excited state trying to move away as fast as possible and act as a jet aiming the asteroid hopefully away from us. Based on how close it is to Earth will determine how many degrees we need to knock it over. Now the feasibility of this is another question but I'm sure someone could do the math. But you aren't going to of course going to melt the entire thing

Re:Asteroids

[uberbrownout]

Lasers work on missiles because they have gobs of explosive and fiddly electronics packed in a small space, whereas an asteroid is a big dumb rock that doesn't care if it's 1% less massive when it hits the Earth.

I'll give you the point that we would have little chance of destroying an asteroid before it could hit Earth. However, you may have seen those things in science class, I forget what they're called, but they're little rotating black and white diamonds in a vacuum chamber that looks like a light bulb. They work because the black side of the diamond absorbs more light, converts it to heat, and excites what little air there is in the chamber, which hits the black side of the diamonds and turns the wheel. If we found a large object on course to hit Earth months or years in advance, we could potentially use a similar principle to constantly burn one "side" of the object and deflect it by a small amount, but perhaps enough to miss the Earth. The only problem I see with this idea is degradation and accuracy problems at that range - I know distance isn't as much of a factor in space, but it's still a factor - and the spin of the asteroid. I imagine in space, it would probably cool fast enough, and they could compensate for the effect.

Anyway, who wouldn't want to take Hoover Dam off the grid to power a giant array of lasers, just because it's friggin' cool?

Re:Not a feasible weapon

[PhysicsScholar]

Since E = h*f = [h*c]/l, the shortest wavelength of light this atom can emit will correspond to the highest energy jump, and likewise the longest wavelength will correspond to the smallest energy jump.

If you use interval pulsations of the said laster, one may be able to obtain a small enough frequency such that the power requirement is largely rendered asunder.

Also, many of these lasers will be deployed on non-human devices, such as tanks and Land Rovers.

I'm torn...

[SquierStrat]

As someone who might one day fly the JSF (I'm trying to become a Marine Aviator...I have one of my first interviews next week *crosses fingers*) I'm kind of torn on this whole idea of a laser. The geek in me says that's too kewl! It's like Star Wars or something!

But then there is that overly logical Marine in me that says sounds unreliably. Much rather have a tried and true missile. This is is going to be very interesting to see when it actually goes into service how well it performs and is used. I could see this project either changing the way the military develops and uses weapons, or eliminating the whole idea for at least 50 years.

Re:I'm torn...

[Chibi Merrow]

If I remember correctly from previous reading (ie: I haven't read this article...), isn't the JSF Laser a replacement for the ubiquitous Vulcan in place on practically all US fighters? I don't think they'd honestly drop missiles totally in favor of a Laser (Especially not w/ all the money and time we spent on AMRAAM and what I've heard about the AIM-9X :) so I wouldn't worry, you'll still get to shout cool things like "I've got tone!" "Fox 3!" etc. ;)

BTW, thanks for your willingness to serve our country. Good luck in your endeavours and Godspeed. :)

Re:I'm torn...

[sql*kitten]

But then there is that overly logical Marine in me that says sounds unreliably. Much rather have a tried and true missile.

I've no doubt that the first laser weapons will be pretty poor. But back in the 50s there were probably overly logical Marines just like you saying they'd rather have a tried-and-true machine gun fitted to their planes. Once a concept has been proved to work, the military have a history of being quickly able to turn it into something practical.

Re:I'm torn...

[SquierStrat]

Which still brings interesting points up...like how do you detect that you are overshooting or undershooting the target? Currently 1 in 5 rounds is a tracer. But you can't see lasers unless there is something special about this one (I've not really read up on it so I don't know.)

The AMRAAM and the new Sidewinder are both well worth the money we've spent. Particularly the new Sidewinder. Most air to air engagements (with fighters) occur at close range. Hence an upgrade to our heat seeker has been needed for quite a while.

Thank you for thanking me, it beats being called a babykiller (yes I already have been.) :-)

Re:I'm torn...

[SquierStrat]

This is a very true and very good point. I'm just scared that they'll shove this thing onto my plane and it isn't ready for combat and I have to go into combat and it fails me in the middle of combat. Ouch no?

Re:I'm torn...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. As presently planned the laser would function as an adjunct to the 20mm vulcan cannon and your normal missile payload - it doesn't replace any of the "tried and true" weapons.

Re:I'm torn...

[coding_ape]

Hopefully they will learn their lesson this time and leave missiles on there for at least a while.

Back when the F-4 first came out in the sixties it didnt have a gun - they figured the newfangled missiles would take care of everything. Then the pilots actually flying the things in Nam came back screaming that they were getting into gun situations and all they had were these crappy sidewinders that would miss all the time. So they put a gun back on the F-4, but it took until the J version I believe.

Re:I'm torn...

[scotch]

Don't worry, the only thing you'll be flying is a desk. ;)

Re:I'm torn...

[Anonymous Coward]

But then there is that overly logical Marine in me that says sounds unreliably. Much rather have a tried and true missile.

I agree completely. And what about those people with cars? Just wait - they'll see that the horse + buggy is a much more reliable combo. Then who'll be laughing?

Re:I'm torn...

[ErikZ]

Just like any new weapon.

It will go though its development phase. They'll tinker with it when it hits the field. Then after about 10 years of use they'll come up with a newer version that works quite well.

For something made by a government contractor that is. :)

Re:I'm torn...

[Malc]

Missiles were unreliable new technology at one time. Give it time.

Re:I'm torn...

[ceejayoz]

Ever heard of the M-16 fiasco during the Vietnam war? Whole squads were found shot dead while attempting to unjam their rifles.

Whoops, eh?

Re:I'm torn...

[Zathrus]

Well, the HUD could certainly show a false color for the laser path, and even persist it for longer than it actually fired if needed.

But, frankly, it wouldn't do you any good - if the laser is missing the target then your targeting computer is FUBAR and you aren't likely to be able to fix it. This is not a machine gun - it doesn't fire in a straight line. You identify a target and issue the fire command. The computer then does target acquisition and determination and aims the laser for you. Most likely it's going to try and hit a pre-determined vulnerable point, like a fuel tank or control surface.

The added advantage here is that you don't have to be pointing directly at the target - think of it more like the turret mounted vulcan on the Apache. The disadvantage is that you probably can't compensate for a misaligned lens like you can for a gun installed slightly off center.

GI-JOE

[Anonymous Coward]

GI-JOE has been using these for a long, long time.

Re:GI-JOE

[MondoMor]

GI-JOE has been using these for a long, long time.

My childhood tells me that laser-warfare is ideal:

Shoot at tanks, helicopters and everything, and NEVER, EVER actually hit a person. They'll just parachute or jump to safety as soon as their vehicle is destroyed, not even suffering burns or shrapnel injuries from the explosion.

War is fUN!

Re:GI-JOE

[hikeran]

Even better yet .. that little pistol can not only keep firnig without reloading .. But.. it can take out fighter jets.. armored tanks. helicopters.. ect.. heck why bother spending money on those big cannons?? when a simple laser pistol can take it all out! :)

Re:GI-JOE

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow we have some stoopid moding going on on slash dot.

stoopid.

Like Akira.. only for real

[forged]

At the pace Research is going, they're going to have their laser ready in a decade - just in time to match what was depicted in Akira (1988) with satellite SOL. One of my favourites movies btw. :)

nitpick

[misterhaan]

you've made an interesting typo in 'lasor'

'laser' is actually an acronym, which stands for light amplification (through) stimulated emission (of) radiation.

'lasor' then might be light amplification (through) stimulated omission (of) radiation, which basically sounds like a powerful light sucker, instead of a the powerful dark sucker that a laser is.

Re:nitpick

[misterhaan]

d'oh! i was sure i'd deleted that 'a' in 'of a the' . . . oh well.

warm meal

[mogorman]

I think ever animal deservers a warm meal mwahahhahahahah..

The problem with mirrors...

[caldaan]

Would be finding one that woulnd't be instantly vaporized when touched by a laser of that magnitude. Certainly paint isn't going to work as it would instantly oxidize and loose all reflective properties. Polished metals might help but they too would loose structural integrity. The mirror would have to be close to if not 100 percent reflecive of all the radiation being pointed at it and remain so for the duration of the attack. As far as using smoke cloud around missles as protection, they too need to see for guidance purposes, plus it would be almost impossibly to keep a leading smoke edge on something moving that quickly as the drag on the particles would loose the impulse of the rocket engine as soon as they were ejected, leaving the rocket exposed.

Just for your information

[Crasoum]

A kilowatt is 3,600,000 joules, 10 kilowatts in respect is 36,000,000.

Lightning is 1,000,000,000 to 10,000,000,000 joules.

Basically they are trying to make a weapon that could blast the hell out of that tree in your front yard, but right now will have to settle for your cat.

To put this in prespective, the adverage person uses 64,800,000 joules a month, or 18 kilowatts... So for every time they fire this baby, they are blowing 50-100 bucks....

They essentially are what cause the blackouts in California.

Re:Just for your information

[mblase]

To put this in prespective, the adverage person uses 64,800,000 joules a month, or 18 kilowatts...

I had to read that in context twice. For a second it sounded like you were implying the military wanted to use human beings to power these laser machines, a la "The Matrix".

("It turns out we were wrong... the reason the machines began growing humans for power is because they couldn't afford the electric bill for their satellite television any more.")

Re:Just for your information

[KFury]

"A kilowatt is 3,600,000 joules, 10 kilowatts in respect is 36,000,000."

What are you talking about? A kilowatt is a measure of power, and a joule is a measure of energy. The two are not directly comparable without a time factor thrown in. Do you mean a kilowatt hour is 3,600,000 joules?

By your calculation, lightning is 280-2,800 kilowatts (0.3-2.8 megawatts). As we all know, lighting is more in the range of 1.21 gigawatts (humor intended, but general priniciple remains the same). It's not like lightning strikes last for an hour.

------
"To put this in prespective, the adverage person uses 64,800,000 joules a month, or 18 kilowatts... So for every time they fire this baby, they are blowing 50-100 bucks....

They essentially are what cause the blackouts in California."

What the fuck are you talking about? This causes the blackouts in California, not some sergeant flipping the switch on $100 of electricity.

Re:Just for your information

[Anonymous Coward]

A kilowatt is 3,600,000 joules

A kilowatt isn't any number of joules, that's like saying a mile is 3 weeks. I think you mean "a kilowatt hour is 3,600,000 joules". I doubt anyone was planning to run this laser for a hour continuously...

They essentially are what cause the blackouts in California.

Is that a slight whiff of troll there? Who the hell moderated this Informative? It's either Troll or Flamebait,

Re:Just for your information

[Anonymous Coward]

A kilowatt is 3,600,000 joules, 10 kilowatts in respect is 36,000,000.

Lightning is 1,000,000,000 to 10,000,000,000 joules.

Basically they are trying to make a weapon that could blast the hell out of that tree in your front yard, but right now will have to settle for your cat.

Watt is a measure of rate of energy, not energy.
So 10kW is 36MJ per second. Thus a 1GJ lightning equivilant can be achieved after 27.8 seconds.

dan.

Re:Just for your information

[Anonymous Coward]

Watt is a measure of rate of energy, not energy.

Right.

So 10kW is 36MJ per second.

No, it's 10,000 joules per second, by definition. I think you're confusing hours and seconds here.

Re:Just for your information

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah.... I never bothered to actually check the numbers that were given. It was probably a kilowatt hour he was refering to, not kilowatt.

dan.

Re:Just for your information

[default luser]

Lightning is 1,000,000,000 to 10,000,000,000 joules.

Funny, I always thought lightning had 1.21 jigawatts.

Doc! ...what the hell is a jigawatt?!?

Re:Just for your information

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the particle accelerators that use 300 megawatts in 300 nanoseconds?

How much does THAT cost?

The pursuit of truth and knowledge has no cost that can't be recouped.

Can you say the same for warfare?

Power source Re:Not a feasible weapon

[YrWrstNtmr]

Well, gee...I guess if you can power a laser pointer strong enough to blind you with a couple of AAA batteries, a 747 or Navy destroyer can supply enough power to run a laser strong enough to affect an incoming missile.

Asteroids!

[Chibi Merrow]

Hey... Then we could use the laser to heat up one side of the asteroid... and make it land on our enemies! GENIUS! :D

Re:Asteroids!

[yerricde]

Then we could use the laser to heat up one side of the asteroid... and make it land on our enemies!

Or split it into two smaller rocks... which both land on our enemies!

Re:Not a feasible weapon

[Phosphor3k]

A 15 watt Argon Ion laser will punch holes in aluminum cans. It will also cause severe burns to peolple and go through clothes like mad.

Re:But what the world really wants to know is . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Light sabers are not possible to create via lasers.

At least not through the 'canon' explanation of them, which insists they're lasers whose beams magically fold at a certain point for no discernable reason.

Wait a few thousand years, maybe we'll figure out some other tech that'll make fanboys happy.

Thank the Gods I'll be dead by then.

Reply to the story, not the headline

[ksw2]

Argh! Read the article. They're talking about mounting them on Spectre gunship and aircraft carriers, not someone's back.

Retrograde reflector

[FuzzyDaddy]

A beam shined into the interior corner of a cube comes out in exactly the opposite direction. Send that beam right back atcha!

lasers on C130s

[Anonymous Coward]

QUOTE
"I have no doubt that by the end of the decade, we will have a laser weapon installed on a Joint Strike Fighter jet or an AC-130 gunship."
UNQUOTE

The fact that the Lockheed C130 will still
be used a decade from now is an amazing fact
also. I guess it would be almost 50 years old
then.

The Posleeen never firugred it out...

[BenJeremy]

Yes, I'm sure John Ringo is wondering the same thing.

Actually, humans might have a better time of it than the Posleen. I've seen similarly daunting tasks performed quite well with machine vision and targeting systems.

Re:Not a feasible weapon

[Idarubicin]

Lasers work by creating an inversion of atoms into an excited state and then releasing that exciting energy in a burst. But exciting the atoms obviously takes energy and, by E=mc^2, it takes a LOT. Industrial and scientific lasers can manage this by being plugged in to a dedicated power supply capable of delivering the gigawattage required for even small lasers, but a soldier in the field clearly doesn't have the luxury of an outlet needed to power his weapon.

Okay, I'll bite. Where does E=mc^2 come into this? I've worked with lasers for a number of years, and I have yet to see any of my lasing medium converted directly to energy. Lasers operate by kicking atoms into an excited state (usually an excited electronic state) and then emitting light when excited atoms relax back to ground state.

For the record, small lasers don't require "gigawattage" to operate. I have a laser pointer that runs on one AA battery--I'll be giving a talk using it in a couple of hours. A laser designed for a weapons application would be larger. Still, I could assemble a carbon dioxide laser that could start fires from several hundred feet away and still be light enough to carry--and operate for a while on a moderately hefty battery back.

Granted, I couldn't destroy missiles with it, but the article discussses lasers that are mounted on aircraft or vehicles, or are part of fixed installations. You don't need a large power supply for even an extremely powerful laser if it only fires the very short pulses (microseconds or nanoseconds) that would be most useful for military purposes.

Don't nail me to a cross...

[stud9920]

... but couldn't people be nice to each other for a change ?

Not Just Lasers

[dscottj]

What is not reported here, but has been mentioned in Aviation Week and Space Technology, is Israel seems to have already fielded a chem-based laser missle defense system, apparently deployed on the Syrian border (at least that's where it was last reported anyway).

Another thing not widely covered in the normal monkey media: Gulf War II will almost certainly premiere our new "directed energy" weapon systems which have quietly been brought out of the labs over the past year or so. From the (admittedly basic) descriptions given to the non-monkey press by those in the know, the systems work with microwaves to zap electronic gear. They're mounted on precision guided bodies (not bombs per-se, but probably shaped a lot like them) and are one-shot items.

The idea is superpowerful microwave radiation can fry anything with transistors in it, even stuff buried deep underground. These things deliver a burst of microwaves that fry things within a (classified) limited range. It's not clear if they can be directed or if it goes off in a sphere like a ghostly bomb.

The reason they aren't already mounting these things on F-16s and just pressing buttons is a) the range is really short right now and b) they aren't directional enough yet and would end up frying the electronics of the shooter, which would be annoying to the pilot.

Re:Not Just Lasers

[racerx509]

"would end up frying the electronics of the shooter, which would be annoying to the pilot."

Having your avionics system fried while flying at 900 knots over enemy territory would be a bit more than annoying don't you think?

Re:Not Just Lasers

[Loki_1929]

"Having your avionics system fried while flying at 900 knots over enemy territory would be a bit more than annoying don't you think?"

I don't know, why not ask the original F-16 test pilots?

When the F-16 premiered, there was a wire-chaffing problem, which was then covered up as much as possible by the military and General Dynamics (designed the F-16). Basically, screws protruding into the sections of the plane housing most of the wiring were rubbing against the wires during flight; hence the wire chaffing. The mechanics wouldn't ever see a problem on the ground, but during flight every so often, the insulation would wear thin and all of a sudden, the elctrical system would completely short out. Congratulations, you now have the most computer-reliant fighter in the world flying without an electrical system. Basically, crashes were mostly either covered up completely or blamed on the pilots until General Dynamics could fix the problem.

Re:Not Just Lasers

[David Roundy]

Another thing not widely covered in the normal monkey media: Gulf War II will almost certainly premiere our new "directed energy" weapon systems which have quietly been brought out of the labs over the past year or so...

... It's not clear if they can be directed or if it goes off in a sphere like a ghostly bomb.

So we'd be looking at an undirected directed energy weapon, then?

Re:Not Just Lasers

[NathanielSamson]

The directed energy weapons described are of the emp variety. The US purchased several explosive emp devices from the Russians. These devices work by setting up a large electrical field, than using explosives this field is collapsed ramping up the charge till at the end of the device the energy is released. This pulse is fast and powerful frying any non-shielded electrical device. Nuclear weapons also produce this effect although on a much larger scale. There is talk that the US has another variety of this weapon using superconductors, however no information is currently available to my knowledge describing how this type of weapon is designed.

Re:Not Just Lasers

[Anonymous Coward]

We supposedly had testbed lasers flying a very long time ago-perhaps even in the '70's. There were supposedly a couple of 747 type flying laser platforms used in tests in the late 80's/early 90's. They were part of anti-ballistic missle research, etc. (recollections vague). I always wondered why those Scud missles headed for Isreal in the Gulf War tended to land "35 miles short", and probably the same could be said for those aimed at Saudi Arabia. The Scuds of that generation kept the missile body attached to the warhead, and if you messed up the aerodynamics...... I suspect that there were may have been some operational tests of the airborn lasers under combat conditions already. There are of course limits to the laser's usefulness-like shooting through the smoke in Kuwait......

Terrorism

[Anonymous Coward]

As a sniper I would kill (literally) for a silent laser sniper rifle. With the range, accuracy, lack of kickback, weight, and stealth provided by even the crudest laser rifle I can single handedly assassinate every major government official in this country. Since the beam travels at about the speed of light, instead of a couple miles per second for the fastest bullets, it would be a lot easier to target the wing fuel tanks of commercial airliners since you don't have to compensate for the latency between firing and hitting the target. Since laser sniper rifles are so accurate I can attach a robotic mechanism to aim so that targets more distant than 20 miles can be hit. Laser rifles (or cannons) can even target satellites so that I can cause havoc on the communication infrastructure of the Western Nations while myself and my subordinants can launch a full scale assult on the major cities.

Re:Terrorism

[Anonymous Coward]

With the range, accuracy, lack of kickback, weight

Weight? I guess it wouldn't be too heavy, as long as you carried the enormous power source around with a handy pickup truck.

No, 64 mil joules as in to power that

[Crasoum]

super cooled quad processor 4gig 3200 DDR Ati 9700/Gforce4 TI video editing monster you have

Or in my case, my portable toaster which so happens to have a monitor.

What about...

[saider]

Does the Navy have plans for some shark mounted lasers. Or am I thinking of someone else?

Plenty of laser weapons around

[Ikoma Andy]

Maybe not as sexy as this one, but they already exist. Lasers are believed to have been used by the Sovs against American pilots in an attempt to permanently blind them, see info here. Also, a big deal is dazzlers, which temporarily do the same thing, see some info here.

Re:Not a feasible weapon

[operagost]

E=mc^2 isn't relevant here. There's no matter to energy conversion. One form of energy (from electrical or chemical processes) is changed to another (light).

Tanks

[_Spirit]

The weird thing is that the article mentions tanks as a possible platform. How can that ever be practical ? If I am not mistaken tanks rarely have a direct line of sight to their targets. If the laser is not airborne it's range would be very small compared to current weapons. Anyone with an actual understanding of how tanks operate in battle care to enlighten me ?

Re:Tanks

[Tucan]

You are mistaken. Tanks are line of sight weapons. Perhaps you are thinking of artillery?

Re:Tanks

[ByteMangler_242]

I would think that the air defense component would be the more important angle on this than offensive target elimination. I would think a joint strike with laser and conventional tanks would be best, or some form of combo vehicle. Use laser for defence and line-of-sight targets, conventional rounds for long range and canyon-hidden baddies.

Air attack is the weakness of a tank, especially when in siege mode. Keep Goliaths on hand to defend against air attack. They are cheaper than a flying force. (ok, so I know nothing 'bout tanks)

Re:Tanks

[Stonehand]

Heh. I seem to recall hearing that there was a discussion regarding one tank simulation about the lack of aircraft.

The designer justified his decision to omit them by pointing out that

(a) Air defense would likely be somebody else's job, not the tanker's, and

(b) If the above failed, and enemy aircraft could roam at will above you, you're so outmatched that it wouldn't be a very interesting simulation.

Re:Tanks

[evilWurst]

It can be practical if the tank is using it against aircraft and missles, since right now the only thing with a good chance of taking out a US tank (besides another US tank) is a big bomb dropped on it from a plane.

If the tank-mounted laser is good enough to take out bombs/missles launched from the air, then tanks can be used without air superiority...something which hasn't been workable since WW2. And when defending, you could put a bunch of tanks around something to shoot down incoming missles.

Re:Tanks

[Anonymous Coward]

If I am not mistaken tanks rarely have a direct line of sight to their targets.

M1 main battle tanks currently use laser range finders to acquire targets and calculate a firing solution. They allow the crew of a moving tank to acquire a moving target and destroy it. It's really pretty bad ass. For a demonstration, refer to anything written about the engagements between the U. S. Army and Iraqi tanks during the Gulf War.

Re:Tanks

[Baikala]

I was reading the parent very seriusly until..
Air attack is the weakness of a tank, especially when in siege mode. Keep Goliaths on hand to defend against air attack. They are cheaper than a flying force.
lol!!! and it even has a seris chid post moderated as +2! Nobody else catch the starcraft joke?
C'mon, this is very funny, mod the parent up!

Boeing Laser

[Mortonce]

I work for Boeing. These things are already out there. http://www.airbornelaser.com/ Cool shit.

watts vs. watt-hours

[yerricde]

A kilowatt is 3,600,000 joules, 10 kilowatts in respect is 36,000,000.

No. Joules are energy units; watts are power units. Power refers to the rate of change of energy. A kilowatt is a kilojoule per second. A kilowatt-hour (common unit of household electrical energy consumption) is 3.6 MJ. By comparison, a kilocalorie (the dietary Calorie) equals 4184 J.

Not at all...

[danro]

I am not an American.
I am afraid however that the current US administration, with it's focus on using military force to solve issues, will polarize the political climate in the world even further than today and create a really nasty situation for _all_ a few years from now.

This will not be good for anybody, american or otherwise.

Only Al Quaida and their ilk will like it.
A polarization between the "christian world" and the "muslim world" is at the top of their wish list.

Mr Rumsfelt and his friends are hard at work making this a reality.
Huge mistake. And we might all end up paying for it.
They are creating legions of new enemies.

Re:Not at all...

[Anonymous Coward]

A polarization between the "christian world" and the "muslim world" is at the top of their wish list.


You have your head several feet up your ass.

It wasn't the US administration that flew planes into the World Trade Center.

It wasn't the US administration that bombed the disco in Bali.

It wasn't the US administration that blew up the French oil tanker.

It wasn't the US administration that was responsible for the sniper attacks in Washington DC.

It wasn't the US administration that took hostages in the Moscow theater.

It isn't the US administration that's sending homicide bombers into Israel on a weekly basis.

Re:Not at all...

[Planesdragon]

I am an American, and proud of it.

The polarization between "muslim" and "christian" is there, and has been there for a good 1500 years now.

Halfway measures in everything we do will not change this. The only method I can concieve to alter this disparity is to have a "one world" view--and for the west to settle the problems it has created.

Saddam Hussen would not be in power if not for our aid during the Cold War. The Taliban would not have taken power if not for the US's aid to the Afghans against the USSR. We have created these "monsters," and we need to deal with them.

On a side note, "use of military power to solve issues" is a time-honored tradition, in the Muslim and Christian worlds. Petty dictator starving a country's people? The surest way to fix the problem is to remove the petty dictator, not to negotiate with him. If we (the West) are percieved as not being willing to fight, then those that are willing to fight will have an advantage over us.

I eagerly await the day when the Muslim world returns to a height of learning and civilization--but I'd be willing to go to war (me, personally, leaving my job and my wife and joining a military that I won't do all that well in) to make that day come sooner.

Re:Not at all...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am posting anon so that I don't flammed to death for this.

"I am an American, and proud of it."

WTF do you have to be proud of?

Racial unrest.
You pollute more than any other country.
More poor people than any other industrial country
Most of the rest of the world looks down on you with a mixture of contempt, and pity.

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you have nothing to be proud of anymore. Now either shutup about your misplaced pride, or go out and build something out of the ashes of your nation, that is worthy of your pride.

Re:Not at all...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice little troll.

Racial unrest.
I'm not sure what racial unrest you are referring to. I think you are confusing the US with the Islam/non-Islams, Palestinians/Jews, Germans/Turks, Nigerians/Brits, North Africans/Non-North Africans, etc. If you think the US's racial problems are worse than those (and pretty much most of Europe, former USSR, and Africa), then you really have your head up your snottly little ass.

You pollute more than any other country.
More poor people than any other industrial country
Besides all the fine statistics you provided to back this up, you obviously have no concept of the phrase per capita. Look it up and I'll give you bonus points if you can use it correctly in an argument (hint: you'll won't be able to use it on these points). On the other hand you could be just ignorant (which is probably also true based on your racial view).

Most of the rest of the world looks down on you with a mixture of contempt, and pity.
And envy, but that is a whole different argument. Anyway, your "rest of the world" wouldn't include Britian, current Afganistan, Israel, Australia, Russia, China, or the Phillipines, to name a few off the top of the head. What is your point? The French look down on all Angelos with contempt and pity (but for some reason they are OK with Iranian terrorists, go figure) and look how much respect they get. Maybe you are referring to some of the other European countries out of which the terrorist cells operated and planned the WTC attacks? Yeah, they have a decent, moral platform to look down from (that is sarcasm, in case your myopic US-is-evil glasses didn't recognize it).

Re:Not at all...

[Cplus]

Not the administration, but rather foreign policy was the root cause of at least three of these things.

Re:Not at all...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what's called "blaming the victim".

There is NO excuse for terrorism. None.

What a lame article...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only is the science dumbed down into gibberish, but...

Environmentalists are concerned about the deployment of a modified Boeing 747, the world's largest commercial jet, that would operate the nation's first airborne chemical laser, contending that the chemical beam could be harmful to the atmosphere and that the potential for toxic spills is unacceptable.

What environmentalists? Obviously not anybody reputable, so which (of the many) lunatic fringe groups is this referring to?

Real environmentalists are concerned about the ecological damage caused by modern warfare in general (remember all those burning oil wells in Kuwait?) and are unlikely to waste time focusing on individual expensive boondoggles.

Referring to the views of muddle-headed urban PETA greens as though they represented the mainstream of environmentalism is like referring to the views of the KKK as being representative of christianity.

Call me a super geek but

[ChuckMaster]

I always wondered why in star trek they didn't use lasers to bypass the shields. Obviously if you can SEE the ship, then light must be able to pass through the shields, so a laser weapon could be very effective. On another note, since lasers aren't normally in a visible spectrum and don't make a loud bang, this could be a very deadly stealth weapon. I can imagine Sadam and his crew marching out and all of a sudden everyone starts dropping and nobody can figure out what the hell is going on.

Re:Call me a super geek but

[ErikZ]

Because space battles between ships that look like black spheres against the blackness of space aren't very interesting.

It's a very affordable FX budget though!

Re:Call me a super geek but

[Malc]

Are powerful lasers silent? Is it possible that they heat the air that they pass through? If so, what is the possibility of a thunder clap like the one associated with lightning?

Re:Call me a super geek but

[Dyolf Knip]

Just because visible light can get out doesn't mean it can get in. The shields could operate like one-way mirrors: any radiation generated by the ship inside can pass right through but anything incoming gets stopped.

Of course, this would leave the ship totally blind, but hey...

Ladies and gentlemen

[Ektanoor]

"Let me present you with the most superb, high-tech, uberpowerful laser weapon ever. It's the size of a pen, it is as light as a feather, it is stealthy and it is powerful... Look at that van!.. BANG!!! Yes, you see how the van vapourized! Because this little thing produces no less than 5GW!!! Uh? Yes?..

"Well Sir I'm quite impressed with you demonstration! But why are you making this demonstration near a nuclear facility?"

"Ooooh, that's the batteries..."

How do you direct the beam?

[Gerry Gleason]

Given the powers at which these lasers operate, I imagine that the mirror would be effective shielding for a few tenths of a second before the energy not reflected built up enough to scorch the silvering. Once that happens you're dead.

If mirrors just don't work, then do you have to point the whole laser assembly? On a ship or tank, you might be able to direct a turret to the target, but that means targeting wouldn't be as fast as you would like. For an aircraft, you're probably going to have to turn to the target, which might make it kind of difficult to hit an incoming rocket.

Re:How do you direct the beam?

[s.fontinalis]

The common trick you have for lasers is having a wide beam diameter initially(in this case at aircraft) - and then having a lens focus the beam on the target. This allows you to have lower power densities at the lens train, and higher power densities where you want it, on the target.

Re:How do you direct the beam?

[Geo-Mike]

Also, the mirror required for 'aiming' the laser is smaller, so you can afford to have a better mirror.

Civilians lose

[G. W. Bush Junior]

the article states:
With such lasers, a fighter jet could destroy ground targets with pinpoint accuracy, significantly reducing the chance of injuring civilians.

uhmmm... no!
The problem with lasers is, that once they hit something the beam will reflected beam/beam fragments will be able to blind people in a LARGE area (as in a radius of several miles) around the target...
Soldiers will be able to wear protective gear...
Civilians probably won't...
Civilians lose...

If anyone has ever worked with really powerful laser you'll will know how strict the safety regulations are... and you'll know how difficult it is to find all the reflections from an experimental setup.

Re:Civilians lose

[Goldsmith]

As a civilian, I would feel a lot better about my house and family being turned to rubble than I would about possibly being blinded.

Ok, sarcasm aside, I know what you mean about the reflections... but really, what else are you going to do? Civilians always lose in war.

Re:Civilians lose

[Dyolf Knip]

"I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." -Bush Jr.

Minor nitpick. It was Bush Sr. who said that. But given his government-religion track record, it's a safe bet that Dubya's of a similar opinion.

Re:Civilians lose

[Anonymous Coward]

The real problem with this is that it doesn't make any difference, if we're still unable to determine whether or not there are civilians at the target. The high civilian casualty rate in Afghanistan (http://www.cursor.org/stories/noncounters.htm) has been as much caused by poor intelligence, and poor target selection, as by innacuracy.

Re:Civilians lose

[G. W. Bush Junior]

Yup... absolutely true.
In fact, it's the whole point about wars. (it probably isn't about being nice to civilians anyway).

I was merely pointing out a factual error in the article.
Apparently they believed that THIS PARTICULAR weapon of war would actually benefit civilians.

Ooh, ooh, I got one too!

[Ashurbanipal]

Referring to the views of muddle-headed urban PETA greens as though they represented the mainstream of environmentalism is like referring to the views of the KKK as being representative of christianity.

It's like pretending the views of fundamentalist Islamists (Dubya's "friends" the Saudis, for example) are representative of mainstream Islam.

I'm sure we can come up with more of these...

question for all you physicists

[v8interceptor]

if they developed such a weapon, would it be as potent during day as during night?

for instance, my laser pointer can shine around 200 metres at night, but only 5-10 metres during the day.

based on that observation, this might only have a limited effect during the day?

if so, perhaps Osama will move up to lapland for that extreme lack of night ;)

Re:question for all you physicists

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the same amount of energy one way or another, jackass. Did the 100 watt lightbulb you get suddenly stop producing 100 watts of light when you took it outside and turned it on?

Re:question for all you physicists

[Anonymous Coward]

um. no.
it shines the same distance, your ability to perceive it is simply drowned out by other radiation in the day.

only inclement weather harms the laser, it will make just as big of holes in the daytime.

What if you miss?

[Nyh]

I am just wondering who gets hurt when you miss. Most misses will end op somwhere in the universe, but in air to air combat lots of shots will end up vaporising somethig different as intended. Normal bullets fall down after some kilometers. A missle will blow up when it realises it missed target but light wil go on and on and on.

Ofcourse it will loose power by widening of the beam and diffraction at air molecules but I think it will be leath for a longer distance than anyhing else.

Hans Wessels

Forget Stealth technology then...

[glesga_kiss]

If you build your aircraft/missle out of reflective materials to counteract lasers, your going to make it a large target for radar.

Stealth material generally works by absorbing the energy. The two defences won't be able to co-exist.

Re:Forget Stealth technology then...

[MrFredBloggs]

"If you build your aircraft/missle out of reflective materials to counteract lasers, your going to make it a large target for radar."

I guess. But doesn't the Stealth Bomber work that way? Won't laser light bounce off it fairly successfully?

Re:Forget Stealth technology then...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's BLACK. That means it absorbs most of the energy in the visible spectrum. Which means, no. It would be a most excelent target.

Though I will have to disagree with the grandparent post, having reflective surface dosen't necessairly mean having good microwave proporgating properties.

Re:Forget Stealth technology then...

[MrFredBloggs]

>It's BLACK

I didn't mean `copy it's colour`, I meant `reduce the angles so its smooth`. MMMMmmmmm Smooth chrome.... :)

Re:Forget Stealth technology then...

[Helter]

They won't have to... Think about how a stealth aircrafts defenses work. They don't defeat a missiles blast, they defeat the tracking mechanism that controls the missile.

A laser weapon would STILL have to be targetted somehow. If the radar array can't see the aircraft the laser can't track/destroy it.

Re:Forget Stealth technology then...

[goon america]

No, you've got it all wrong. Stealth technology works by reflecting the radar signal away from the radar receiver, not by absorbing it. The F-117's body is made entirely out of flat planes and sharp edges -- curves would scatter the radio signal so that it reflects in all directions, while flatness reflects it in only *one* direction, which by overwhelming probability won't be the direction of the radar receiver.

Supposedly the B-2 works by having an F-117-like layer underneath a smoother shell. It could be harder to make this outer shell ignore radio and reflect laser waves at the same time, though... otherwise, I don't see how laser defense and radar stealth is incompatible.

Re:Forget Stealth technology then...

[xtheunknown]

Actually, you're both right. The F-117 works both ways. It both reflects radar at odd angles and attenuates the signal by absorbing (hence a weaker return signal) radar.

F-117's are not invisible to radar, they just appear very small, approximately the size of a sparrow, and are usually over-looked by the radar technician as being natural phenomenom.

Also, they have IR emission reducing capabilities too.

The first comment was right. Defeating laser and radar are contradictory goals.

-- Admit nothing, deny everything, and make counter-accusations.
Naval Intelligence Motto

Re:Forget Stealth technology then...

[wrax]

I think it will be pretty cool to have stealth craft outfitted with silent lasers. missiles can be tracked by radar after they are fired and travel considerably slower than light, a laser travels at the speed of light, kind of hard to defend against... thats assuming you don't need to carry around a truck full of chemicals to fire the weapon however...

Re:Forget Stealth technology then...

[renoX]

Well, nothing prevents you to put reflective materials *under* the stealth layer.

If a missile is detected even though it has a "stealth layer", and a laser tries to destroy the missile, first the laser will burns the stealth layer, but then it will be reflected by the reflective layer..
Of course the reflective layer will be much less effective than the mirrors used in lasers for example.

But still, if the mirror reflects only 90% of the energy, you need a laser ten times more powerfull to destroy the missile than what is necessary to destroy a "normal" missile.

Re:Forget Stealth technology then...

[Rob Parkhill]

F-117's are not invisible to radar, they just appear very small, approximately the size of a sparrow, and are usually over-looked by the radar technician as being natural phenomenom.

Hmmmm, if I were a radar operator, a sparrow moving at 600mph would definately get my attention...

Re:Forget Stealth technology then...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if it was an English swallow, but not if it was an African swallow.

Yuk, yuk.

Re:Forget Stealth technology then...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not entirely true, you just paint your target longer It'll eat through it in no time. Besides reflective material isn't light. For someone to protect an aircraft or missle they would gain a great deal of weight.

Re:Forget Stealth technology then...

[AnyoneEB]

Maybe if it was an English swallow, but not if it was an African swallow.

You mean European, not English!

Re:Forget Stealth technology then...

[xtheunknown]

Good point except the radar is tuned to ignore things that small. Otherwise there would be too much clutter.

I Like This Part

[The Dobber]

From The Article
"Environmentalists are concerned about the deployment of a modified Boeing 747, the world's largest commercial jet, that would operate the nation's first airborne chemical laser, contending that the chemical beam could be harmful to the atmosphere and that the potential for toxic spills is unacceptable. "

Wonder how they'd feel about a chemically armed Scud dropping down in thier neighborhood. Perhaps they should all climb down from thier tree perches, get together and draft a letter to Saddam, let him know the "bad" of chemical warfare.

These are the same fuck-weasel types who question if it was legal to have the military assist in the search for the sniper. Don't know, maybe we should let him pop a cap in someone else while we debate.

Grrrrrrrrrrrr

Re:I Like This Part

[antistuff]

the end doesnt always justify the means

Re:I Like This Part

[Loki_1929]

"These are the same fuck-weasel types who question if it was legal to have the military assist in the search for the sniper. Don't know, maybe we should let him pop a cap in someone else while we debate."

Yes, let's throw away our laws and traditions whenever it's convenient. I questioned why the ACLU (of which I'm a member) would have a problem with the military stepping in to help with that investigation. Know what I did? I kept an open mind and read their position statement on the issue. After realizing that it is, in fact, illegal for the military to perform law enforcement and that there's a VERY good reason for this, I had to agree with them that the military had no place getting involved. Listen, we fight/invade/bomb countries who use their military for civilian law enforcement. Iran does it, the Taliban did it, the Israelies do it - the United States of America does NOT do this. There was no question about whether it was legal for the military to assist; it's flatly illegal. They were questioning the people who said, "oh, it's ok to do it just the once" because that's how every dictatorship/totalitarian regime/hellhole society gets going. Little by little you erode the rights of the citizenship and gain more and more control until no one can possibly challenge you. You know, we could have a crime-free society if we forced about 1/3 of all citizens to join the military and had inspections of every man, woman, and child along with all places public and private, and then simply killed anyone who did anything wrong. We'd eliminate drug abuse quite easily by just searching everyone and everything all the time, mandating daily drug testing for all citizens, and shooting anyone who disobeys also. Then we can put up cameras in every room of every building, as well as public places too. We'd eliminate crime within a year! The ends do NOT always justify the means. If you believe otherwise, how's this grab you: we could raise the average IQ in this country quite easily. Sounds great, right? How, you ask? By simply testing everyone's IQ and shooting everyone who tests below a certain level. Now, I don't agree with everything environmentalists say, not by a long shot, but I also think that just because something sounds great ( "hey, we can catch the sniper faster if we use the military!" ), doesn't mean we should jump right into it.

Think my examples are ridiculous? Tell that to the several million people who were murdered at the orders of a man who slowly rose to power in a country called Germany in the 30's and 40's. He started out small, "make the jews wear stars!", grew a little bolder, "make the jews live in ghettos!", and finally ended up killing millions. He didn't go from point A to point C in a day; he didn't do it in a year; he slowly made small changes over a period of more than 15 years which took a fairly normal (albeit poor) European society and transformed it into one of the most brutal and nightmarish places in the history of the world.

Please may God grant we never see that here in the States, or anywhere else ever again. We need to recognize immediately when someone's trying to take us from point A to point B, so we never get to B or (God forbid) C.

giggles (from the article) and a question

[haggar]

quote: "I have no doubt that by the end of the decade, we will have a laser weapon installed on a Joint Strike Fighter jet or an AC-130 gunship."

There is something distinctly humorous in having the JSF and the AC-130 in the same sentence, side by side.

And here's the question: can anyone tell me how exactly would lasers be effective against targets with very shiny surfaces? Silver-coated mirrors are able to to reflect 99.92% of the light - therefore, they absorbe less than 1/1000th of the energy. Does it mean that these lasers have to be built with a thousand-times overhead??

Geneva convention

[kin_korn_karn]

Wonder what the Geneva Convention will be modified to say about this.

Re:Geneva convention

[Don Negro]

Does it really matter?

I kind of doubt our government would ratify it this time around. They seem to be really big on not having any restrictions to their movement.

Re:Geneva convention

[ceejayoz]

Geneva convention only bans weapons designed to blind humans. This laser is designed to take out targets - being able to blind is just an added bonus.

Loopholes are fun, aren't they?

Re:Geneva convention

[kin_korn_karn]

I was thinking more along the lines of the "inhumane" weapons that the Geneva convention bans, such as wooden bullets. It seems that a laser with no visible beam would qualify as inhumane if it's ever deployed as an anti-personnel, direct fire weapon.

Re:Geneva convention

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, it's a "legal" bonus. The International Red Cross has an excellent FAQ page on blinding laser weapons.
The problem with the systems under development is that they don't discriminate between human-operated sensors and machine operated sensors. One system, I believe called Pathfinder, is vehicle mounted and uses a search sensor like the AN/PXX TLOS to monitor the battlefield for the "glint" or reflection produced by sensor lenses, like a target designator or pair of binoculars. It then zaps the sensor with a visible or IR laser pulse. Of course, whether someone is looking through the sensor at that moment is not the Pathfinder's problem. So this "legal" use of lasers ends up blinding people anyway. Even a target designator when viewed through ordinary binoculars can blind, like looking at the sun through an unshielded telescope-- in response to this, during the gulf war the U.S. issued Ballistic/Laser Protective Spectacles and M22 Laser Protective Binoculars. One of the issues with these protection measures is that they only work with a few common wavelengths of laser. I have no doubt that the U.S. will develop defensive measures against wavelength-agile threats, but I still have a problem with the use of blinding energy weapons in combat because let's face it, sight is the most important sense. Unfortunately, our friendly dept. of defense doesn't view the eyesight of Iraqi conscript soldiers with much sympathy. *sigh*.

Spinning

[ek_adam]

You could spin the missile to reduce spot heating, but that's going to complicate guidance considerably.

Some missiles spin anyway. The Sidewinder missile was intentionally slightly unstable and spun so that it flew in a spiral. Its seeker had one degree of control, up-down relative to the center of the spiral. When the heat source it was looking at was near the center of the spiral, the spiral would narrow down towards the target. When the heat source was not near the center of the spiral, the spiral would broaden out in a cone until it reacquired the heat source. Fairly early in its development a filter was added so that it would ignore anything with the precise infrared signature of the sun.

Laser Efficiency

[lenshead]

Until fairly recently, laser efficiency was very poor -- sub 10%. Recent solid state lasers are better -- I have read reports as high as 40%.

However, if you are running the laser from a heat engine powering an electrical generator, you will still end up dissipating locally several times the power in the beam.

Then, the beam will diverge because of diffraction, atmospheric turbulance and, perhaps, non-linear optical effects of the atmosphere. There will also be absorption due to clouds, polution, smoke, etc.

I expect it will be a significant engineering challenge to deploy a weapons laser, as described in the article, that blows a bigger hole in the enemy vehicle than it does in your own.

Re:Laser Efficiency

[Anonymous Coward]

the heat dissipated locally is flushed into the aircraft fuel supply. a single shot from a 100KW JSF mounted laser heats up the fuel in the tanks by around 1 degree. so you can fire it a coupla dozen times before waiting for a cool off period.

Re:Laser Efficiency

[yppiz]

Gee, hope those tanks aren't near empty when you fire.

--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu

This is really more usefull as a counter-measure

[TheNarrator]

This thing will be great as an anti-ship missle countermeasures. Check out this new Russian Weapon, the Sunburn missle, supersonic anti ship missle. If you had one of these lasers mounted on a destroyer, no matter how fast the incoming missle is flying a computer controlled gunner could point the laser at this thing and fry it as soon as it comes over the horizon. A destroyer or an aircraft carrier has enough electricity producing capability and heat dissipation that this would work.

Next Gen & Counter

[limekiller4]

From the article:
"A Navy ship could use the laser, with its beam traveling at the speed of light, to fend off even the fastest missiles. And ground troops could use a Humvee-mounted version of the weapon to instantly knock out incoming enemy artillery and mortar shells. "

This is, of course, an arms race. So what happens when they're not firing missles anymore, but lasers?

I'm not suggesting it's a bad idea. I'd just love to see what protection they'll propose when our opponents get up-to-speed. I also have to wonder if there is a low-tech way of defeating it (remember when we spent millions coming up with a pen that would write in zero-G and the Russians just used pencils?)...

Re:Next Gen & Counter

[NetFusion]

(remember when we spent millions coming up with a pen that would write in zero-G and the Russians just used pencils?)

The notion the space pen R&D was paid by taxpayers is an urban legend, NASA didnt pay for the research, the Fisher pen co did and owns the patent. But NASA does buy em, but not nearly as many as space enthusiast do.

Space Pen History

Re:Next Gen & Counter

[Guppy]

(remember when we spent millions coming up with a pen that would write in zero-G and the Russians just used pencils?)...

There's a page for this on the Urban Legends Reference Page.

Apparently, there are a number of problems with pencils, including the flammability of wood/graphite in the pure oxygen atmospheres that were used at that time, and that conductive graphite dust could drift into electronics and cause a short.

Re:Next Gen & Counter

[ryanvm]

So what happens when they're not firing missles anymore, but lasers?

We'll use missiles to destroy their lasers, silly.

Re:Next Gen & Counter

[Stonehand]

(*) Do you really think they'll stop firing missiles? Most countries likely to antagonize somebody with effective, field-capable lasers (large powers) are probably bothering somebody likely to remain without them (especially in the case of the US, whose forces are often deployed into an existing conflict)... so missiles won't be obsolete.

(*) There are conflicts today where old weapons -- even as old as spears and machetes -- are side-by-side with moderately old weapons (AK-47s, for instance... and the explosive grenade goes back at least to the late 1700's, as primitive explosive-charges were thrown to detonate the powder magazines in ships... and the general concept of the gunpowder firearm goes back to the late Middle Ages; RPG-7s) and where more modern weapon systems (vehicles with reactive armor, laser-guided missiles, Phalanx CIWS) are practically non-existent.

Hell, have you ever seen a Palestinian fire an automatic rifle -- perhaps a Kalashnikov or a captured Galil or M16 -- at an Israeli Merkava, when the latter is buttoned up? It's futile, as the bullets have neglible chance of finding a spot penetrable by the small rounds (/maybe/ the vision block), but that doesn't mean that they've ditched their rifles and are now swimming in RPGs.

Weapons cost time (training), money (lots), contacts (need to find somebody who'll sell... for an example of a client with problems, I doubt that the radical Islamists can readily buy modern weapon systems from the US, Russia, China, or Israeli as they are all involved in ongoing conflicts with their brethren... well, maybe they can go to France. *shrug*)

The last major weapon system concept to be completely obsoleted was probably the battleship, which yielded to the aircraft carrier battlegroup, and even now there are still gun-armed ships meant for surface engagements, I'm sure.

(*) Remember when Snopes debunked the "NASA Space Pen" nonsense"?

Re:Next Gen & Counter

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee they used pencils?

That's right, they did, up until they figured out that graphite particles were causing fires. Then they used our pens... which we spent... $0 developing.

Yeah I remember when that happened, that was a terrible waste of money.

Re:Next Gen & Counter

[Galvatron]

The solution is obvious: decoy missiles. It's a lot easier to build an empty decoy missile than it is to build a real nuke (lower payload weight, in addition to not having to manufacture the nuke itself). So, you fire thousands of decoys at thousands of different targets, meaning that the only way to ensure adequate protection is to have all of those sites defended with their own lasers.

Is it me...

[Deagol]

Or did anyone else of Project CrossBow when they read this headline? "There's no defense like a good offense!"

Re:lasers on C130s (OT)

[AragornSonOfArathorn]

I find the fact that the B-52 bomber has been in service for almost 50 years already pretty amazing. It first flew in 1954, and supposedly will still be in service well past 2045 (91 years... wow)

Did a quick google search and got this url: http://www.af.mil/news/factsheets/B_52_Stratofortr ess.html

Gives a new meaning to tin foil hat...

[danro]

So Saddam would have to wear a big stupid looking reflective hat?

Haha...
Imagine his public appearances, try being taken seriously as an ruthless dictator with that thing on his head.

In particular when they fire on him and his hat lights up like a disco ball and vaporize random bystanders.
Or... would he see that as a good thing?

Re:Gives a new meaning to tin foil hat...

[Anonymous Coward]

>>would he see that as a good thing?
Not as much as your stupid president who pressed the button..

Re:chemical lasers

[Anonymous Coward]

High power lasers are typically chemically powered. So you will still have ammo, however it will be easier to store.

Saying nothing...

[Gruneun]

overly logical Marine

must resist... joke... too... easy...

Re:Saying nothing...

[SquierStrat]

Ever actually known a Marine? They aren't the big and dumb guys they are made out to be. :-) They are mostly pretty smart guys. The Army on the other hand... ;-)

Sides, if you call me a jar head I'll drop a bomb on your house! :-)

LOSE

[Anonymous Coward]

It won't loose power, it will LOSE power.

Dumbfuck.

(oh, and it's missile, not missle, and leath is not a word at all. holy crap, you're an idiot)

Smoke AND Mirrors

[iamacat]

Perhaps the missile can contain a coolant that creates an especially dense fog when it evaporates. It will both make the mirror last longer and shield that missile from direct light. It will also be harder to actually hit the thing surrounded by a cloud.

Also I wonder what will happen to your laser gun if someone manages to reflect the light back to the source even for a second.

Blinding people?

[Gruneun]

I believe you meant the BeDazzler

Signal to Noise

[stinkydog]

Qoute the poster:

if they developed such a weapon, would it be as potent during day as during night?
for instance, my laser pointer can shine around 200 metres at night, but only 5-10 metres during the day.
based on that observation, this might only have a limited effect during the day?

What you see is a signal to noise effect. Scatteded daylight reduces the apparent strength of the beam without reducing the actual strength. Try this experiment:
1: Get in the car an get on the highway
2: Roll down the windows
3: Set the radio volume to a comfortable level
4: Roll up the windows
The radio will sound apparently louder because the amount of noise is reduced. The actual amount of sound the radio puts out does not change. Science is cool.

SD

And inclement weather...

[gillbates]

Lasers do have one big drawback. The beam is not very effective in inclement weather and requires greater levels of energy to pierce thick clouds.

I am not a physicist, but I believe that even the infrared laser beams would be scattered by rain or fog droplets, making a laser practically useless under such situations. Since the power of lasers as weapons is dependent on all of the light waves traveling in phase and in the same direction, something as simple as a drop of water could scatter laser light in all different directions, disrupting the beam and rendering it tactically useless.

Re:And inclement weather...

[MrFredBloggs]

So a fine spray around a plane/car etc would be a cheap and easy way to reduce the damage. Perhaps if you added something to the water (reflective elements) it'd disperse it even better?

Re:And inclement weather...

[drinkypoo]

I am not a physicist, but I believe that even the infrared laser beams would be scattered by rain or fog droplets, making a laser practically useless under such situations. Since the power of lasers as weapons is dependent on all of the light waves traveling in phase and in the same direction, something as simple as a drop of water could scatter laser light in all different directions, disrupting the beam and rendering it tactically useless.

I'm not a physicist either, but I can stills hed some light on this issue. It depends largely on the amount of water. A powerful enough laser will actually be visible in air containing normal levels of humidity (say, 40% perhaps) as it takes the water apart. This is nothing close to the multiple-megawatt chemical lasers which we can safely assume are ready to be launched at any time, let alone satellite-mounted lasers.

At this time, AFAIK the military has only achieved a few megawatts in these chemical lasers. Even so, that is enough to burn off significant water cover. They lase for a few seconds IIRC, so this should be more than long enough to pierce a cloud and still fry a missile or other aircraft.

As we increase the effectiveness of our power sources -- making chemical lasers counts here -- atmospheric dispersion becomes less and less of a problem. It is however true that sometimes when you fire a laser its atmospheric effects interfere with it. As such it is sometimes more effective to spread or split the laser at the source(s) and have them combine/converge/focus at the target. Some combination of these techniques will likely make any water-based defense short of actual running water fairly useless.

That is an idea for protecting stationary or near-stationary (in terms of comparative speed - a tank may qualify but not an aircraft obviously) objects, mostly buildings; Build a fountain into them such that water will cascade down its sides. Of course, a stationary object is subject to bombardment and so that will provide you limited usefulness.

Re:And inclement weather...

[Slime-dogg]

To counter, we have to take into consideration the area covered by the beam. If the beam is going to be about the size of a raindrop, we can expect the raindrop to scatter the beam until it is vaporized. If the beam is much larger than a raindrop, we'll say having a 3 or 4 inch diameter, only the portions of the beam that hit the raindrop will be dispersed. The rest of the beam (and the majority) will continue on to the target.

It is more than likely that a thick enough beam will just vaporize a path to the target in a relatively short amount of time. You may have rain on the outside, but it's perfect weather within the beam. ;-)

gimme war

[presearch]

The appetite for war and death posted here is quite depressing.

Ex-military talking about how bitchen' more "death from above" is.
Geeks making Austin Powers jokes thinking that this is just a big funny movie.
Brainless shills bringing up Osama/Saddam and how we'll kick his ass.

And you would think that slashdot readers would be at least
a little more enlightened than the average cow grazing in Wal-mart.

There's no intelligent life here, at least none that's detectable.

Re:gimme war

[Stonehand]

The simplest way to invite war is to not be prepared for it -- either in terms of actual power, or psychological capability.

One of the reasons why the Great Powers were able to roundly abuse other nations is that they /had/ the power. Militarily weak nations have, historically, been treated as such...

And when nations, in the name of international law and peace, turn the other cheek to an aggressor when those same laws are abused, the results are generally obvious -- the aggression continues. Condemnations have never practically stopped a massacre, nor have battalions been routed by a tongue-lashing, while negotiations fail when there is genuinely nothing to discuss because there is nothing of perceived satisfactory mutual benefit regarding an issue.

Re:gimme war

[Anonymous Coward]

You're assuming that your views are enlightened.

Way to go open mindedness! Woo!

Take some sociology or history courses, THIS is humanity!

Re:gimme war

[presearch]

It's not a matter of the US being militarily weak and
therefore vulnerable. If the US was some 4th world
neighbor to an aggressor then maybe that argument
would hold. We have more to offer with our tech abilities
than to develop ways of effective killing. If we took our
tech prowess and applied it to other endeavors, say
helping feed the hungry, providing them with a means
for clean water, an education, just helped them improve
their lives instead of raping what resources they have
and then turning people into dust, maybe then the incentive
for aggression would be minimized or eliminated.
But no. There's money to be made. Fsck them, we deserve
to rule the world. I've got a Book right here that says
God thinks it's our destiny. Face it, the US is a deranged,
sick country and we deserve to get our asses kicked
into the stone age.

Re:gimme war

[circletimessquare]

you demonstrate disdain for an aspect of human nature. unfortunately, no matter how disgusting this aspect of human nature that is war, it does not make that danger go away. discussing war is not supporting war, it is merely recognizing that war can and might happen. are there assholes out there who enjoy war? certainly. but the vast majority of people recognize war as an unfortunate aspect of human nature, and prepare for it, even though they don't like it. why are you criticizing them? if you meet a real asshole who loves waging war for the sadistic love of anarchy, verbally bitch slap the sadistic grin off his face. in the meantime, learn a little more about human nature before you start heaping your disdain upon slashdot.

the do-nothing attitude about war that you demonstrate leads to disgraceful events in history like hitler's gambit for the sudetenland before world war ii. if you don't know what i am talking about, do some googling and learn what an avoidance of war really means: just creating the conditions for an even greater, deadlier war at a later time. you can't push war away and hope it will go away. if you push war away, it simply festers and the conditions for it grow worse until it finally does punch through and there is no avoiding it at all. you have to face war when you recognize it, deal with it, and move on. you can't avoid it. nobody likes this, but you can't hold it against them for recognizing reality for what it is. don't shoot the messenger just because you don't like the message.

if some person or country aggressively approaches you with war on their mind, you cannot save yourself by capitulating to their every demand. nor is a "let's hold hands and sing campfire songs" attitude going to change the attitude of some very evil people in this world. you have to defend yourself from them or you actually encourage them to be more aggressive if they get the idea you will not oppose them with force, if necessary. do i like this? no. but not liking it doesn't make this obvious truth go away. that's just reality. face it.

there is nothing wrong making jokes about war either. humans make jokes about all sorts of bad things, like priests abusing boys, that are just plain evil, but serve to psychologically relieve our nervousness. more basic psychological human nature for you to try and understand.

by the way, your obvious arrogance is perhaps a more dangerous aspect of human nature than any discussion of war on slashdot could ever be. more evil flows from human arrogance, that you seem to have gallons of, than perhaps any other human failing. there are wonderful, accurate, logical, straightforward arguments against war to be had out there, but your arrogance demonstrates none of that, and your mean-spirited words only serve to reduce the power of those who argue rationally against war.

your meanness is just mental masturbation, making you feel better about yourself at the expense of other people's respect for you. by talking about "the average cow grazing in Wal-mart" you reveal a hatred for the common person on the street. i have 1,000 pounds more faith in those "cows grazing at walmart" to make the right decisions about life and liberty than i do in an obviously mean-spirited, common-person hating, arrogant and smug person such as yourself. think about that before criticizing what you see as "warmongers."

look at your own evil before criticizing the perceived evil in others. arrogance such as yours has spawned more useless horrible wars than anything else has. you have blind self-love that leads you to treat others arrogantly. news flash: sunlight does not shine out of your butt. you are only human too. your arrogance puts you far closer to the human evil that spawns war than a thousand austin power jokes and bin laden ass-kicking tirades ever could.

that's my rant for the day. ;-P

Re:gimme war

[Anonymous Coward]

And you would think that slashdot readers would be at least a little more enlightened than the average cow grazing in Wal-mart.

I'm glad that you can have that opinion. Of course, without a strong military that spent the Soviet Union into bankruptcy, I think that you'd be singing a different tune right now.

Hymm of the Soviet Union

Re:gimme war

[Anonymous Coward]

We may be sick and deranged, but compared to most if not all other countries in the world, we are stone sober and on an even keel. I'll agree that many of the problems in the 3rd world are directly caused by the 1st, but all the let's throw away our weapons and give peace a chance talk isn't going to make all the bad people and bad situations in the world go away. Hell many of the most pressing problems were caused by the "help groups"

Take overpopulation and starvation for example. The knock knock Jesus saves types go in and innoculated everyone reducing the infant mortality rate from 50-60% to 5-10%, but then they don't teach them about birth control because it's "bad". We see a few years of happiness all around, but then the population tripples in twenty years. Now all the clean water and farming programes go out the window since they are overwelmed by sheer numbers. People are starving to death and it sparks a civil war. Good/rightious intentions have caused more problems than anything else in this world.

Re:gimme war

[Anonymous Coward]

Nicely said. I'd mod you up if I had points.

Re:gimme war

[Stonehand]

There are some issues which just cannot be negotiated, and which have absolutely nothing to do with material conditions or welfare. There is no middle ground, for instance, between those who advocate a secular constitutional republic and those who prefer government by strict interpretation of implementation of Sharia law and Wahhabiist principles, because these two outlooks are completely incompatible... and I would suggest that the bin Laden family wealth provides an obvious counterexample to any hypothesized moderating influence of prosperity. Numerous of the Sept. 11 hijackers received educations at respectable institutions in the West, and none were of the poor, downtrodden, oppressed variety that al-Jazeera likes to play over and over. Non-rational ideologies (in contrast to, say, pragmatism) can make for inevitable conflict, because they are often incompatible.

Such irrational leaders even become leaders of states. Mullah Omar appeared to have been firmly convinced that Allah would bail him out, for instance, and drive out the infidel. The government of North Korea seems to still believe in Stalinism. Many of the Middle Eastern states are knowingly playing with fire by funding schools of thought more radical than their governments...

War and conflict are inevitable, given a sufficiently large and contentious population. The relevant question is not how to bring about world peace -- you cannot -- but how you deal with the wars that will arise. Then, it becomes very useful to have the best military technology and training, so you can deal with it on your on terms and not via, say, wasteful WWI-style charges.

Go JOE!

[Genjurosan]

So will the US use Red laser beams and all of our enemies will use Green? Perhaps we should use an alternating pattern of Red, White, and Blue laser light just so they know who's coming for them.

But first we will drop baby powder bombs in so they can see the beams, then we light em up!

And no, it Donald Rumsfeld doesn't bother me.

Forethcoming APS article

[forand]

There will be a more scientific article released by the APS soon, assuming the government does not try to classify it.

Magnets

[Inda]

There is no need to keep quiet about this. Everyone knows that magnets are at the heart of all scientific experiments.

Cheap countermeasures aginst this!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget to wear your chromium plated jacket and
hat! Chromium plate your army tank. And.. what if
you relect the light back to the jet in realtime
with a realtime deformable mirror? Deformable mirrors are used in adpative optics and you can reshape a laser beam in realtime! So if someone spent time to design a radar/optical tracker I think the counter measure would cost less! A high speed computer (cheap nowadays), 256 photomultiplier tubes, radar (to get initial fix on jet), deformable mirror (256 nodes, piezo mirror). Device just has to reflect the beam back to the target, photomultipliers are used to
look at the beam, deformable mirror and lenses used to refocus the energy back on the jet.

Re:Cheap countermeasures aginst this!

[Anonymous Coward]

two words: retro reflector

Take a breath... and then read

[Gruneun]

Please explain to me how a more high tech military could have prevented the INS and airports not catching the terrorists, and prevented them from slamming civilian planes into buildings.

I never said the miltary could have prevented the September 11 hijackings. What I did say is that the intelligence community had its hands tied for years. They saw budgets cut and limitations on who it could associate with and use as informants. Would that have absolutely stopped the tragedies? No, but maybe it would have.

I was drawing a similarity with the military. If you continue to read other posts (emphasis on "read"), you may notice that there was some information about Isreal using laser technology for defense. My point is that other countries, including dictators who have full control over miltary spending, are catching up. That is not a position that you want to be in.

an open society will always be prone to such attacks, by the very nature of being an open society.

So, because we're free people, we should ignore defense? What stops an open society from protecting itself?

That is the price we pay for the freedoms we have 99.9999% of the time.

Yeah, but the people who get shafted from the other 0.0001% would probably disagree with you. Who are you to decide they're freedoms get sacrificed because it's an acceptable trade-off for your spending ideas.

There's a way around everything.

[Rip!ey]

A Navy ship could use the laser, with its beam traveling at the speed of light, to fend off even the fastest missiles.

Pity about those torpedoes though huh! Launched by enemy submarine/ship/plane/whatever.

A laser will be useless under water.

Re:There's a way around everything.

[Nihilanth]

will it? light -does- travel underwater, you know. Think of it this way. A submarine or a surface vessel with a nuclear reactor on it could probably pony up enough power to fire a pretty jacked-up laser. Even though its under water, i'm willing to bet that this laser could kill a torpedo before it got close enough to damage the hull.

Re:There's a way around everything.

[BinxBolling]

will it? light -does- travel underwater, you know.

Water absorbs far more of the light passing through it than air does. Try this: Put on some goggles, jump in the ocean, and estimate how far you can see. Now, surface, and once again, estimate how far you can see. There will likely be several orders of magnitude of difference between the two.

Re:There's a way around everything.

[Nihilanth]

right..now, how hard is it to increase the order of magnitude of power of a lazer? with a nuclear power plant feeding the pipe? with how short a range as our target distance?

Yeah, yeah, water is more dense than air. i get that. we have at our command sources of power so massive that changes in density are trifling obsticals.

Crossbow Project

[Cranst0n]

They must be developing all this just to get BinLaden and Hussein. Just put it on the bottom of the space shuttle with a phase conjugate tracking system and you'd have the crossbow project.

"I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates who said... I drank WHAT?"

You mean 40 MegaWatts.

[Thag]

The Terminator asked for a Phased Plasma Rifle in the 40 Megawatt range.

Jon Acheson

Re:You mean 40 MegaWatts.

[503]

Wasn't it jiggawatts?

Oh wait... wrong movie.

Re:You mean 40 MegaWatts.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Jay-Z uses electricity by the jiggawatt.

You're thinking of gigawatts.

Simple fix

[FreeUser]

if you hit a mirror with a powerful enough beam of laser light, the small fraction of light that's absorbed (no such thing as an ideal reflector) will rapidly ablate the mirror coat, and then you're screwed. [...] a 100KW IR laser will vaporize pretty much anything that's not *perfectly* reflective, i.e. anything we can build with current technology.

So you make your mirror subsystem disposable, and eject the spent mirrors like shells. Assuming you can get the desired result before or during the ablative process, you've got one shot, one mirror. We're used to such constraints with bullets and shell casings, and some disposable, portable ground-to-air missile systems, why not with mirrors?

Re:Simple fix

[Brown]

So you make your mirror subsystem disposable, and eject the spent mirrors like shells.

I think the guy's point was that the mirror isn't good for one shot; it'll pretty much vanish, and the laser'll keep going. A laser isn't like a projectile; a projectile is expended when it hits something. With a laser, only the time spent cutting through the shield is 'wasted'; the remaining milliseconds (or even seconds, possibly) of the pulse after it's done with the shield will slice into your fuel/warhead/guidence/crew.
Bang.

- Chris

Re:Simple fix

[FreeUser]

I think the guy's point was that the mirror isn't good for one shot; it'll pretty much vanish, and the laser'll keep going.

Perhaps not, but ablation takes time, so either designing one-shot disposable mirrors should be practical (just make the reflective material really, really thick), or do without the mirror and aim the turret manually.

Either would work, and the laser would still be much faster than a bullet or missile, which is traditionally aimed in the same, low tech manner.

A buyer

[ItWasThem]

Tell me you can strap one of these on to a frickin' sharks head and I may have a buyer for you...

AC-130

[Morologous]

At the end of the article, the author casually mentions that a direct energy weapon could be mounted on the AC-130. I think this is a highly likely scenario.

The AC-130 mounts extremely heavy weapons (105mm Howitzers, Miniguns, etc). It seems like this is a more likely platform for early laser weapons.

Conventional on reflections

[racerx509]

While the use of reflective materials could help to deflect some of the power of the laser, everyone forgot one thing. Conventional weapons. Adding a reflective coating to your normally camoflaged jeep or base to stop laser fire will easily be spotted by a pilot who will not hesitate to put a missile on the target. Also, it is a dead give-away for radar.

Rate of fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi,

I just wondered about the rate of fire. I guess they use some kind of capacitor to story the energy and then release it through their laser.
Now how long does it take to recharge the capacitor? If it takes too long, simply fire more projectiles at the target than the laser/capacitor can handle, and you know that at least some of them will go through this kind of defense.

What do you think about this?

Effective laser weapons == no more fighter jets

[Anonymous Coward]

The JSF idea is doomed to failure if it works.

This is because if you have an effective laser weapons system that will work on a fighter, then you can have an even more powerful system on the ground in a defense role. As soon as the JSF is detected, it is toast.

Unless, of course, if we plan on only using these weapons on opponents with inferior technology who can't fight back. Then it will work. But then good old missiles would work just fine as well.

So what's the point, except to blow a lot of money?

Set phasors to stun...

[CSZeus]

Screw lasers, I want to know how close we are to the phasors. I mean seriously, can you set a laser to stun damage? I think not.

But what if the target is wrong?

[Bi0h4z4rD]

"With such lasers, a fighter jet could destroy ground targets with pinpoint accuracy, significantly reducing the chance of injuring civilians."

What about all those attacks we've heard about with these so-called "Smart bombs" that hit their intended target without error, only to find out later that the target was completely bogus in the first place??

Technology is only as good as the human error that screws it up!

Would you even have to predict?

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

If the laser can move it's targetting area quick enough, why bother predicting where the object is going? Just fire a low-power targetting laser at it to ensure you've hit the right spot (round trip time to confirm : 2 x distance / c)), then fire the full-powered laser once you have confirmation (time to hit target = distance/c). I doubt the target's going anywhere in those coupla nanoseconds.

enviromental concern about chemical lasers?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Environmentalists are concerned about the deployment of a modified Boeing 747, the world's largest commercial jet, that would operate the nation's first airborne chemical laser, contending that the chemical beam could be harmful to the atmosphere and that the potential for toxic spills is unacceptable. "

Now I'm all for saving the enviroment, but somehow I think a NUKE might do MORE damage then a chemical lasers waste fumes.

Re:But what the world really wants to know is . .

[ceejayoz]

Here.

Highly relevant program

[tellezj]

Take a look at the THEL program. (Tactical High Energy Laser)

Mildly Shocked no one has put these up

[anzha]

A bit of Karma whoring here, wish I'd gotten online sooner so that people would see this much earlier:

TheHigh Energy Laser Systems Test Facility (so-called HELSTF). Let's see if Tom's webserver can survive this...This is the laser test facility for the army and navy at White Sands Missile Range. They've got the world's most powerful laser (MIRACL: Mid Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser) there.

Being developed for them, by Livermore by the same guys that are doing the National Ignition Facility is a solid state laser. It works.

Also at HELSTF, and the first functional laser weapon, is Tactical High Energy Laser (aka THEL, and I hate that URL, btw...)

Search TRW for more stuff on lasers as well as Lockmart and Boeing, of course.

about time...

[AssFace]

GI Joe has frickin had them for years now.

Real genius

[cweiblen]

So when do we fill Saddam's house with popcorn?

Quote

[Anonymous Coward]

"If this is the future, then where are the f__king laser guns"?

-Simon Phoenix, Demolition Man

A trend...

[Cervantes]

Does anyone else notice a trend going on here? Unmanned planes flown by remote control, missiles that can be fired from hundreds of miles away, stealth bombers that can fly halfway around the world to do their work and come back, a laser missile shield to protect your country, and now laser weapons that can blow shit up from dozens of miles away...

If I were paranoid, I'd deduce that the goal of the US military is to be able to blow other countries up without committing any troops (at least until all thats left is a private in a foxhole wondering where all the pretty lights came from), to be able to protect their vast stocks of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and at the same time, to ensure that no other country can have them.

"You don't scare us, Yankee dogs! We have the bomb!"
bzzzzzzzzzzap!
"Uh, we had the bomb, but thats ok, we'll build another!"
bzzzzzzzap!
"Uh, ok, we have no real buildings left in our country now, but you better not try to invade us, we have friends with big missiles!"
*points up at orbiting defense satillites*
"Uh, ok, so we can't shoot at you, but if you try to invade, we'll fight to the death!"
*nuclear and chemical missiles come crashing down by the dozens*
"Hm, so we can't fight back, no one else can fight back, no one can build the weapons you have because if they do you blow them up, and now you stand unopposed to force your will upon the world."
...
"Would you like fries with that?"

Re:A trend...

[Stonehand]

Offhand, I don't think there's any rational government in the world which would pass up military research that would reduce their own probable casualties, unless it's of such a nature that it violates their value system (for instance, using thermonuclear weapons to annihilate Afghanistan instead of risking troops would not have gone over well in the United States, I suspect, even though it would have reduced US casualties).

The age of the bonzai charge and bravado over brains is long gone.

Re:A trend...

[Backov]

Sounds good.

Make it so.

Cheers,
Backov

Stealth Bombs? Lots o' little bombs?

[Anonymous Coward]

To shoot something with a laser you need to track it. If good stealth technology is available to other countries by the time these lasers are ready there could be problems even finding a target. That applies to aircraft as well as missiles.

What if instead of sending out one big fat rocket with a target on it, the enemies send out a rocket that turns into a cluster bomb well before it reaches the target. It would be like trying to shoot a spray from a hose with a bb gun instead of shooting a water baloon. These lasers are going to be like the early guns where they had to be reloaded by hand after every shot only it'll be because of overheating.

I can imagine it'll work well for planes but won't fighter aircraft become obsolete once these lasers go into production?

Targeting might be a tougher nut to crack than making a viable laser.

Re:Not a feasible weapon

[ItWasThem]

I'll tell you where E=mc^2 comes into it... we had to put that in the business plan to get our funding. Everyone in government knows that no serious science is done without quoting E=MC^2 in your business plan! Look where those SETI guys got, do you see mention of E=MC^2 in their business plan? Didn't think so, and how are they doing for money today?

Coming soon to a bumper near you:

[DJ Uptime]

"You can't hug a child with directed energy arms"

THIS END TOWARDS ENEMY

[Anonymous Coward]

...is my favourite

Call Me When.........

[flyneye]

Call me when this involves something i can carry concealed per my rights to keep and bear arms.(then the only quandry is which half of the mugger still wants my wallet) ;P

Rail Guns?

[Loki_1929]

Lemme know when they get a working railgun ready for army troops and I'll be the first one to sign up. I'm an excellent shot, and I've got 6 years of Quake experience to prove it! Bet I can kick Rumsfeld's ass in Rail Arena!

Claymore mines...

[teridon]

say "Front toward enemy" on them. The picture is vietnam-era; they might say "This side toward enemy" now.

Speaking of death rays...

[Stonehand]

It's a bit tangential, but here's a bit on how the Northern Alliance and Taliban had difficulty conceiving of US military capabilities (unless certain GIs were pulling the leg of _Frontline_'s interviewer). Some may find it amusing or disturbing...

(from Frontline):

U.S. Special Forces ODA 595
ODA 595 fought with warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum in northern
Afghanistan.
read the interview [blank.gif]
[blank.gif]

You said earlier that Dostum thought you had a death ray. What can you
tell me about that?

Mark (Capt.):

Due to the altitude that the aircraft was flying with the laser-guided
munitions, when it dropped its ordnance the bomb was falling for a
minute and half to two minutes. If you timed it just right, as the
laser target designator is engaging and [targeting the] enemy
position, you let your Northern Alliance commander take a look through
the laser target designator. He sees it going, but he doesn't see the
bombs fly into the target. He hears that chirping noise from the laser
target designator and then the enemy position explodes. They believe
that we have the death ray, and this was a myth that we were willing
to perpetuate. Every one of us on our rifles carried a smaller laser.
We let the Northern Alliance guys look through our night vision
goggles. ... I think Will has summed it up best. This whole situation
is like the Flintstones meet the Jetsons. And those guys could not
fathom that we have some sort of aiming device that would allow us to
hit a target at night on the first round.

Will (Sgt.):

I think something that's key in all this is that both Northern
Alliance and enemy communications were, for the most part, CB radios.
They would be arguing with each other in the heat of battle. The
Taliban would be saying, "nanny, nanny, boo, boo" and the Northern
Alliance would be saying, "hey, we're coming to get you." They would
also tell the Taliban about this death ray. At Kunduz, we were
negotiating back and forth to try to get these guys to surrender. They
were saying, "We'll surrender, we'll march into your camp, but we want
to keep our guns." Dostum finally said, "Put your guns down, take your
jackets off, march in here or we're turning the Americans onto you
with the death ray." Instantly you could see the guys bend over. They
put their guns down, they took their cloaks off and they started
marching in, in single file right up into the middle of our perimeter,
because they knew that it was over if that death ray was coming out.

Mark Capt.:

This was also perpetuated by the presence of the AC 130 Spectra
gunship. They had a female fire support officer that was on the radio.
Dostum heard her voice and he brought Mohammed Fazal, who's the former
Taliban chief of staff. He's trying to delay this surrender in Kunduz
while his forces are attempting to recapture Mazar-e-Sharif. Dostum
brings Fazal near the radio so that he can hear this female voice.
Fazal hears her voice as it's being explained to him, through the
translators, that we have the angel of death overhead, from the AC 130
gunship. Dostum explains to him that we have the angel of death
overhead and that we possess the death ray. If they don't surrender
now all of their troops will burn in hell. Fazal jumped on the radio
and his men were surrendering within minutes. ...

I wonder how well-informed the foot soldiers of the likely US enemies are, and whether an invisible missile/building-destroying laser would have a serious morale impact...

Re:Speaking of death rays...

[Boingy the Boingster]

I might believe the "death ray" stuff but I have a real hard time believing the "angel of death" story.

First of all, the Afghanis know radio. They have radios. So since when would a voice over radio be anything special?

Number two, according to the beliefs of Muslims angels are not female. They are genderless beings. Furthermore when they do appear to people with human or human-like attributes they are invariably male. I'm confident that it's common knowledge among even poorly educated Taliban Muslims that the angel of death is Azrail who is represented as male always.

Not to mention that for a Muslim to suddenly believe that Azrail is working directly for Uncle Sam requires an incredible change in core beliefs.

If the surrendering part of the story is true at all then he probably told the troops to surrender because "they've got some chick in a plane up there who's gonna blow you up."

Vancouver and Seattle are safe, for now...

[dstone]

From the article:
Lasers do have one big drawback. The beam is not very effective in inclement weather and requires greater levels of energy to pierce thick clouds.

Yay for temperate rainforests!

The problem with your logic is...

[caldaan]

take 10,000J/.1 seconds and you would also have 100KWatts as well, which do you think will do more damage and bust through the mirrors?? his 500mJ, 500ns so called 1Megawatt laser or the 10KJ 100 millisecond one?

Re:The problem with your logic is...

[Enocasiones]

OK, In your case the total energy is 1KJ, which over a small area can be quite intense. With the 500/500 pulse the energy total is ridiculous.

My somewhat cryptic point was that you have to pay attention to the power AND to the energy transmitted, i.e., the length of the pulse also matters. Just giving a power output is not that significant. Theres energy and theres power, and you shouldnt mix both.

Re:giggles (from the article) and a question

[Dyolf Knip]

Silver-coated mirrors are able to to reflect 99.92% of the light

Outside of space telescopes and cleanroom labs, have you ever seen a 99.92% reflective mirror _stay_ that way? A smudge of oil on the surface would vaporize instantly, heating the mirror up and deforming it slightly. This causes the mirror to not be quite so reflective, so it absorbs even more heat, etc, etc.

Fortunately for the US military, the only practical defense to a laser would be something that could instantly conduct the heat the laser generates around the rest of the vehicle; the parts not being fired at become a giant heatsink. I don't know if electrical superconductors are also heat superconductors, but either way, such a material is much further away on the horizon than high-power solid state lasers.

Keep in mind

[Iowaguy]

Efficiency of mirrors aside, keep in mind the purpose of war is to kill people. Sure, having a nice shiny surface for laser defense can work (in principal) but it also makes you really, really, really visable. This would make you a great target. So, if we can mount a laser and make all the bad-guys dress in shiny suits, GREAT. The the camo guys with guns can just clean up. Any solution can't be that one sided.

What good would Anti_Missle system

[MichaelPenne]

do against human carried warheads?

Or the next terrorists with suitcase nukes or truck bombs?

I mean we already have dozens of ways to stop trucks and commercial air planes.

The ABL is a great defense against WMD _missels_, but we have better defenses against _states_ that might launch missels: massive retaliation. From US vs Irag epsiode 1 to India v. Pakistan, evidense is MAD works.

Meanwhile, the ABL will not work well at all against human carried warheads, the most common forms of attack we are likely to suffer, the only real defense against these is to make the lives of the cannon fodder more pleasent than the glory of dying for the cause...

Re:What good would Anti_Missle system

[Stonehand]

Retalliation and deterrence theory

(1) Only works when everybody with sufficient access in the entire WMD system is rational. This is increasingly questionable; for an example, consider North Korea, which appears to prefer being able to hit the continental United States with a nuclear weapon (they have missiles with sufficient range, although accuracy has been questioned) to, say, being able to feed their people.

(2) Ignores the possibilities of accidental launches and launch systems which would have unclear authorship. For instance, it may be unclear who just launched an ICBM if it came from the middle of an ocean...

Couple things

[Sycraft-fu]

1) Where do you get this "several miles" figure? Show me some math that supports that assertation.

2) Bombs do a great job not only of blinding people, but deafening them, maiming them and, oh yes, KILLING them. They are much less targeted than a laser.

3) Civilans always loose out in a war.

The point of this is more precise weapons, so we can destroy only the target and not cause collertal damage. Smart bombs are good, much better than just carpet bombing, but a bomb still destorys a large area, and flings shrapnel over a larger one.

I fail to see why people get so alarmist about lasers, they will incur much less colleratal damage than bombs, which is the whole reason we are interested in them. We already have more than enough weapons that can destroy large areas of stuff, nuclear weapons being the ultimate in that category. We have been working on, and continue to work on, weapons that are more precise, that can destory one specific target and not touch anything around it.

Re:Couple things

[G. W. Bush Junior]

1) pretty simple... the power needed to fry someones retina is minimal compared to the power required to burn a hole in a tank... How long does a laserbeam have to pass through air to reach a level where it's safe... effectively the uper boundary is set by the terrain, thus the "several miles". It just seemed like a nice estimate for a typical line of sight.

Lasers are NOT a precise weapon... it's far more non-local than bombs. The beam does not stop just because it hits a tank.

2) So you would also argue that land mines are better than bombs because they don't kill people?!?!
My point is that like landmines the only real losers are the civilians because this means that we'll revert to weapons that damage just as large an area as carpet bombing. Smart bombs are very local compared to lasers.

3) Of course civilians lose in a war... and that's the whole point... why make wars if the civilians on the oppposite side didn't get hurt. I was merely pointing out an error in the article. Apparently they believed that THIS particular weapon would benefit civilians.

Re:BattleTech Dammit!!

[anastus]

BattleTech Dammit!!

Yeah, yeah, offtopic or redundant, but I still am amazed at life imitating fiction. In the BattleTech Novel/Tabletop/RPG universe cira the year 3000'ish, many of the games' documents make mention of atmospheric laser weapons designed in the 21-22nd century designed SOLEY to blind infantry and civilians: the ultimate soft kill weapons...

Capacitors? Please answer...

[orim]

I admit I'm electronics ignorant... Would more capacitors in a device reduce the need for an immediate (sustained) power source, if we're talking about short bursts?

This may be why my X-wing can only shoot every second or so (in pulses), as opposed to having a pure beam laser? :)

Re:Capacitors? Please answer...

[Idarubicin]

Would more capacitors in a device reduce the need for an immediate (sustained) power source, if we're talking about short bursts?

Emphatically, yes. Actually, for nearly all pulsed lasers, there's almost no other way to get to a high power--and pulsed lasers are by far the 'big guns' (pardon the expression) of the laser world. Using capacitors allows one to deliver a very large amount of energy in a very short time, which works just great for a weapon, as long as you aim the thing accurately.

It's also possible to shorten already short laser pulses using nonlinear optics, but that's beyond the scope of this post. ;)

Re:Stealth Bombs? Lots o' little bombs?

[Nihilanth]

perhaps not. If an array of powerful enough lasers used for missile defence was refracted into a larger number of beams that just circled and changed refraction angle until the coverage area approaches that of a series of overlapping cones, you could conceivably take out all the ordinance at once.

Why no laser sniper rifles?

[Galvatron]

Okay, question: why don't SWAT teams and the like have laser sniper rifles? Sure, they'd be bulky, and require external power supplies. Sure, you'd have to make sure they fire OUTSIDE the visual spectrum to prevent blindness. But, for a hostage standoff sitation, where you've got hours to get your people into place, wouldn't having a weapon that would be 100% accurate by virtue of traveling at the speed of light, unaffected by gravity or air currents, be really useful?

"Very sufficient"?

[ArcSecond]

What the hell does "basic, but very sufficient" mean? Is that like "minimal, but extremely adequate"? Or more like "average, but radically normal"?

Just thought I'd point out this lapse in editing, on both the part of the submitter and the /. guys. Not that anyone else cares, I'm sure.

possible countermeasure

[Anonymous Coward]

Make some decently coated retroreflectors (3 mirrors at right angles to each other, same way they bounced a laser off the moon, reflects back in the opposite direction of beam [with a slight spatial translation]). (IAAPM, I am a physics major. And have worked with high powered lasers, terawatt range [I am not joking])

You can get them online

[boatboy]

They're not solid state, but if all you want to do is blow holes in stuff with light, put some of these on your Hummer...Of course, they also sell these so purchase at your own risk...

GI Joe

[Frying Ferret]

So when will the design lasers that have a misty cloud that surround the beam, and which also travel at the speed of light. That was you could actually see it. Of course to be totally sci-fi one would have to slow down the speed of light to about 1000MPH and then you could actually watch the beam "fly" through the air.

scatter the beam

[gCGBD]

We are assuming there isn't an smoke on the
battlefield.

The laser would require IR transparent media
to traverse before striking the intended (IR
absorbant) target.

Smoke is probably not IR transparent.
If it happens to be, I'm sure the enemy
could arrange for some non-transparent smoke
to be present.

Dust storms, and other atmospheric scattering
would diminish the beam effect as well (acid
rain).

I wouldn't bet _my_ life on one of these...

Re:E = mc? (pronounced "Emk")

[CrystalFalcon]

turns atomic particles into light with enough radiation to damage an object it encounters

Umm... anyone know how that is supposed to happen?

You use a hammer and a chisel to split a beer atom in order to get bubbles in the beer. This process is pronounced "Emk".

Various Comments

[drinkypoo]

First of all, as far as laser defense systems; Consider the possibilities of a cooling laser or similar. Second, lots of water, but I've commented on that elsewhere. Third, cold plasma seems to be easier to generate than we thought, ALA star trek shield tech. Maybe that's the real answer. The neat trick is magnetic bottling to hold it in place...

Second, on the subject of laser anti missile systems, this has been speculated about for a long-ass time. Battletech had AMS systems on 'mechs for a while which were like baby phalanx systems, and then later the LAMS, the laser version. And of course, think back to star control, the earther ship had a laser-based antimissile system, which was really handy against those guys who could launch fighters at you. It's been a while :(

Wow...

[Techi]

This, combined with the cloaking suits that were featured in an article last year would make our army like something out of Final Fantasy. Wow! Cool!

Re:giggles (from the article) and a question

[Nathanbp]

Yes, electrical superconductors are heat superconductors. Unfortunatly, they have to be very very cold to work, so wouldn't help much versus lasers. High temperature superconductors would work as an efficent laser defense as has been pointed out by sci-fi authors.

Nothing to see here...

[Anonymous Coward]

move along.

Laser of Lead

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is another laser for you, the lead type. It's so simple you want to cry. Some of the articles I've seen are not accurate, but the pictures are very impressive. The current prototype has 36 barrels, no moving parts and fires 45,000 rounds per minute. The million rounds per minute gun has 200+ barrels
1 milliion rounds a minute

Plasma, not laser

[Kris Warkentin]

I would expect that he was talking about something that shoots hot plasma at you, not a laser. But how much plasma is 40 watts worth? And do you have to buy it in little canisters like they're always using in ST Voyager?

I've got Laser Eyes

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm So Curious (Laser Eyes)

I got laser eyes!
And I know what you're thinking!
It comes as no surprise!
Christmas lights are blinking!

And I'm so curious,
and I'm so curious,
and I'm so curious, and I GOT LASER EYES!
HEY!

And I'm so curious,
and I'm so curious,
and I'm so curious, and I GOT LASER EYES!
HEY!

(Repeat twice)

I GOT LASER EYES! HEY!
I GOT LASER EYES! HEY!

o-o-o-oh SUFFRAGETTE!

(SIFL n OLLY FOREVER)

Re:Stealth Bombs? Lots o' little bombs?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're completly forgetting about rate of fire and heat dissipation. These aren't going to be flashlights that you turn on for a few minutes at a time.

I guess a battleship has enough juice to get some cold sea water running through the enourmous heat sink they would need but that doesn't affect the power requirements for what you're proposing.

Think about all the smelly cooked fish left in it's wake :p

Corner reflector armour

[cdc]

And next week, we'll develop armour consisting of thousands of small corner reflectors. What do think will happen when a big grunty laser beam hits a panel of corner-reflectors?

Of course, you'd need pretty good mirrors for a 100kw laser.

Cheers,
cdc

Refraction?

[SHEENmaster]

If you build your aircraft/missle out of reflective materials to counteract lasers, your going to make it a large target for radar. Stealth material generally works by absorbing the energy. The two defences won't be able to co-exist.

The whole purpose of absorbtion is to stop light/radar from reflecting back towards their source. Through refraction, couldn't your missile just refract the light or reflect it at odd angles?

optics

[mattinjersey]

Many posts have concerned the laser power, and the reflectivity of the missile. Another consideration is the necessary aperture of the output laser.
According to this reference, we will need to focus a 25W laser to 100microns in order to burn through steel. This small spot size is necessary to get the required energy density.
From Gaussian optics, the spot size of a laser will be given as:
s=(lamba)*f/d.
where s=spot size, lamba=wavelength of light, and f=focal length of lens.
So d=(f*lamba)/S. With f=1 mile=1609m, and lamda=1micron, and lets take a spot size of 100microns. Then d=1609m*1micron/100microns=16m.
So for this small spot size, we will need a physical lens size of 16m, which is quite big!
And this was for a distance of only 1 mile! Probably aircraft typically will fight at 50miles or more, which will make the required aperture hundreds of meters!
This is a quite fundamental problem.

ATTENTION EVERYONE

[Anonymous Coward]

you should set your comment-O-meter level to -1

the parent comment is rated flamebait, but i think that it is very insightfull or, moderators and meta modders, do u job and give ur opinion to the parent post

RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA

and you would realize that we are not talking "disable the sensors on missiles and humans (eyes)"
we are talking heat it to a kazillion degrees while it is obliverated(SP)

Re:BattleTech Dammit!!

[G. W. Bush Junior]

nono... real life is far more civilized than BattleTech.
We lie about the real purpose of the laser...


Well... yes... of course we could destroy a tank much cheaper and more effeiciently with a machine-gun or an ordinary bomb, and yes it wouldn't take up as much real estate as laser... But really... we prefer laser because it... uhm... sounds cool and science fiction'ish. The whole blinding people buisness is just a nasty (and COMPLETELY unintentional) side effect.

Example.

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh, haven't you seen The Sum of All Fears? I never knew what those things were called until now...

(Yes, I know. It's a movie. I'm being semifacetious.)

America is screwing up

[Mittermeyer]

We need to let this tech linger in the background for a good long while. Rumsfeld is wrong, other countries will steal this tech and duplicate it within a few short years (see Russia and A-/H-bombs). Then we will not be able to do airpower projection, and our ICBM nuclear threat may soon ring hollow because if you can mount it on a plane you can mount it on an AA vehicle and put more juice on the ground vehicle then the airplane.

Like Britain creating HMS Dreadnaught, this technology will be the seeds of our strategic decline.

Who takes the biggest hit?

[myowntrueself]

Ok so you've got a 100KW laser pointed at me,
but aha! I've got a mirror that reflects
95% of the light.

So, uh, my mirror has to absorb 5KW of the unreflected laser energy,
but dude, thats 95KW of laser being reflected RIGHT BACK AT YOU!!!

Just think about that.

Sure you want to be a Marine?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Marines say, "Mine is not to reason why ... Mine is but to do or die." It seems to be implicit with the Marines that I know that whatever Uncle Sam provides for them is just fine, no questions asked.

Collateral Damage

[LordLucless]

Wouldn't 99% of the laser beam being reflected into the surroundings be rather hazardous to the health of anything you were trying to save from the missile?

Re:I can imagine.....ALSO

[vortexau]

that they should include:
"Please, do NOT point at your friends!"

Friendly Fire - biggest killer in the US military,
and amoung its allies' forces.
_________________________________________ _________

"You are false data, so I shall ignore you" -(Bomb No.20)
__________________________________________________
.

This begs the question

[bagsc1]

100kW hitting w/ "pinpoint accuracy"... what kind of heatsinkage would be necessary to dissipate all this? Assuming "pinpoint accuracy" is a figure of speech, really more on the scale of .01 m^2, says you need to dissipate 1 megawatt/m^2 to prevent the burnout. If you're partially reflective (50%), and spinning (divide power by circumference/.1m if theta=>inf) you need less heat dissipation. A small missile, C=pi m, semireflective is down to 1/63 (.016) the heat sinkage necessary. Quality CPU heatsinks dissipate, what, on the scale of 10kW/m^2? Clearly, if it really is pinpoint accurate, even if only down to the .01m range, all that is moot. But that's one hell of a fire control system, .01m error over 10km. I dont do optics, but that sounds pretty fantastically accurate to me, at least in atmospehere. Liquid nitro cooling could help sink even more. Oh, and if it wasn't the most obvious solution: the optical countermeasure. How bout a smoke trailer a few meters in front of the missile, opaque to whatever the necessary frequency was?

Last Post!

[alpg]

[In 'Doctor' mode], I spent a good ten minutes telling Emacs what I
thought of it. (The response was, 'Perhaps you could try to be less
abusive.')
-- Matt Welsh

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