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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."
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.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
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.
AMCGLTD.COM. Where cats, science fictio
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.