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Laser Shoots Down Artillery Shell In Flight
An anonymous reader writes "The Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser is a joint project between the US Army and the Israeli Defense Ministry, with much of the work being done by TRW. Tuesday they had a spectacular success when they shot an artillery shell out of the air."
They make it sound as if an artillary shell is a HARDER taregt to hit than a rocket. Rockets accelerate, tumble, and move erratically. Artillery shells move in well understood, computable trajectories. They probably had the damn flight path of the shell computed before they fired it. It's one thing to shoot down a shell when you know it's path ahead of time, another entirely to get a fix on an unknown, erratic rocket and destroy it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
They likely mean the laser heated a spot on the projectile sufficiently to initiate low order detonation of the explosives therein. This would likely break it into enough pieces to keep it well short of its original intended target...
Shells don't kill (many) people by ballistic momentum, they kill mostly through shrapnel.
That said, raining shrapnel from the sky could still be dangerous, but it would land short of the original target. So just overshoot?
I have to assume that it was some sort of explosive warhead that was detonated by the heat of the laser.
History clearly demonstrates that all surface-to-air weapons systems demo slightly better when you pack the target to the gills with high explosives.
But yeah, the original momentum isn't getting "blown up", so if the thing that's shooting at you is a battleship lobbing volkswagon-sized projectiles, the fact that you warmed it up a little bit before it hit you isn't going to make much difference.
But if the enemy is going to helpfully pack all his warheads with heat sensitive HE, then this should work great!
G.
I wonder how the laser could do this. This is indeed the most technicaly challenging part of the task. I visit military exhibitions regularly but I never heard of a system that could work against targets of that size (projectile). Even tracking rockets is very difficult and they're way bigger and emit a lot of detectable heat.
My guess is that in their setup the targeting system knew from where exactly the gun fired. In a real-life war this is usually not the case. So until the tracking is reliable (and not easily fooled), this sounds entirely vaporware.
Remember, this is a coherent beam of laser photons. Lasers lose little of their energy and gain only slightly in cross-sectional area with increasing distance. It is likely that any deployed system will have a range vastly greater than artillery. These things can be miles behind the front or even in the air. Plus, the accuracy is such that we will soon be able to vaporize selected individuals in a crowd.
Before long we will have the ability to render even sophisticated armies totally obsolete. I think this is a good thing. We'll turn opposing officers and armor into cinders in the first fifteen minutes of any engagement, sparing not only civilian bystanders but the great majority of the troops.
Thirty years from now, the greatest challenge to our armed forces will be how to deal with the POWs. No power on Earth will be able to oppose us when we decide to bend other nations to our will.
You may like this situation (I certainly do) or not, but be prepared to face the reality. Our obligation to the rest of the world, as American citizens, is to work to keep our Constitutional checks and balances in place so that our mighty power is used for worthy ends.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
It'd also be useful in Afghanistan right now, where every so often somebody tries to lob a mortar round or rocket into a US camp. They don't lob a huge salvo (e.g. a Katyusha launcher might be tough to hide from the drones, satellites, manned aircraft, patrols...) but one could do some damage if they improved their accuracy or just got lucky enough. The ability to zap 'em would be nice.
Israel... yes, they're probably expecting more Katyushas c/o Hezbollah, and all the mortars that the Palestinians technically agreed not to have, but do have anyway.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Nope. This isn't _Star Trek_...
(1) To feed people, first you need to wipe out the bastards using food as a weapon -- a real problem in many conflict zones. Mogadishu, anyone? Recall what happened when the lightly-armed UN handed out food? It got seized by the militias. In other places, it'd be the government that'd confiscate the food.
(2) Your peace is not their peace. Radical Islamists want the world to be Moslem. Some others would prefer there to be NO Moslems. Some prefer equality of opportunity, while others prefer equality of poverty. Some want a modern world, while others will only be happy with a Year Zero Khmer Rouge-style approach. You can't make them all happy, simultaneously.
At any given point in history, probably a large portion of the human population is Thoroughly Pissed Off. Are you going to tell them to just completely change their value systems and surrender?
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
As someone that has lived in several third world countries, I can tell you that the problems in the third world do not stem from lack of money, but rather from rampant corruption.
When someone in Africa starves, it is only because some tinpot dictator wants them to starve, for whatever reason. And when some child in Bolivia gets sick from drinking contaminated water it is only because some politico has embezzled the funds that should have gone to improving the water supply.
The sad part about the debts to most developing nations is that most of the monies were squandered or diverted into private accounts. However, in most cases forgiving those debts would just allow the current leaders to do the same thing all over again. The sad bit is that cleaning up corrupt governments is much harder than building water purification plants. Even the most advanced nations have fairly serious problems with corruption. Besides, no matter how much we gave other countries they would always suspect that we were holding out.
Historically speaking the power to do massive destruction has been a far greater deterrent than paying tribute. That's just the way things are.
Technology isn't everything. Hell, technology plus military leadership plus strategy plus tactics plus logistics isn't everything.
There's politics. An enemy does not have to defeat the entire power of the United States; it only needs to plausibly threaten enough damage to make the US reconsider its commitment, and balance the value of objectives versus projected losses. North Korea, for instance, might question whether we'd either (a) offer them a hefty no-questions-asked aid package, or (b) accept the destruction of a major American city on the west coast. The Iraqi ambassador might suggest to the US ambassador that, should the US attack, the first Iraqi action would be launching its entire chemical arsenal at Jerusalem, and query as to whether or not the ensuing chaos would be helpful to the US. And so forth.
Protecting South Vietnam's dictatorship was not worth it, politically...
Oh, and the US does and will continue to cause collateral damage -- we killed quite a few innocent bystanders in Afghanistan, for instance. Some were due to misidentification, some due to misses, some due to accepting bad intelligence. And, should there be war in Iraq, there will probably be deliberate "collateral" damage in the sense that it may be necessary to directly or indirectly damage civillian infrastructure e.g. power grids, water supplies, that sort of thing.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Given the fact that the Israeli Defense Ministry has been aiding the US with this, I'm going to go ahead and assume that they'll definately be having systems such as this.
This wasn't rigged. Everyone was told ahead of time that the target missle had a GPS receiver on the warhead as well as a C-band beacon.
Just because the unfairness was pre-published doesn't mean the test had scientific validity.
The purpose of the test was not in acquisition and tracking, but in the kill vehicle technology
That's plenty difficult, but easy compared to the target identification problem. A chain is as strong as its weakest link. There's still no plan for how the acquistion can work and not be defeated by simplistic countermeasures. Without that, the high speed missile impacts are worthless.
(Ok, not quite worthless- there is one EASY way to solve the detection problem: give up on kinetic kill, and just load the anti-missile missile with an atomic warhead. You don't need to worry about which fragment contains the enemy bomb if you can just liquify everything in a 10km radius. For some reason, the Pentagon hasn't wanted to take this plan to the American public...)
Honestly, peoples hostility to this program in current time has me baffled.
What's so odd about an fighting an expensive program that'll never work?
Regardless of if the TBM can work mechanically (kinetic kill) and tactically (satellite detection of launch), there's no way it will work strategically.
Scenario 0: Terrorists. A small, well funded group acquires an atomic warhead. Either they're supplied by an "axis of evil" state, or they loot one from a under-defended Russian bunker. Now they've got 600 lbs of pure destructive power- why bother attaching it to a missile, which is expensive, risky, error-prone, and open to detection- when they can simply carry it into their target city with an SUV / powerboat / Cessna? If they did launch a nuclear ICBM, a pair of Tridents would glaze the entire originating nation before the first mushroom cloud has faded.
Scenario 1: Nation. A large country developes nukes and strikes the US. For each warhead, they fly out 3 dummy missles and maybe mix in some MIRV technology as well. The dummies can be cheap, they don't even need real guidance. Remember, atomic weapons are NOT kinetic-kill. You can (conventionally) explode the rocket in midflight, or otherwise jink and be evasive, without reducing your destructive power. (Accuracy doesn't matter with a 50 megaton bomb). As long as the first bomb is detonated anywhere with line-of-sight to US defensive sensors/satellites, it will disrupt enough radar to make cover for the rest.
Any nation big enough to build & fire a few ICBMs is also big enough to make enough dummies to swamp any TBM defense system. (Our existing atomic warheads provide a strong deterrent protection, of course)
Scenario 2: A lone madman. Some lunatic gets hold of a Russian missile silo, and on the spur of the moment fires a warhead at NYC.
This is the only place where the TBM plan could concievably help, and its so unlikely compared to the other scenarios that its hard to argue that TBM is cost effective. (Unless you think the expenditure would help the economy, which is actually likely). But much better would be to solve scenario 0 & 2 at the same time, by reducing nuclear proliferation worldwide. I won't get into the steps to do that- there's two well-documented approaches, neither one attractive to the American mood.
It's a different world over there. The children are terrorists. It's a shame the Israelis didn't finish the job.
Or forcing people out of there own land because of their religion?
Excuse me, what Muslim countries is Israel attacking? Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Quatar, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Chad, Libya, Lebanon, Jordan, Indonesia, the Phillipines? Hmmm, there must be some other factor (Google News: 13 hours ago) that you're missing. Israel's not attacking any Muslim country. Just some Arab-Israeli ("Palestinian") misfits wanting an overthrow of Israel.
In other news, there was another suicide bombing this afternoon on the West Bank in the settlement of Tampa. "When I arrived I saw body parts lying on the road," said a woman who witnessed the blast. "I went into the shop and saw some remains covered in blood and nearby a severed leg which belonged to another body." The street was crowded with schoolchildren and shoppers on their way home from work.
The Spanish Authority has condemned the bombing. The Español Inquisition-Jihad is claiming responsibility for this attack, which is in protest of the illegal American settlements on the occupied territory owned by the Spaniards. Gov. Jeb Bush was unavailable for comment as he was attending a funeral of a victim of last week's suicide bomber.
Ah yes, and the Wright brothers failed because their flyer wasn't a 747 or a Concorde.
Get real. You develop a complicated system a piece at a time and you test the pieces as you develop them. You bring several pieces together in a "technology demonstrator" and then, maybe, just maybe, you move on to a prototype and only if that works do you develop a fieldable system. You are using the criteria for a multiple fieldable systems to criticize the demonstration of a component and, on top of that, you are criticizing said system because it may not be able to do something its not intended to do. Shheeeessh. I suppose you also don't like seatbelts in your car because they won't save your sorry behind if someone fires an anti-tank missle at you.
I haven't heard a single missle defense person claim we're safe now. We're just a little further down the road to maybe developing a system that might be able to keep us safe from a specific threat.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
"Solution, low altitude cheap drone cruise missiles..."
You can't get any cheaper than an artillery shell. That's why they are used so widely all over the world. The eqipment is far more rugged and battle tested than any drone to be fielded. Pipe dreams of rapid deployable cruise missile-like weapons are nice, but right now, they're pipe dreams for all but the largest of nations. And even those nations are going to stick with artillery. For the simple fact that it's simple to use and can be rapidly deployed. Maybe someday somebody will come up with the RPG of missile drones (simple to use, advanced AI with decent target recognition on the cheap for use in the rugged third world? Don't hold your breath), but you'll never be able to put more cheap drones into the air faster than I can saturate the area with artillery. Your point about decoys is probably the simplest, best bet, but I'm assuming target discrimination will improve as well. It's the same old game of move, counter-move over an over.
Blackmail. Make the cost of using the lasers too high. An example, they use overt lasers, you use covert biologicals in their civilian sectors. They use space, you contaminate their water in a major city. They use B-2's, you use a dozen or a hundred guys with bic lighters one night. They steal your natural resources when you are a small weak country, you ally with a strong non allied country and promise them 1/2 your resources for help. They do economic sanctions, you make their economic infrastructure non functional, the "backhoe whoops" syndrome, or code red part deux.
Just because you may be able to accomplish your objective by other means doesn't render a specific technology/strategy and/or weapons platform automatically irrelevant as you seem to be implying. In fact, it's the same argument you hear opposing ballistic missile shields. "Well hot damn. They may protect us from ICBMs, but they can still sneak a nuke in across the boarders, therefore a missile shield is completely useless!"
I've always found that particular leap of logic astounding, personally. I can wage war by other means, therefore, that particular defense is useless. No, wrong, BS. Every one of your counter arguments are great, until you add the statement, "but so can your enemy." Fighting the unlimited dirty war you propose against a well armed, well financed opponent will earn you a massive ration of shit in a hurry, no matter who the opponent is. Sure. Nerve gas a city. You just signalled your willing to fight a no holds barred campaign. Your well financed opponent will likely get a lot nastier rather than pliable as you seem to hope. Contaminate Frances major water supplies. It'll hurt them, sure, but mark my words they will get a handle on the situation on come gunning for whatever weak-assed organization that launched the attack. Yes, even France.
On a side note, check out David Drake and his Hammer's Slammers series. He fleshes out anti-artillery and guide artillery systems quite well in his works.
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It seems to me that a laser that can pump enough energy into a rocket or a shell to destroy it is going to pump enough energy into your face to melt it off. I really don't think being blinded is much of a concern. That's like saying, "watch where you point that shotgun! You could put someone's eye out!" Sure, their eyes come out the back of their head. They ain't blind... they dead.
"...and no lasers aimed at people"
Except that this system will be used principly for shooting down shells, not people. It'll most likely be aimed up, 24/7 to do it's job. If a Hind should wander into it's attack radius, maybe it'll lock on, maybe it won't, but I serverly doubt it will specifically target the people inside, just the big radar blob that represents the helo. Tough shit for them. If you could ban it on that point, well hell, lets ban all surface to air weapondry while we're at it.
As far as the ABL against terrorsists, sure, why not. That's why the white house has SAM sites and marines equipped with Stingers. Again, the effect is the same.
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I'm not American, and after seeing the results of the last election, I have serious doubts about Americas system of checks and balances
I *am* American, and I have serious doubts about America's system of checks and balances.
The really frusterating thing is that the executive branch (and specficially the President) has consistently taken power away from the legislative branch for two hundred years. The recent introduction of the massively powerful and almost unrestricted Office of Homeland Security and USA-PATRIOT is uncomfortably close to the point where it would be easy to pull a transition to a dictatorial-like government, a la the Nazis. The way the Nazis worked:
* Economy was slumping, people were worried and looking to anyone with a solution (not there yet...our "recession" is actually pretty minor).
* Physical intimidation of opposition politicians (again, not there yet).
* National security issues (the Reichstag Fire) that was "dealt with" (immediately taken advantage of) by suspending many civil rights and granting unprescedented power to the government. USA-PATRIOT isn't as strong as this -- it isn't full martial law -- but most people are willingly allowing the elimination of many once-strongly held civil rights to "stop terrorism". Search and seizure, free speech...
* The establishment of powerful organizations like the SA and the SS that operated with few restrictions. This is where the Office of Homeland Security comes in -- it has more funding than even the FBI. It has zero of the restrictions that were placed on the FBI (like inability to pull things overseas, spy on overseas nations, etc), none of the restrictions on the CIA (can't spy on domestic citizens), has many of the powers of the INS. It's quite similar in name to the KGB, and essentially forms a "domestic monitoring and early response" organization. The integrity of something like that is very fragile, and could be used to pull off too many unpleasant things. It is not subject to an amount of oversight anywhere near proportional to its powers. It is, in essence, a "secret police".
Other interesting bits was government-induced imperialism and expansion (not necessarily supported by everyone involved). As we wipe out Afghanistan's government and set up our own puppet government, and start actively threatening more governments than we had for a long, long time (Iraq. North Korea. Indonesia.), we're trying to exert a significantly increased control over other countries (though not occupy them).
Also, America would make an awful world cop. America does what's in her own interests, which is at least somewhat her responsibility to her people. However, America (unlike most other countries) has been *firmly* opposed to a world court or global police system, because it would be a challenge to her own power.
I don't see overwhelming strength, used at will against other nations, as a long term path to world peace
Yes, but conflict does work well for rallying and unifying your people behind you. Hitler knew it. 1984 knew about it. If Bush didn't know it before, he does now from his massive ratings spikes (from his earlier pathetic ones). Nationalism was at its strongest during the World Wars. Nothing like a good war to secure your position.
America has little interest in world peace. At the very least, maintaining a divided, weakened Arab region (at least until the oil is gone) is very much in her interests.
May we never see th