Slashdot Mirror
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."
Reading through the article doesn't give much info about details such as:
How much does one unit cost?
How long is the "reload"/"re-aiming" time?
Will it survive real heavy artillery battle?
Thus, if you want to protect the target, you either have to vaporise the entire projectile so the momentum is dispelled by the air, or maybe it's an explosive shell and the laser persuaded it to explode (which is another way of vaporising it, I suppose).
Breaking it in two or poking a hole in it wouldn't be sufficient.
Does anyone know exactly what they meant by the laser "destroying" the projectile?
like the ones used to pass the first generation patriot missle system. The gen 1 patriots were so bad that final analysis showed that in one test the patriot missed the mark only to have the target slam into it, thus causing both to break up. In the official scoring this was marked as a hit and win for the patriot sytem even though it was a random fluke. Unless someone not affiliated with the military or the defense contractor verifies the results I shall remain skepticle until field use proves the system.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Really?
I would think that a shell starts with an initial velocity, and slows down due to air resistance and gravity as it arcs upwards.
As it begins it's decent, itmay speed up with gravity, or slow down even more, depending on the air-resistence. If it slows down, it will slow down slower (if that makes sense).
Second, a shell goes much faster than a rocket. If the aim is off by just a little, a rocket might not have moved that much. A shell would probably be long gone.
Third, I believe shells are smaller than rockets. Smaller target requires more accuracy.
Ergo, a shell *IS* harder to hit than a rocket.
Gosh, it looks as if all those old sci-fi books really were a glimpse of the future.
:-)
Now if this prediction made in the 1969 edition of Popular Mechanics would just come true:
"Future watches won't just be for keeping time either. Wlatham engineers forsee this exciting possibility: Wristwatches in the year 2000 will be used for more than time measurement. They will be total communication centers, containing devices not only for accurate timing but also for voice and vision communication; and simple recording -- they'll even contain simple miniaturized computers"
Wow -- imagine that, a miniaturized computer in your wristwatch -- nah, it could never happen!
But a Dick-Tracy wristwatch communicator, yeah, that'll work
What if the shell had a very glossy finish (like a mirror or something). Would the laser still have the same impact (no pun intended)? I'm just curious.
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.
Actually, that depends on how you look at it. A rocket, while certainly being much harder to target and track with the laser, is still holding volatile propellent, which the artillery shell would lack. The artillery shell would also have a thicker casing then a missile. This makes me wonder the same thing as another poster, what they mean when they say the shell was "Destroyed". Still, it is interesting to see lasers coming into use in the military, for purposes other than just targeting things.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
There's a simple formula for calculating how far you will miss by if the laser is misaligned: e = d tan t where t is the angle of misalignment and d is the distance from the laser to the target. Disclaimer: this formula is only accurate for extremely small angles, but those are the kind we're dealing with here.
Say, for example, you're shooting at a missile that's 1500 meters away, and you are misaligned by 15 arc minutes (0.25 degrees). The laser will miss the rocket by 6.5 meters, according to the formula. That's a significant error.
Not only do you have the difficulty of tracking the rocket to within sub-meter accuracy, you also have the problem of keeping the laser in constant alignment to extremely low tolerances, for a long enough period of time to actually destroy the target.
This accomplishment is no laughing matter!
Now, all we need to do is to find an enemy to use it against.
If we don't know where the shells are coming from, what's the chances that this system will be able to realistically identify a genuine incoming round, activate (from idle) and reliably shoot it down in time? We're not getting the first couple of rounds, and after that, our existing counterbattery systems will be silencing the enemy artillery.
If we do know where they're coming from (and we damn well should, given what we spend on reccetech), then why aren't we pasting them with our existing overwhelming air superiority and artillery?
So what's the theatre? Where are these systems going to be deployed?
One in the White House, one in the Pentagon... where else? Whatever we build on the WTC site? But do we reckon that any grunts are going to get the benefit of it? Hmmm.
It's neato technology, but it seems like a solution to a problem that the US has spent trillions to ensure that it doesn't have any more.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
So, lets review. 'Predator' unmanned aircraft armed with Hellfire missles for patrol and attacks, lasers to shoot down artillery (and you know bullets are coming soon), Star Wars V2 to protect us from missiles, and any country that tries to develop anything we don't like gets a "regime change".
Hrm.. well we [Americans] have to get something out of our tax dollars. It sure made my day when CNN reported they were able to identify the target of the hellfire by the leg fragment they found by the blast site.
Live web cams
Most nations have signed the Geneva Convention to regulate the conduct of war- amoung other things, this means that you can only attack people with weapons meant to kill them, but not infect, poison, or maim.
(A gentleman's agreement between the respective military-industrial-complexes, really. Dead soldier -> proud military funeral -> enhanced militarism and anticipation of future retaliation. Wounded soldier -> disabled veteran begging on sidewalk -> budget pressure for providing care, and public squeamishness about enrolling in future conflicts. Too much peace hurts our economic growth!)
This means no chemical weapons (tell that to Russia!), no hollowpoint or fragmentary bullets, few shotguns, and no lasers aimed at people. Because the easiest ways to hurt someone with a laser is to burn his eyes out, this is consistent with Geneva.
But, today's new, powerful anti-munition lasers will be an attractive option in the anti-aircraft role as well. Military planners must be thinking of this, but they don't want to talk about it for fear of striking taboo/war-crimes territory.
But I wonder what'll happen if a laser-defense battery suddenly finds themselves face to face with an enemy Hind who snuck up terrain-masked. Will they run for it and hope he's a slow shot, or light it up and watch the fireworks?
And, if the the ABL gets built and we get another hijacker repurposing an airliner into a weapon, the president will be hard pressed not to order him zapped, too.
(Of course, another reason planners might not talk much about targeting aircraft with lasers is that the US and Israel have no potential opponents whose aircraft can't be simply destroyed with Beyond-Visual-Range missiles. Won't stop me from speculating.)
It'll be a long time before the R&D cost of the defensive missile is absorbed, so they'll be much more costly for a long time. In the long run the price goes down, but its still a precision instrument (with serious maintenance and C4I infrastructure needs) in comparison to a dummy ICBM which only needs to hit the right continent. And labor is cheaper in some of these hostile-states.
Each defensive rocket will have at best Probabilty-Kill 90%, so you'll want to use more than one per incoming agressor. If the attacker is a manuverable cruise missle and not just ballistic, you'll want more. (Submarine-launched cruise missles are really a whole different problem than ICBM interception. And a harder one). Or if there's a MIRV, then that's another multiplier on the target count.
The cost advantage of the defense missiles is that they have less distance to travel, and need less metal and fuel. I can't say for sure how much that'll reduce the overall cost, though. And you'll want protectors to engage at the longest range you can (so that if one fails, you have time to fire more). The price war is no slam dunk.
Remember the Missile Commmand game? It wasn't much fun, you could never win...
More likely than wanting to really be able to neutralize an aresnal the size of Russia's, we'd just want 50 missiles on each coast that could go forth in groups of 5 against "rogue madman" warheads.
A couple of years ago Israel won the Eurovision Song Contest. Their entrant was the transexual Dana International, and her victory really pissed off all the orthodox hard-core who would rather see people like that put to death.
I thought her victory representing her country was A Good Thing, purely because it pissed off the fundies!
The song was shit, of course, but then all Eurovision songs are.
"Information wants to be paid"