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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."
... when they fire one of these at a disco ball? heh.
...but is this thing as accurate as Luke Skywalkers light-sabre?
If not, you'll have to use the (air)force, George...
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?
GREAT BALLS OF FIRE!
They say in the article that it was developed by the army and TRW, but we all know it was Mitch Taylor and Chris Knight.
Do you put a GPS and transmitter in an artillery shell?
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.
No, that was James Bond.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
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
"I wouldn't know, I haven't had a working weapon since Korea." --quote from the movie
Yipee! Won't we all be safe once the "civilized world" is protected from the barbarians? Why, the "bad people" won't even be able to shoot at usat all, let alone support the "terror-ists" with their insidious "terror-ism".
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".
Yeah, I can't see why the rest of the world hates the west, can you? We turn war into a fuckin' video game, and relegate them to attacking us with swords while riding their camels.
I know it's the natural evolution of war, but it also seems like the natural evolution of capitalism applied to the battlefield. He with the most money to make the best toys wins, and he who doesn't hopes for an aid package to be sent to his widow.
Of course, we might get charitable in a few years and let them have some low powered lasers, but only if they attach them to the sharks... I mean, come on, is it too much to ask for some sharks with frickin lasers on their heads?
I think it's time for some sugar... rants like this could be dangerous... nice Echelon, niiiice Echelon.
Hm, maybe I should get a book on lasers from the librar
NO CARRIER
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Lasers to knock out 'metal things' have been around for decades as well. The difficult part has been tracking very high speed objects from a distance.
There was a big Navy project to put a laser on a ship. I have no idea if that was ever put into operation.
There was the 'Star Wars' Alpha program that was run during the Regean military buildup. And King George the Second appears to be trying to breath life back into the project.
What makes this news item 'interesting' is that the DoD seldom comments on successes like this unless program funding is at stake or some politico needs to be impressed.
Regards.
Where does the laser go if they miss the shell? Disperse into a cloud? Hit a passing 747?
Somehow, I doubt a 747 would be flying into a live fire area (Iraqi airliners excepted). Many current artillery shells have high trajectories that go several km in altitude. As a matter of fact, I once worked on a system that had an operator warning "NOTIFY NASA", for when a shell trajectory was computed to go above a certain altitude.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Who? Who is predictable?
looks like we're getting ready to fight the Goa'uld invasion forces... ;-)
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
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
Puh-lease. Like Israel is running out of stuff to shoot at people. This doesn't increase anybody's ability to harm anyone else - it's a defensive capability. We have 2000-lb bombs that land within a few feet of whatever we feel like. We have machine guns, artillery, and RPGs. So does Israel. This is a defensive machine - it doesn't significantly upgrade anyone's ability to kill someone over what already exists. If it saves our lives on the battlefield, more power to them. What I really want to know is how often it can change targets and fire - that's the difference between stopping an artillery barrage or just a handful of rockets. Your post was off-topic and irrelevant, and I hope it gets modded appropriately. Besides, even if you were on topic, if you're claiming the Palestinians are somehow without culpability and that Israel is the only wrongdoer, or even significantly worse than their adversary, you're insane, ill-informed, unbalanced, or any combination thereof. I pray that in spite of short-sighted fools who preach what they don't really understand, there may someday be world peace. Also, I pray that people stop using names of their ex-significant-others as their handles.
This is Jesus Kent. Stop playing with yourself.
GetTheJob.com : Nothing but Real Jobs.
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.
"Didn't they have this back in the 60's? correct me if I'm wrong, I was always told this. "
Well, the technnology was developed recently, but yeah it did exist in the 60's. I think it was called the Alan Parsens Project.
"Derp de derp."
I have no problem with the Jews taking thier land back. Even if it is after 1300 years. If Native Americans started a revolution in A.D. 3000 to take North America Back, who's side would you be on?
Scott: "I mean why don't you just call it Operation Wang Chung? Ass!"
Evil: "Well what, what should we?"
Scott: "Nothing, I'm sure Operation Bananarama will be huge!"
Evil: "What are you saying?"
Scott: "If you..."
Evil: "..Shh!"
Scott: "..trying to be hip."
Evil: "double-u, double-u SHH dot com. Dot org."
Scott: "You suck!"
Evil: "SHH!"
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Soviets and Russians have used lasers to dazzle American and Canadian pilots, including those involved in fishery patrols.
All I asked for is that the word "la-ser" be printed with quote marks around it, is that so hard?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
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.
That airliner didn't fly into a live fire area, until the USS Vincennes decided to make it one. The question became not whether Robocruiser made a mistake but how. An interesting story, albeit tragic.
That's why there's a problem in the Mideast.
I realize that this is somewhat offtopic, but probably should be addressed. Personally, I don't condone the actions of the few Palestinians that go around blowing up innocent people. However, there are two sides to a story, and living in the United States, we typicaly see only the sides of our allies (i.e. Isreal). Isreal protects its "settlements" using what we would call terrorism if it was commited by a muslim state.
Remember that bully that picked on you in school? Did you ever think about slashing his tires or something along those lines to get back at him? You of course realized that if you did no one would care what that jerk did to you. There are definatly better ways to resolve issues like this, maybe it'd be easier to find those with a little less name calling.
I fully expect to be modded down for replying to this, but the truth of the matter is that I don't really care. People can either go on pretending that the situation is black and white, so no one can ever come up with any kind of reasonably thought out peace. It's so much easier to say that we are right and they are wrong.
Be a man! View at -1
acm.cs.uwec.edu
I like it! (But will anyone get it?)
Doonesbury did a classic on this one (site is down). Let's not assume the military is disclosing all.
It took a little poking around, but I found an explanation of how this thing works... looks like deuterium gets them a longer wavelength that travels through the atmosphere better.
Whatever the reasons are, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near that thing while it's fueled. Raw flourine is incredibly nasty stuff, and the hydrogen flouride exhaust is really awful, too... it dissolves in water to form hydrofluoric acid, which is reactive enough to eat glass (you have to keep it in teflon bottles). I hope they're not discharging it into the atmosphere!
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
Heard a story about a test with a Haubitzer, where they fired a shell more or less directly at a tank almost a kilometer away; according to the story, the tank rolled over some 30 or 40 times
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
...that's the year the Palestinian government (at the time) started kicking Jewish settlers out of Palestine. The palestine's didn't want "infidels" and "zionists" in their "holy land" so they tried to kick the jews out. But the jews ended up kicking their asses instead, and formed Israel. The Arabs(babaloynians) started it becuase they can't share or play nice with their neighbors.
I certainly don't remember them doing that, outside of a Tom Clancy novel. They did demonstrate that they could use an IR laser to dazzle the photoreceptors of a satellite in orbit, but they damned sure did not destroy one with even a laser, let alone a "particle beam." Shooting at another nation's military hardware is something of an act of war ,you know.
Wrote Iraqi, thought Iranian. Never mind....... brain fade.
"Do you think that Christian countries would have this same type of problem? They have learned over the centuries to "let it go""
Haha- just like the Catholics.
INQUISITOR: I've been reading the handbook, Brian.
BRIAN: Uh, huh. What handbook ?
INQUISITOR: The Maleus Malificarum. And see here, it says here we can't tolerate witches and devil-worshipers
BRIAN: I see. But I'm not a witch or a devil-worshiper.
INQUISITOR: Well, Brian, it says here that witches and worshippers of devils will refute claims that they are witches or devil-worshippers, so I'm kinda thinking you must be one.
BRIAN: Wha?
INQUISITOR: I'm sorry, Brian, we're going to have to "let you go". Prepare the stake, boys.
graspee
I see alot of doubtful slashdotters but I can tell you that anyone that has seen a navy CIWS close in weapons system fire at a inbound drone traveling at MACH II does not doubt the trajectory technology. The CIWS never misses and as a matter of fact will continue to shoot individual pieces as well as the plane towing the cable all while being perfectly aimed by computer. So don't think for a moment they cannot calculate and fire on something moving even faster than a artillery shell.
Got Code?
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.
And those tanks full of flourine and deuterium will make a hellacious bang if they're hit... and thoroughly poison the surrounding area.
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
Israel gets this technology because it, unlike Syria, Jordan, Egypt or Saudi Arabia, has an industrial capacitiy and a healthy research and development environment.
The United States part in THEL is 20% of the R&D budget, same as the US part in the Popeye long-range missile. The US funded Arrow to the tune of 80% because Israel wasn't an ABM signatory and could work on some things the US was treaty-bound not to work on.
Israel has made some serious technological advances in Agriculture, Desal, Military Avionics, Artillery, Small Arms, Computer Science without US assistance.
Remeber that Israel developed nuclear weapons in a partnership with South Africa, not the United States.
And do not forget that in the late 40s and early 50s the USSR, France, Czech and United Kingdom supported Israel while the United States supported Iran and Jordan.
It wasn't until the 1973 war that the United States threw it's support behind Israel, a point at which most of the Israeli industry was already developing.
As for World Peace, all it does is keep the status quo, which is not always a good thing.
Sales of Light Pens and magnifying glasses shot up drastically today...
It definitely disperses and loses energy from the moment it's fired.
Could it hit a 747? yeah. would it destroy it? I think that's kinda depends where it hit it, and how it reacts to the heat/energy. And obviously how critical the component is thats hit.
A bird? yeah, unlucky bird, this isn't exactly a wide beam. A bird would be cooked.
ISS? no way. ISS is like 220 miles above the earth. This this is lucky to reach 20 miles (i doubt that, but i'm sure the range is classified)
Mars? what are you smoking.
Alien ship? only if they were tailing that 747
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
You have a seriously flawed view of human nature.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Nuclear devices cannot be detonated by random shots. They require very precise triggers. The most you'd get would be radioactive shrapnel from the destroyed bomb.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
As an ex army cannoneer, I'd like to know more about the artillery shell that was destroyed by the laser.
...
... we used radar at night to track where our shells were landing.
Here's what I can tell you
I worked on the m198 Howitzer, which can fire a 100 pound 155mm HE (high explosive) shell at a muzzle velocity of around 750m/s. With other combinations of propellants and rounds, the velocity could easily reach 1 kilometer per second or greater. Not too shabby for a 100+ pound piece of steel going down range into a target the size of a 5 gallon bucket.
The inherent problem with an artillery shell is that its trajectory is highly predictable... its all about math. So, for the purposes of a high powered laser, as long as it can perform some really nifty calculations in a split second, and point itself right into the path of a traveling artillery shell, then the shell will actually fly into the laser if everything goes according to plan.
Artillery shells can also be detected with radar
So, whats next... assuming that the laser works by calculating the trajectory of the shell, and positions itself ahead of the shell, would the next advancement in artillery be shells that wobble to avoid running into a high powered laser?
Besides these basic artillery shells, there are also laser guided and rocket assisted shells, whos trajectories may be a bit harder to calculate.
Here are just some of the factors that go into calculating the trajectory of an artillery shell...
1. The exact weight of the shell.
2. The type, amount, and temperature of the propellent.
3. Resistence of travel (air friction) based on weather conditions and altitude.
4. Curvature of the earth and gravity.
So there you have it folks... this laser is an amazing piece of technology.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Article states there is potential for the final product to have a range in the thousands of kilometers.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
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.
One of the things I found most striking when flying into Vietnam (during the war) was hearing, on the Airport Terminal Information System at Cam Rahn: "Caution: High trajectory artillery fire from " (coordinates).
Of course those silly shells have to go up high, otherwise they wouldn't get very far!
The only good weather is bad weather.
ofcourse they knew exactly which flightpath the shell was going to follow and where it was going to be at what time beforehand. So taking it down wasn't really that hard.
They probably shot some shells before and got the flightpath recorded into a computer. Then they shot the "test" shell during compareable weatherconditions and perhaps they even did some minor adjustments, it doesn't really matter, they knew the trajectory beforehand, so when they shot the "test" shell the laser knew exactly at which point to fire at which coordinates.
This isn't how things go in the real world, so I wonder how much of an defense contractor technology bragging hype this is and whose interests are behind this (it's not difficult to make a guess here).
China! you're forgetting about China. Sure, they're not as powerful as the US military-wise, but not that far behind either. Besides, their comunist regime with absolutely no concern for public opinion allows them to use some very radical war strategies.
Never underestimate the power of a good strategy, even (especially) when you don't have the upper hand
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
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.
The purpose of the test was not in acquisition and tracking, but in the kill vehicle technology (plot a path to a moving point, get within infrared range, correct course, and detonate). Sounds simple, but it gets a bit trickey a closing speeds of ~10km/s.
The x-band satellites just weren't operational over the pacific when these tests were being done. So, when Colo springs control asked Hawaii where the missle was, it responded with information from the GPS receiver but provided artifically 'degraded' data stream. This was underlined and not hidden in the test plan (released before the test). It was done as a 'simulation' of x-band (national missle defense system) data.
Honestly, peoples hostility to this program in current time has me baffled.
The reson pundits of ABM tech would underscore every little failure, or break out conspiracies and wave around "rigged" results, was that we should not be researching ABM technology. Russia's on board now, you can stop pissing your pants worrying were going to invoke a nuclear war by having this technology.
If you hate being lied to, you should take the time to better research what people (including myself) and news sources in general tell you.
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
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.
I believe lasers would be more useful to shoot down enemy airplanes.
As for shooting down incoming nuclear missiles... do as the Russians planned to do... detonate nuclear
missiles among the incoming missiles. Who cares about the EMP when you save your people from being
nuked?
Wonder what happened to this program. Manufactered the primary optic for it back in 97 or 98. What the frig took em so long.......
> actually, it made me think back to previous laser or missile based "star wars" tests where they installed GPS transmitters in the targets. the target was destroyed, congress saw headlines like 'Missile Test A Success' and gave the program its continued funding, and it wasn't revealed until afterwards that the test was rigged [alternet.org]. i hate being lied to.
Also remember the tests on the 80's era Sgt. York "DIVAD" divisional air-defense artillery system. They packed the target aircraft with explosives and set it off by remote control for the better edification of an audience of congresscritters.
Unfortunately for the proponents of the system, one of the congressmen at that dog+pony show was a veteran of air combat, and saw that the timing between the shot and the 'hit' was impossible. DIVAD is dead.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
After seeing the previously fixed results of SDI tests, reading about the problems with the Patriot missle system, and learning the true history of the testing of the Bradley "fighting vehicle," I don't doubt that these results were fixed. I just wonder how much.
(BTW, a good movie about the Bradley tests is "Pentagon Wars", starring Carey Elwes and Kelsey Grammer. It's been playing recently on the Starz channels. For more info see: http://us.imdb.com/Title?0144550)
<?php while ($self != "asleep") { $sheep_count++; } ?>
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.
Yeah, remember Spies Like Us with Chevy Chase and Dan Akyroyd?
You are kidding, right? There are roughly 6 billion people in the world now. Are you really saying that it costs $3.33 per year to feed each person? Not terribly likely. Learn to do a little math.
I'm suprised no one else caught this. The initial description of "concentrated light energy photons" made me a little wary, but then I noticed:
"the laser tracked, locked onto and fired a burst of concentrated light energy photons at the speeding shell... Seconds later, at a point well short of its intended destination, the projectile was destroyed"
I dunno what kind of crazy trajectory that laser had, but at 300km a second, this thing must have been pretty darn far away...
One would think that "instantly, the projectile was destroyed" would sound even better--and more importantly, have been accurate.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
using this "laser" I will hold the world ransom for....1 MILLION DOLLARS
Try doing some research on Hezbollah. They've got mortars, Katyushas, and a considerable number of foot soldiers, courtesy of Syria and Iran, plus a host country (Lebanon, operating as a proxy for Syria).
Oh, and they're not too fond of Israel, as evidenced by its habit of shelling.
Don't forget Iran and Iraq, which also have decent amounts of firepower, including Katyushas (gotta love the Cold War USSR...) and mortars of their own, and other artillery pieces. Oh, and both have virulently anti-US elements in power right now (although Iran is almost in play; if only Khatami can leverage his support among the people against Khameni and the rest of the Revolutionary Council...).
Oh, and also, don't forget the Taliban, which still has people running around with mortars taking pot shots at American bases. But hey, it doesn't matter if Americans die, because they're American, right?
Oh, and China might have a bit of a beef with the US that might eventually come down to arms, if the US shows weakness. They'd like to regain the "renegade province" some day, and they're no doubt working on how to neutralize the possible threat of a US Carrier Battlegroup that would be the obvious intervention force. China has advanced sufficiently to have artillery andmissiles, in case you haven't noticed.
Oh, and perhaps if you paid more attention and had more clue than you exhibit above, you wouldn't have had to pay as much for college...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Where does the laser go if they miss the shell?
To the happy little laser home in the clouds.
Live web cams
--just some preliminary WAGS here, total random order off the top of my head:
A successful knockout requires precise aiming, artillery is a parabola, farther away the higher the arc, the easier to see and knockout. Solution, low altitude cheap drone cruise missiles,nap of the earth flying, highly maneuverable, very close to the ground. They are configured stealth angularity, paint and composite emissions absorbing materials. Work until the atmospheric or exosatmospheric lasers are in place.
Decoys until the defensive laser is overwhelmed. These things heat up, require some kind of fueling, whether conventional gennys for electricity or pulse nukes, whatever, their "fuel supply" is a limiting factor. Get them to use up the available fuel supply on masses of cheap joke targets that can't be ignored, ie, every tenth one is a real destructive device, and etc. Once their fuel is gone, proceed with attack. the supply lines for these devices as well, there will always be weak link humans in these supply lines, cut a part of the line someplace removed from the laser.
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
The BEST though--blackmail/bribe/control the opposing forces top leadership and business people. You win hands down no fighting required, the ultimate trojan horse attack, the Quisling gambit.
Star Wars seemed like a giant money pit specifically against a foe who was collapsing anyway.
This seems:
- very applicaple to current events,
- an impressive technological achievement,
- a lot less expensive than star wars,
- and much harder to abuse (paranoid people felt the gub'ment would take them out without a trace by blasting them from space).
Or are you cheering for Sadam's scuds to hit Israel?Let me put it another way: weapons of war are going to exist wether or not you want them to. An advance like this could potentially mean that a defensive unit out in the middle of nowhere would not run out of amunition, for example. That could mean a lot lower cost to operate - no choking supply lines, no shortages, all you need is power.
You can preach "peace at all costs" all you want, it won't keep the people that aren't going to be reasoned with from trying to kill you. Let me repeat: just because you are reasonable does not mean every one can be reasoned with. Developing our military's capabilities is a necessary evil, sometimes with very good side effects.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Holy ass-raped Bill Gates by Stallman Batman! Did them cats just shoot down a shell with a laser beam?
Unless the projectile takes a few seconds to heat up.
The DoD has had laser guided munitions for decades. Since Vietnam, in fact.
This isn't about LGMs, it's about fully-functional tactical laser weaponry. Right now, its the MTHEL system. Next, it will be hand-held laser weapons for the individual soldiers. The technology exists for laser weapons (basically just high-powered laser pointers), the problem is with a power supply.
Lasers to knock out 'metal things' have been around for decades as well. The difficult part has been tracking very high speed objects from a distance.
Where have these been? I haven't seen a one of them.
There was a big Navy project to put a laser on a ship. I have no idea if that was ever put into operation.
Nope...it was cancelled.
There was the 'Star Wars' Alpha program that was run during the Regean military buildup. And King George the Second appears to be trying to breath life back into the project.
The 'Star Wars' project was for a space-based laser missile-defense system.....this system is both ground based, and not meant for just ballistic missiles, as the 'Star Wars' project was.
What makes this news item 'interesting' is that the DoD seldom comments on successes like this unless program funding is at stake or some politico needs to be impressed.
Unless, of course, the release of the information causes the use of a weapon to fall. In this case, it would be targeted more at cruise missiles and other short- to medium-range weaponry rather than ICBMs.
--CypherDragon
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.
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.)
So, 1980's computers could have done it rather easily, for at least some target types.
Of course, Reagan actually had the right idea; putting lasers in space makes much more sense than lasers on the ground, since the air soaks up so much of the energy. Fast-forward to today, and
Jouster
"Mini me stop humping the laser..ok..honest to
god...Why don't you and the giant laser get a
fricken room for god's sake?"
?sp
TheIDF has world class technology development and software development. Don't forget they own the process that allows them to make smaller nukes than anyone - probably on the order of 3-4Kg of fuel. All self developed.
Merkava tanks including the cnomputerized fire control and autoloaders? Self created.
UAV technology - initially invented there.
Jericho missiles and Ofek Spy satellites - all homegrown.
Homegrown cruise missiles...
Good point... Although, one has to imagine that this would be a fatal flaw of the weapon.
If it takes a few seconds to heat up, then it's reasonable to implement a mechanism in the missle to detect heat and to do something to subvert the lazer. Presumably, the lazer is going to be difficult to aim (or at least lock in on) as you need ultra-fine precision when dealing with such small angles over a large distance.
A simply mechanism to throw the missle randomly off course and then correct should wreck havoc on this weapon...
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
I have sufficient faith in the human race.
And here, my friend, is your problem.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
With all these laser developments one article I recall reading a good year ago (possibly New Scientist) was the fact these extremely high energy lasers have the ability to blind. Now typically one assumes you need to be exposed in the line of sight, but in the case of many of these military grade lasers the sheer reflection (that you would hardly notice) from an unassuming object (such as a car hood) can render all those in sight of the car (military and civilian) completely blind.
What I am wondering is the implications and serious research since then that makes these lasers suddenly OK, especially given the force that the Geneva convention brings when it comes to blinding your opponent.
Could the next thing boon in war be forgoing shooting artillery shells and moving into showering a known occupied area with blinding lasers?
I know how hard in Counter-Strike it is to shoot while flashed..
now they can hit hijacked planes with... no, it doesn't help that situation.
Oh, it might help. Assume that hijacked planes will be used to target big cities. Big cities with lots of electricity and tall buildings- it sounds like science fiction, but I can imagine a policy of installing larger versions of these things atop skyscrapes in NYC and DC to head off rogue airliners and ICBMs too.
(The scary flaw with that scheme is 4 terrorists with guns who hijack the laser and carve holes all over Manhattan. But buildings are much more resilient to laser heating than airframes are. They'd use up the fuel before killing too many people.)
Ok, I know the mirror thing won't work for defense against lasers, but how about the thermal tiles they use on the space shuttle? Those little buggers are so very not thermally conductive, wouldn't they make an effective shield against a laser weapon?
Granted, several inches of thermal tiles may not be practical on an artillery warhead, but certainly would be on tanks and the like.
Learn how a CPU works before you learn to program. Seriously.
... how a society can deal with losses.
The West does have enough tanks and missiles to wipe out all Muslims, but it does not have any guts to do so. Muslims have guts to butcher all westerners, but they don't have planes and missiles to do that.
Ability to deal with losses brings us to the biggest underlying difference between the Western civilization and the traditional cultures. It is K- versus R- reproductive strategies.
K means a few offsprings, most survive, life has a very high value. R - millions of offsprings, a few survive, price of life is nothing. Now bring it into human realm, and you will be able to trace several pieces of the culture (such as "Live free or die" or "Whatever it takes") to the R-strategy times. And now nobody wants to die - neither for the country nor for anything else.
This is why Western type society will probably never commit genocide even if its survival will depend on it.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
"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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There was some confusion as to what value there was in shooting a hole in an artillery shell.
If you hit a rocket with a laser, your best shot would disable its guidance and control systems. This would quite possibly shut down its engine, but would certainly prevent it from hitting you at all. Secondary targets on a misile include control surfaces, engine, and fuel, all of which have the potential to destroy the misile before it reaches you.
Now if you are applying these countermeasures on a misile that is already very near you, another factor comes into play... what kind of a hit it is. If you're on an aircraft carrier and someone shoots an antiship misile at you from reasonably close range, and it's of a Russian design, it's going to fly up at 45deg, and then sharp down at 45 degrees at you, very fast. If you manage to detonate the propellant or disable the rocket, there's still a good chance it will hit you and deliver its full damage. (a "hard" hit) If you get luckier and detonate its payload, or destroy the control and detonation systems, you are still going to get hit, but this is a "soft" hit. The misile body, rocket motor, and all the other bits (in one piece or many) will still do appreciable damage, but at least it's not likely to sink the boat.
Shells are different. Major shells are going to have armor piercing or high explosive payloads, and C4 just doesn't blow up if you vaporize it with a laser... it burns. So you are not all that likely to detonate it. Shells are fired with great precision, and if all factors are known, they will land with that same precision. Your best hit on a shell is to damage it physically, and change its aerodynamic characteristics. Take a shell and scar the nose with a pocket knife, and it's totalled... you won't hit anything with it, it's not going to fly straight anymore. The laser just has to damage the casing. It's worth noting that if you punch a hole in it fast enough and start burning up the C4 inside, you might just plain burst the shell by simple gas expansion. In any event, it's effectively dealt with. It may still land and blow up, but it's not going to hit what it was aimed at.
Even changing the orientation of the misile/shell is very useful in countermeasures. Most of these have "shaped charges", where the explosive payload is directed in a very carefully engineered way to do maximum damage. When hitting a tank with an antitank round, having the "business end" hit the tank is the difference between destroying the tank (piercing the armor and sending chaff all around the cabin to kill the crew) or doing negligible damage by exploding harmlessly outside the tank. Misiles are essentially the same... a misile that would normally destroy a target may not even detonate if it's tumbling when it hits and contacts sideways, and if the target is even lightly armored, damage will be minimal rather than fatal.
I expect lasers to prove very effective as a projectile countermeasure.
I did have one curiosity about the shell test they did... does anyone know how long they "beamed" the shell before it was effectively dealt with? That's one thing that must be considered... if you have to hold the beam on the target for a considerable length of time, it may be much more difficult to get in a fatal shot. Misiles tend not to roll, so if you are shooting at it from the side, (i.e.you're not the target) you still can hit one spot continuously. Shells on the other hand, are usually designed to spin as they fly downrange, and so targetting the side is actually targetting a band around the shell.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Why isn't this +5 Funny yet? (I never seem to have mod points...)
The goal that's the same for all people is to have more children like yourself (both genetically and memetically, which includes religion). Everyone can peacefully pursue this goal for a while, and inevitably exhaust their resources. And then there's war, or starvation. ALL wars are essentially started by "young males looking for resources to attract and retain a mate".
(True, this planet has resources enough for many more humans than their already are, but no one waits until hitting the point of true exhaustion to start a war. There's a threshold of diminishing returns for your peaceful gathering operations where violently seizing your needs becomes an attractive proposition, despite the risks)
I hope some day it will be _Star Trek_ too. And I think it's plausible- trillions of people living in nonviolent harmony, distributed across the entire galaxy. Of course we might not call them human anymore, since they'd spent all day processing digital information from a small alcove aboard a giant grey cube, but that's the best future we can reasonably expect. The lives of the "Federation" just don't make sense.
And thus, since any US missiles in silos will already have launched before being hit, the enemy may as well never target them at all. They should just concentrate on vulnerable seaboard cities to maximimze their threat.
For that matter, what is this thing's power source? Granted, your laser only needs to be effective under a kilometer, but to intercept the amount of artillery in the average barrage is gonna take a butt-load of power. I remember in a popular science (heh) somebody was able to generate and ass-tonne of power using a C4 powered generator (no, really...) so I guess you could rig one to be powered off a belt of explossive ammunition? Sheesh...
As to the reflectivity, I just can't think of any coating that would survive that sort of abuse and be effective over a laser guarded target... At least it might take a longer "burn-time" to destroy it...
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"There was a big Navy project to put a laser on a ship. I have no idea if that was ever put into operation."
If that isn't the dumbest idea I've ever heard...
No, seriously. How many decades has it been since naval warfare was at line-of-sight ranges? That makes about as much sense as laser "artillery."
"Plunging fire? What's that?"
Wow. You've seen one too many bad science fiction movies.
Oh, and if you mean the "war machine" learns from it's enemies, consider this little dictum: "each war is fought with strategies and tactics meant for the previous one". Last one the US fought was in the Gulf...which was "overwhelming force". Well, looks like the military does learn and adapt, don't th....oh, wait...
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Strictly speaking this weapon plays no part in your "cycle" unless there are other militant nations gunning to take us out.
This is a purely defensive tool (for at least the forseeable future). Defensive tools in and of themselves should not be qualified as "weapons" per se. This project is a weapon no more than a shield or plate armor is (well, almost... this uses really cool lasers and projects a field of protection a mile wide...).
And yes. The US gets to have anything it invents. Thats usually how it works. If a country developes nuclear capability, we dont take the capability away (for the most part, look at india and pakistan), we just leverage advantages that we have to "convince" people that it is in their best interests to discontinue nuclear programs (e.g. North Korea).
Just because its the US and its chic to hate us, it doesn't make you right.
--Kevin
Man, now I get your sig!
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
The reason to put lasers in space was to target ICBMs during the "boost" phase of operation, i.e. before they (literally) go ballistic.
The main reason is that, once a missile has gone ballistic and is accerated mainly by gravity, you might as well have it release several warheads and decoys that can be targeted independently (this is called "MIRV"). The Soviets and the Americans implemented this in their missiles a while ago.
So the idea is to target thousands of ICBMs instead of tends or hundreds of thousands of individual warheads.
The problem is that, during the boost phase, the missiles would not be in line-of-sight from the US. So there were schemes such as "pop-up defense" (in which defense systems are launched upwards on rockets from submarines so that they are hopefully in line-of-sight of Soviet ICBMs).
The most famous and ambitious of these schemes was the space-based laser idea that you mention.
Since these lasers have to punch down almost all the way through the atmosphere to destroy an ICBM during boost phase, they actually have to be much more powerful than any laser so far constructed.
But there was a very brilliant, and actually somewhat plausible, idea for accomplishing this: the nuclear bomb pumped X-ray laser.
I mean, wow. What a wild idea.
Peacefull coexistence is lost on you. It doesn't even occur as an option to you, apparently. That's just plain evil.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
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?
:p
I'd imagine it'd be just like SAM site or Patriot missile battery. They aren't always on, but rather switched on if the situation warrents. On that note, I'd imagine you're right-- The average platoon soldier won't see it's benefit unless he is around a high value target or is part of a large scale action. I can't imagine this system being portable enough or cheap enough to guard anything less. I'm guessing vehical towed at least.
US has spent trillions to ensure that it doesn't have any more
Don't feel too bad. "They" don't have any money either so it all balances out
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I don't know how expensive a tile is to produce, but you probably just stated the best material to counter this system. And all it does is have to survive for a few seconds, not a prolonged, gut wrenching re-entry, so you probably wouldn't need several inches. I'm guessing the lasers will "flash" the shell with thermal energy before quickly moving on to the next instead of riding it all the way to the ground. Likewise, I doubt the entire thing need be made of the stuff. Just enough to insulate the HE inside.
Combine those with chaff producing shells that explode high above the strike zone to confuse radar and you could probably render the laser well and ineffective.
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-> cooling ... sounds impossible ? it is. But it must be possible to withstand that kind of power for a second (and a supersonic missile could travel a mile in that second at mach 5).
... i know it sounds impossible to reflect light perfectly, but consider that the laser beem is monochromatic light. So what about a small expencive and perfect mirror at the top of the rocket that is kept clean by a small shield that evaporates upon contact with the laser)
... ever noticed some things get totally transparent under monochromatic light. Infrared shines perfectly through dark lenses without any burdon. It must be possible to find materials that the laser will simply not hit, as the photons would find nothing to interact with.
-> misdirection. If I read the article correctly, the laser needs several seconds to lock on. Let's say it takes two. If your rocket gets hit (you ought to be able to detect that and react to it) you immediately release the hull plate it contacted (an explosive between hull and rocket ought to do it, and provide a cooling border by rapidly expanding the distance between hit point and rocket), and will throw of the rocket's course (hopefully) off sufficiently to get out of harm's way. The target beam will continue on it's merry way and hit something else.
-> mirrors
-> refraction. Reflection is hard to do perfectly. BUT do you remember the way a prism reflects light ? You can combine a mirror and a refraction system all in one simple package. I have little doubt you could cover the whole rocket, so you should be able to take care of the beam at most angles (only those direcly on the refracion surface would pose a problem, and you can probably make those angles virtually impossible to hit)
-> transparency
-> people bring up that even slight imperfection in the material would become a serious heat source in laser light. That would not hurt much if the gas were to be transparent (and a substance that only evaporates at 5000 will not stay gaseous for very long unless under constant illumination), these people fail to take into account that the aerodynamics would remove those imperfecions in less than a millisecond at mach 5.
-> misdirection : detect the targeting beam (this weapon needs to use an active targeting beam), and start modifying your course randomly. Using wings at mach 5 you should be able to change course multiple times every millisecond), this would have the added advantage that the naked eye would simply not notice the rocket, nor would a normal camera. Given you can do it fast enough, it MAY be possible to fool a radar (ie, make sure you are in a totally different location each measurement interval, and the radar won't see you)
-> a plasma cloud would reflect light at any frequency, which would prevent the laser from impacting as long as you can keep the cloud from evaporating. More importantly it could block the targeting beam and deny the laser needed information (if it is totally black for the targeting beam the laser will not receive any light back and will be forced to conclude there is no attacking rocket at all)
-> the previous attack has a very low-tech version. Detect the targeting beam's frequency, and paint your rockets with the correct paint.
Anyone remember the urban legend about launching frozen chickens into jet engines to test them?
http://www.snopes.com/science/cannon.htm
Combine that with one of these lasers, and our military could deliver hot chicken dinners to men on the front lines with precision and accuracy! No more jokes about the slop in the mess hall. Our boys can chow down on instant chicken dinners just by calling in an order. Within seconds they could be litterally buried in tasty hot chicken. Yum yum!
Not dumb at all. First, most larger naval vessels have enough room for a large system, more so than a ground-portable defense system. And second, while naval combat is no longer line of sight, defending a multibillion dollar carrier against a less-than-a-million-dollar missile is a major challenge, and most naval vessels now carry the Phalanx close-in system which is basically a last-ditch attempt to take out an inbound missile _right_ before it hits the ship by firing very rapid projectiles at it -- think of it as shrapnel/chaff on megasteroids.
:)
Of course, Trafalgar would have been a lot different if Nelson had had a laser defense system on the Victory that could intercept bullets...
Now you can attach a laser turret to your fire-finding radar and blow the shells down AND use your MLRS to destroy the artillery setup.
The face of war has changed quite a bit with this bit of technology.
-
So let me get this straight: we can't defend against everything, so we shouldn't defend against everything?
We defend against a nuke by stopping them before they even get produced, by firm diplomacy backed up by men on the ground with rifles if necessary.
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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Nuclear and biological weapons as the proliferate not only to third world despots but fringe cult groups will render such technical advances somewhat useless. While you have your projectile interceptors place neatly around your borders some zealot sneaks a WMD into your downtown area or subway and in an instant you are either a hostage or toast.
I believe we (the US) will not be able to maintain a free and ethnically diverse society and while attempting to police the world, righting every wrong and trying to reason with religious imparied freaks. Most likely advance technology will be employed to spy, track and control our own population in order to "protect" ourselves.
Good luck getting their half-billion man army across the Pacific, though.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
There's a reason our enemies have to resort to hijacking planes and loading little boats with explosives, and that reason is that we have stuff like this laser - technological superiority in conventional war.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
OF COURSE THEY KNEW THE FLIGHTPATH, DUMBASS.
Artillery shells are ballistic objects, travelling mostly in a parabolic curve. Get a little bit of that curve and the speed of the shell with radar, and it's just a math problem to find the entire flightpath. The problem is doing the math quick enough that the shell hasn't hit you, and making a laser responsive enough to be in the right place at the right time.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Anyone who has served on board ship in the US Navy since 1980 knows just how good our targeting systems can be. Ever heard of the acronym CIWS? It stands for Close In Weapons System. It was designed to take out inbound projectiles such as cruise missiles between 10 km and 1 km from the ship. It is still actively deployed on many US ships.
The system consists of a tracking radar system with enough computing power to track up to 150 threats at once. It prioritizes the targeting system based upon inbound speed, size of the object, IFF status, and distance from the ship. Once this sucker is enabled, you'd better hope your planes have their IFF turned on, or they'll be shot down quicker than you can blink.
The system did all this using a Vulcan cannon, which is a gatling gun design throwing depleted uranium rounds downrange. The system was designed to fire and correct inflight to hose down a target until it dropped out of the sky. The system's biggest weakness was the fact that it went through rounds so fast (up to 6,000 rpm theoretical, 2,000 rpm typical) that the magazines had to be HUGE. I once saw a picture of the USS New Jersey after its refit. The 4 magazines on board held enough rounds to fire for a grand total of 15 minutes without stopping. The smaller ships that had the system frequently were limited to less than 2 minutes. A decent laser system's power plant occupying the same space would solve this problem.
This system was successfully demonstrated almost 25 years ago. Its first active deployment was in 1980 or 1981. And you "experts" are trying to tell me that the targeting technology hasn't improved enough since to take down an artillery shell? Oh, please. Go do some very basic research on what's in use TODAY before hollering about weapons tests for stuff that might be deployed tomorrow.
The only question in my mind is the size of the power plant necessary to drive a powerful enough laser to be useful. Can it be mounted on anything smaller than a ship? Anyone know?
Thanks, very insightful (and accurate, I actually knew about MIRV, but not about how that affected "Star Wars" missile defense).
I'm burning off some karma here... mods, parent is a score:0 by anonymous coward, but very informative: please mod it up before you mod me down.
Thanks!,
Jouster
Most military electronics are shielded against pretty much any kind of electromagnetic pulse short of a nuclear blast.
This IS compatable to the pulse from a nuclear blast -- just localized in a small area, and only in microwave spectrum.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
s/compatable/comparable/
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
In our atmosphere, light travels at approximately the speed of sound.
<SARCASM>
Yeah, that's why pilots of supersonic jets don't bother with radio, because they fly faster than the radio signals.
</SARCASM>
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
It's a way of keeping you safe UNTIL the counterbattery fire takes out the OPFOR ARTY.
And given the accuracy of current counterfire radar tracking, and the accuracy of current ARTY C^3, it's not a case of "until you finally get it", you get it early on.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Plenty of companies hold back on selling new products that will undercut their existing sales. If I sell $200 vacumn cleaners that need replacing every 4 years, I don't want to market a new $500 model that lasts 20.
An industrial interest may choose to withhold a great new product, even if its expensive, if it will reduce their total profits.
"Speed up ending a battle and you sell some fighter jets. Speed up ending war and you lose a customer"
(I didn't say that the banned weapons were expensive either- the difference between a few kinds of bullets is minimal. In many cases, the loss of a banned weapon can spur expensive R&D into acceptable alternatives. Anthrax canisters are cheaper than atomic warheads.)
in 1899. I doubt that "military-industrial complexes" even existed
Oh yes they did. There's no such thing as "Military Industrial Complex" in formal terms of course- its no more real than a "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy". Both are amusing names that describe an emergent behavior of powerful groups: quasi-organizations that perform in a cohesive way without centralized control. (A collective unconcious)
The military has always been a profit center for nation-states. With today's technology, the wealth comes from "Defense" contracts for weapon systems. 100 years ago, it came from the prestige and position afforded to military leaders in society. (Societies that were more and more aristocratic and even feudal the further east you got into Europe).
The leaderships were built on a structure of occasional terrortorial squabbles with neighbors to enforce the insularity of their countries and strengthen their rule. The self-esteem of the Warrior-Kings and Dashing Archdukes were defined in terms of bravery in battle, and if a generation passed without a good war or two to impress their valor onto the poplace, they'd risk being discarded by a society that no longer valued them.
And that's what was happening as technology started to accelerate 150 years ago. Population density, transportation, and firearms had all advanced to the point where it could no longer be denied that a major battle was a horrible, disgusting affair that reflected poorly on all involved- skill and prowess were meaningless in the raw carnage of 10,000 opposing riflemen tearing each other to pieces through a ruined city.
It is this increasing vileness and blatant cruelty that the Geneva Convention was passed to address. (In 1864 btw- 1899 was an extension). You may think that this was a good thing- that it eased the suffering of poor soliders. And prehaps it did. But by making war more tolerable, you extend the time that it will be tolerated. That is, it is because of "Rules of War" like the Geneva Convention that it was possible for 1st world nations to wage war with frequency up until 1950.
Otherwise, the prospect of going into battle would've been that much less appealing, and even successful agressors would suffer so much in international opinion (such as Iraq suffers today) that violence would be less common.
By ameliorating the damage of war, the Geneva Protocol encouraged the fighting of them.
The IRC's noble efforts gave us another century of nationalistic bloodshed, encouraged by heads-of-state whose position as Commanders-In-Chief was legitimized by the realistic threat of war.
Lets finish up by going back to that link you provided, and reading between the lines. The only text of substance amoung the treaty boilerplate is
"abstain from the use of bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body"
Now, why would any army willingly surrender the use of a weapon in combat? It can't be because the weapon is ineffective; otherwise they wouldn't want it anyway. So there must be some situations when a flattenable bullet is tactically superior to a hard one.
(For example, expending more effort from the medics who have to fish out several fragments from a wound, instead of removing a whole round. This reduces enemy mobility by slowing their evacuations.)
(I shall use you as if you were a military leader of a Geneva Signatory)
So if this weapon is effective, then by willingly forgoing it you are reducing your troop's performance. They won't fight as well, and more of them will die. More of your own people will die! in exchange for the comfort of a enemy group who you've already declared is to be shot on sight.
The whole point of war should be that it is the final extreme- the breakdown of all considerate communication and diplomatic recourse. "All's fair!" But yet, even in war, to uphold a promise written hundreds of miles away, the leadership sent their own young men to death. Your own gentlemanly honor, over the lives of the little people. The Geneva Signatories applied Law even to War- conveying upon War the status of an acceptable activity.
The effect of the bullet-regulation was a cosmetic one. If it applied to both sides, then it fairly degraded both's performance and the victor was the same- so why even bother? Because it made war "cleaner". Less messy. Not so many corpses lying splattered about. More clean kills, fewer crippled survivors. A genteel bandaid covering a festering fatal wound. More proud men marching home in the avenues, fewer being dragged in ambulances. A way to keep on with the parades and speeches and memorial ceremonies twice per year, but not needing to work all year round feeding a disillusioned ghost whose body survived where his soul died.
War is horrible. No one can change that, and if humanitarianism hides that then it is lying to conceal a crime.
</RANT>
the first Iraqi action would be launching its entire chemical arsenal at Jerusalem,
Not too bright. Jerusalem also contains the holiest place in Islam outside of Mecca and Medina -- the Dome of the Rock.
Now if you had said Tel Aviv... but then of course, Baghdad would become a radioactive parking lot from Israeli nukes.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
My experience on Slashdot is that it has been far from Americentric. In fact I've seen far more criticizm of the U.S. than support. Most of it from the EU. Take this article for example - it's about an amazing feat of engineering - so amazing that I'm almost tempted to believe it is a hoax - but all anybody can comment on is how much they hate the US
Just for the record - we know you hate us - in general. We know you especially dislike the fact that we're projecting our power around the world right now. Hell, even I get a little uneasy about it - and I'm as American as they come. But remember, we're in the midst of a well-earned temper tantrum. Pretty soon we'll be satisfied that we killed or captured enough of the bastard-scum that helped to murder our innocent people. After that, the political pendulum will swing back the other way here - as it always does - and the doves will be in control again, which should please the rest of the world.
Also remember, the US is currently the biggest baddest dude on the block - by a long shot - but it won't always be that way. Someday our power will wane. it has to. I don't know who will be in the catbird seat then, maybe the EU, maybe the Chinese, maybe something entirely unexpected, but it WILL happen. Remember the 80's? The Japanese were kicking our butts all over the place. Now China is making a go of it. That the U.S. is the economic powerhouse of the world is by no means a fait acompli. I'm actually suprised that our influence has lasted as long as it has - face it, what does the US have that Europe doesn't? Why is the US so influential?
America will build thousands of these. For every "dummy" nuke, we'll have nearly 5 of these things, and will outnumber anything anyone launches at us by a huge number. Outbuild and outlast is something the USA military takes pride in, and for good reason. You can come up with more whacked theories, but in the end, when you have literally thousands and thousands of these laser cannons, we can all sleep at night and not have to worry about nukes.
quite a few innocent bystanders in Afghanistan, for instance.
Over three thousand civilians.
Quick clarification to my post:
Artillery does reach muzzle velocities that can exceed the speed of sound, but the time of flight at that speed is short.
The average velocity of the round is subsonic, and to put enough energy behind the round to have a supersonic average velocity is dangerous and unnecessary, not to mention prohibitive when considering a ton of other variables, too. (Tube length, wall thickness, weight, shockwave near crew members, etc.)
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
You make the assumption that the Navy would want to use the laser to attack other ships, which is incorrect. It would primarily be for air defense/ missile defense purposes. Possibly they could use it to blind pilots like the Russians have in the past, as well.
I know this because Tyler knows this.
"Calculating an object like a mortar's trajectory is trivial"
Calculating a trajectory from known information is trivial. Calculating a trajectory based on radar coordinates when the object is already in motion is time consuming. You need at least two range vectors to get a rough idea and three or more to get somewhat accurate. These vectors currently come from radar which means the radar has to be conveniently pointing in the direction the shell is coming from to get the best time response. From there the system has to get the vectors, do the math, spin up the laser and reorient it, and fire it all in the relative short time that an artillery shell is in flight which is between 4 to 15 seconds give or take. Systems in the 80's were not that responsive regardless of how little actual computation is involved.
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
make your missile reflect the laser. that will reduce the effectiveness of the laser I would say.
that's my first impression after reading the article.
Privacy is terrorism.
And let me reiterate a point I made before - just because you are a reasonable person doesn't mean that everyone can be reasoned with, and appeasement is not an option.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
No shit. Could you imagine some of these people as parents?
"Great job Timmy. Of course next time, instead of just riding your bike without the training wheels, you should try it no-handed with your eyes closed on the half-pipe."
Casca
I would agree that the United States has made some policy mistakes. We certainly have backed some despicable folks over the years. However, in many of the cases the U.S. had a very limited number of options. I suppose that we could have simply allowed communism to sweep the world. Would you really have preferred that?
The long and the short of it is that the U.S. is not forcing anyone to take our foreign aid, or our loans, and we aren't even forcing the rest of the world to repay our loans. If a country wants to be cut off from our capital they are welcome to stop paying their debts.
It is possible to clean up the corruption in a country. Pinochet was largely successful in Chile, but it isn't something that the U.S. can do for other countries. More's the pity too. We would love to have more third world countries enter the "global economy." The rule of law is good for everyone.
Imagine the precision electronics and mechanics required to shoot a bullet out of the air. Computer scientists normally side with military deescalation, peace, and love, but the most exciting areas of their business are in military technology.
Try hard and think!
The US has been under international treaty, banning development of missel defense systems. No matter how much money the US has they aren't really allowed to do the work..
On the other hand Israel has no such treaties. Israel is the US's only ally capable enough to develop such a technolgy, without the usuall red tape.
BTW: That AWACS plane was purchased from Boieng as a special order 747. All of the radar equipment and hi-tech was added while IN Israel, by the IAI.
And what would be the problem if they did sell it?
Big deal. It's a defensive weapon. If it finaly made the missel obsolete, and prevented one country from bombarding the other from miles away.. Hoorah!!
I would rather be ashes than dust!
Like a terrorist?
Yes, quite.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
Wow. You've seen one too many bad science fiction movies.
Let me get this straight. You're arguing for the giant laser, yet I'm the one who has seen too many science fiction movies?
Oh, and if you mean the "war machine" learns from it's enemies, consider this little dictum: "each war is fought with strategies and tactics meant for the previous one". Last one the US fought was in the Gulf...which was "overwhelming force". Well, looks like the military does learn and adapt, don't th....oh, wait...
So chasing Iraq (with thier outdated military) out of Kuwait with the help of the rest of the world proves that our military can handle any threat?
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
So let me get this straight: we can't defend against everything, so we shouldn't defend against everything?
The trick is not to defend but to counter-attack with overwhelming force. Did we defend Kuwait from attack? The world trade center?
We defend against a nuke by stopping them before they even get produced, by firm diplomacy backed up by men on the ground with rifles if necessary.
Yes! Exactly! How does a giant laser beam *help* with that process?
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
Fine, your worried about the media in this country?
Let's lay it out.
I LIVE in Israel.
I see what goes on every day. My friends are in the army, and it's my family that lives with the fear that for no good reason, we could die at any moment.
Sure, there are kids in the Israeli army that act like jerks. And it happens... in every military. Remember the IDF is compulsory, not voluntary. Everyone servers, and that meens the jerks too.
There are few extremists who want to see dead Arabs. But I have to say.. there are an awfull lot of Arabs that want to see dead Jews.
I've seen these setelments... I just don't get the fuss. With a few exceptions the setelments are usually seperated by over a kilometer from palastinian setelments (yes they have setlements too).
And while were talking about arab setelments, what
about Hebron? It was a major jewish city until 1928, when arab rioters just ran through town killing thousands. The british solution to the problem was to make it illegal for jews to live in Hebron.. Now, for the first time in 1600 years, all religions are allowed to visit the holly sights in Hebron.
BTW: before you decide that Arafat deserves his nobel prize, keep in mind most palastinians don't want him. There terified of him. He's killed more of his own people in this last 3 months (political purges) than the IDF (by more than twice)!!
Go to Israel. Walk thorugh the forests, and the parks. Go pray at what ever church, mosqe, or synagog you like. Then realize that this wasn't possible before 1948. There were no forests. There were no jobs. And if you weren't a particular kind of Muslim, you were likley to get linched.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
Consider that the Soviet Army experienced an order of magnitude more intense and bloody fights than all other allies combined during WWII, and managed to win.
They won, but look what was in their favor: massive resupply from lend/lease, a brutal winter, and a German leader who simply refused to listen to his military leaders.
I'm not a military historian, but from what I have been exposed to the Germans killed Russians in HUGE ratios -- 10:1 or more -- and could have won the Eastern front if Hitler had let his Generals fight the war.
Boiling the Soviet victory down to sheer tenacity is giving the Red Army propagandists far too much credit.
And, of course, Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 in which he argues that a power is a result of the ability or inability to finance war. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the topic of history repeating. Ask yourself this question: how long does it take for another country (say, France) to duplicate what the US has shown to be achievable and how much does the US have to spend remaining on the cutting edge? As cutting-edge weapons systems become more expensive at a greater rate than US economic growth, how long until the cost of being the sole world power sinks the country so deep in debt that it has to retreat to isolationism?
Or, an alternative and simpler question: who was the last sole world power before the US and why did they lose that position? (Hint: they spoke the same language.)
Milo
I LOVE this style of debate. I believe it is reminicent of the Schrodingers "Neener Neener" strategy.
The massive zionist conspiracy!!
Here are some goals of those dastardly Jews:
Don't let anyone read the Protocols of Zion, we wouldn't want our secrets getting out. BTW, does anyone know when the next grave yard meeting is.. I didn't get my invite this month.
Matzah. I Love matzah, the way it constipates me, and tastes allot like saw dust! But we can't make it without gentile blood, arab blood is best because they believe in the "REAL" G_d.
Steal land from the gentiles! I would like to rethink this idea at the next "Zionist Conspiracy Social". Do we really need to mess with the arabs? They have all that oil... such a fuss, when we could take France with a boyscout troop and a few swiss army knives.
Take over the media. Mostly I'd like to do this just so we can stop showing XMass specials in October. Making Saudies and their palls look like blood thirsty tyrants, and revising history to make the whole world believe that the Holocost wiped out 6 million of us (do you think they will ever find that resort we put all of our buddies in the south pacific?)
Banks Banks Banks!! Guys, if we own all the banks why can't I get a loan??!?!?!
I would rather be ashes than dust!
Oh, read the comments....I just read one exclaiming a missile is easier to destroy than a slug. Because a slug has a steadier trajectory.
.44 round in flight and shoot it with a BB. Even if the BB hit, it will have minimal effect.
Well, frankly, I think some of you should read Harry Turtledove World War Series.
Take a big slug, say a real big on like what's launched from the U.S. Iowa class. Fire anti-missiles at it....hey, if you're luck you're knock it of course a bit. But there is so much inertia that it just keeps going.
Another way to describe it. Say you could track a
The issue at hand is that this was the first successful (publicly announced) test that succeeded in stopping a traditional artillary SLUG.
Missiles are often used in artillary due to a higher accuracy and laser-guided controls. Slugs, one advantage had been near instoppability. This is why Iowa class battleships are still used as super-longe range artillary platforms.
This enables the destruction of a solid slug (probably by superheating)...
Now, when these are reduced to fit on a main battle tank or troop transport (like the M-1 Abrams or M-3 Bradleys) you give your vehicle the ability to be immune to other tanks.
Imagine what a single division of M-1 Abrams could do if they had a system that neutralized the effectiveness of the enemy's main battle tanks, anti-tank missiles, etc. They would cut thru like butter...
And as someone else stated, in 30 yrs, when this technology is increased in effectiveness it might be possible to disable large armies with minimal casualties.
Imagine units controlled and linked to a satellite, instead of killing the men they target the weapons...literally melting the AK-47's in their hands.
Wouldn't a bloodless war be nice.
As for the comments on the previous election...I am frankly sick and tired of the people claiming Bush stole the election. First off those recounts WERE finished. Every single re-count I read about concluded in the end that Bush still won.
So please, and that was in the light of college students voting twice for Gore (yes, in many states college students were voting twice thru loop-holes), the fact that that a lot of DEAD people some how manage to make it to the polls to vote for Gore. I mean, come on....enough.
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
Location: Pleiades cluster. Time: approx 350-400 years ago.
Scene: main deck, Star Orbital Ultimate Laser.
Commander Azgota, "@#$%^$#[1]! Some @%@# idiot mixed the measurement units! Recharge and fire at corrected coordinates ASAP! @#$^$@@#".
[1] Many subtle nuances lost in translation from the original Z'k.
---
Nov 2002, half of the earth was reduced to a molten slag by a laser beam.
Surviving astronomers have traced the beam's origin to somewhere around the Pleiades cluster.
Exact reasons for the bolt are unknown.
---
Theories such as the beam being a collateral effect from a possible interstellar war in the Pleiades cluster are being shot down by sceptics.
Actually, no.
In Real Genius, they built a single-shot, self consuming laser that could be used (with a small rotating mirror and a phase conjugate tracking system) to eliminate a single target from space.
"To put it simply, in deference to you, Kent, it's like lasing a stick of dynamite" -- Chris Knight
"Kent has his name on his license plate.
Yeah, my mom does the same thing to my underwear.
Your mom puts license plates in your underwear? How do you sit?" -- Chris and Mitch Taylor
"No, seriously, if there is ever anything I can do for you, or more to the point, to you... please let me know.
Can you hammer a six inch spike through a board with your penis?
Uh, not right now...
Well, a girl has to have her standards..." -- Chris and Susan Decker
"I was just contemplating the immortal words of Socrates who said 'I drank what?'" -- Chris
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
From your comments it is pretty clear that you don't have any idea what you are talking about, at least when it comes to Pinochet and Chile. I lived in Peru while Pinochet was still in power, and moved to Chile right after nearly 50% of the population of Chile voted to keep him in as dictator. It takes a pretty good dictator to win an unfixed election between continuing the dictatorship and a representative democracy that the dictator supported. I can guarantee you that most Chileans do not feel like Pinochet was bad for their country, and quite a few of the Peruvians that I knew wished that Pinochet would work a similar magic in their country. Yes, Pinochet's tactics were harsh, especially in the first years of his rule, but he had a lot of corruption to remove.
The difference between Peru and Chile after Pinochet's reign was striking. Even the smallest shops in Lima had armed guards, where in Chile not even the policemen carried firearms. During Christmas time in Peru police armed with assault rifles regularly pulled over automobiles to ask for "donations." Such activity would never be permitted in Chile. Under Pinochet not only would such activity cost you your job, it could theoretically cost you your life. Thanks primarily to Pinochet's actions Chile is leading South America in entering the "global economy" and the citizens of Chile love that. As an example the right-leaning parties (who generally are allied with Pinochet) have a majority in the Senate.
So who is the armchair analyst in this case my good friend?
Both you and I agree that reform is the only hope the third world countries have of getting out of their current situations. Unless the corruption is removed there can be no real progress. We just disagree on what the removal of corruption requires. Unfortunately there are very few cases of a nation that has been successful in removing corruption from the government. Chile is the only example that I can think of off-hand, and it certainly is the only example that I have seen with my own eyes. Perhaps you can think of another?
Not really. I was using it as a reference to the fact that the Jews and Arabs have been fighting for thousands of years, since biblical times.
Nobody can invade America. They'd get wiped out. No other country has the arial capability it takes to gain an invading edge. And a ground war would be suicide for whatever country tried it.
USA didn't use everything it had in Vietnam.
Israel hasn't tried to conquer the Palestine's, just co-exist (not very well).
Russia could wipe Chechnya off the map if it really wanted to.
In Iraq, the USA wiped out the world's 3rd largest army in 3 days. 3 days!
In Afganistan, the USA wiped out a 500,000 thousand man army with only 3,000 ground troops in 2 months.
So uh...what was your point.
Two words: discarding sabot
And even if it wasn't a prism to reflect back to the laser, a mirror coating with 90% reflectivity combined with some smoke shells could give a laser a lot of trouble. What about the effects of rain and clouds?
Lot's of innocent bystanders in manhatten too. Over 3,000 thousand of them as well. War is hell, welcome to Earth.
BTW: That AWACS plane was purchased from Boieng as a special order 747. All of the radar equipment and hi-tech was added while IN Israel, by the IAI.
Wrong. The plane was produced in Russia, and the radar technology was developed and paid for by the U.S.
And what would be the problem if they did sell it?
Doh? We design and build weapon systems so that we can use them against our adversaries, not the other way around.
Try hard and think?
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
From the LASERS perspective, all it has to do is go:
found an object moving through air.
object is moving at this speed.
shoot object for one second.
It doesn't have to calculate where its going to land, only where is it going to be in the next part of a second.
Size and propellent doesn't matter the the LASER because its relative. If it knows where the object is, and knows how fast its moving, then it can acquire.
Now, if your the guy trying to hot an object with that shel, then yes, you MUST know that to have any hope of decent accuracy.
also, if you the guy firing the shell, I suggest you fire a lot of them at the LASER first...;)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Mount the on ship. you can protect the landing party from artillary as the swarm up the beach.
You can protect the tranportation of the grunts with these.
Ship will allow you to deploy them on a resonably quick basis.
Sub-marinse could use them. they surface, the shoot down missils as they are launched out of enemy submarines.
If the wrong person become the leading power of China, we will need al the tech we can get.
I don't see that as a likely or reasonable way for China to exert its influence, but dictators are rarely reasonable.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Pinochet's political enemies fled the state when he took power (for obvious reasons). Many Americans have very negative things to say about George Bush as well, but that doesn't mean that most Americans hate George Bush. The fact that the majority of Chileans vote along the same party lines as Pinochet should tell you how mainstream his opposition is.
I lived in Chile for two years, with normal Chilean families, in several different cities, and I can guarantee you that the part of the population that was pro-Pinochet is much larger than the very vocal anti-Pinochet contingent. Most people are somewhere in the middle. They are glad for what he did for the country, but they are not happy about the means he used. I would consider myself part of this larger third group. I would even go so far as to say that many of Pinochet's economic policies were bad, but that the removal of corruption from the government outweighed these poor choices in the long run.
And I still contest that corruption is still the root cause of the ills of most developing nations, including Saudi Arabia. But when I talk about corruption I am not simply referring to the crime rate, but to the rule of law. Countries where all of the power is concentrated in just a few people are dangerous for business. That's partially why Chile's economy has grown even faster since Pinochet was forced out. If the ruling family in Saudi Arabia decides they want your business there is little you can do about it. So instead of taking that risk people invest elsewhere.
I have never lived in the Middle East, so I will decline to comment further :).
actually, if the LASERS were on builinding, the terorist would just blow up the power supply. the chemical bath would destroy more people then a rouge airline would.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The scary bit about Chile to me, is that I can't help but think that had I been an adult in Chile in 1973 I might easily have become one of the "disaparecidos." I would never choose to live in such a society. Especially considering that Pinochet is unique in being the only dictator that I can think of that was even theoretically good for his country. For the most part dictators have a ruinous track record.
I can see why you reacted so negatively to my prior comments if you think that I would recommend "the Pinochet solution." I was only using Pinochet as an example of how removing the corruption from a society allowed it to attract investors and modernize. Chile was lucky with Pinochet, but they paid a very high price. Clearly the best choice is to elect honest officials, and remove corrupt ones. This is especially true in countries like India that already have a relatively stable democratic government.
I certainly agree that the first world should do our part to help stop corruption in third world countries, and I also agree that westerners are in many cases a huge source of the problem.
I've been sitting on tremendous stockpiles of 5.56mm ammo for my AR-15 since Y2K. I really need to reclaim the storage space, but I don't think I could bear to part with the ammo unless it was one round at a time, at 3100 fps (feet/second)!
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
The USA doesn't even have the majority of good scientists and engineers. What one team has done, another can do. Everybody will have these systems a few years after the US deploys them, and probably cheaper than US DOD contractors are selling them for to the US government.
All this means is that energy weapons are about to enter the military bag of tricks. So our future battlefields will have that lovely "Star Wars" look to them, but people and vehicles will be vaporizing for real, not as special effects.
The real bad news for Americans is that the USA seems to be on the edge of giving up its technological leadership.
Education is suffering. The entertainment industry is getting a stranglehold on US technology in both hardware and software, and no effective opposition is coming forth.
South Korea was merely ahead of us in broadband development. Not content with only having 60% of households broadband-wired, they're about to put another few billion dollars to pick up the rest. Where are the new services going to come from to take advantage of this? From the USA? Don't bet on it. What is the US doing to catch up? "Leaving it to the free market" that tanked on this to begin with. The US may be the last industrialized country where broadband replaces dialup, and the ability of individuals to figure out how to come up with useful products and services around broadband in the US runs straight into bandwidth and usage limits dreamed up by the cable companies and to a lesser extent, telcos.
I'm not trying to start any Libertarian theological debates here, so I'm not saying whether this is good or bad. Just stating what we know to be true.
Military technology used to drive civilian R&D. Now, it's the other way around. When high-technology companies leave the US in search of better regulatory climates and most of us go with them, will the ability to create the best military tech go with them and with us?
For better for worse, the lack of leadership our government and business leaders are providing us means that for better or worse, a Pax Americana will be a very temporary thing. Perhaps it'll last long enough to get George Bush re-elected and the current generation of Fortune 500 CEOs into a profitable retirement.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Speaking of which, the Q-36 can track up to 14 taqrgets simulatneously. This is usually used for counter-bat work, but I wonderif instead of guns it could be jury-rigged to a new laser, or maybe a whole battery of them. Interesting possibilities. BTW, traditionally, units are referred to as OPFOR when they are in training exercises where friendly units are called "BLUFOR".
I'm an OPFOR soldier at JRTC, if you're interested, and the Q-36 fucks up our world on a regular basis; it's always one of our HPT's.
The real way to make it not "suicide" as you put it is to use mortars with quick setup and pack-up capabilies. You can use these to take out the counter-bat batteries. If you're good (which we are).
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
Clearly there has got to be a better way to form a stable mostly-honest government than the route that Chile took. And even if all of the people who were disappeared were guilty of some heinous crime (which I am sure they weren't) then there still is no excuse for not giving these people their day in court. There is no greater corruption than to take someone's life without due process of the law.
On the other hand, I will never forget what my years in Peru taught me. I love that people, they were very kind to me (once they got past the fact that I was a Yanqui), but that country is so screwed up I can't imagine what could possibly fix it. The corruption simply goes too deep. I don't know how to fix Peru's problems, but I do know that without getting a handle on the problems brought on by corruption no amount of foreign aid is likely to do any good.
Perhaps eventually Peruvians will come to understand the importance of electing honest representatives.
Either way, thanks for the discussion. You have reminded me of the all too real consequences of American foreign policy. Unfortunately my travels have made me a bit cynical.
The French also have quite a powerful SSBN force. They currently have 2 Triomphant and 2 Roudoutable class boats, each with 96 warheads. Carriers look pretty academic when your 384 biggest cities are radioactive cinders.
At some point in the 80s, during Reagan's SDI stuff, they did have a laser fitted in a 747 which was planned to shoot down rockets. IIRC they were just getting it sort of working (they had their first success at actually hitting a rocket) and then got funding cut. Amazing they even got it sort-of-working really, considering the electronics they were working with back then.
Grab.
"Let me get this straight. You're arguing for the giant laser, yet I'm the one who has seen too many science fiction movies?"
Well, the giant laser does exist and has been tested (some great movies on the site, btw).
"So chasing Iraq (with thier outdated military) out of Kuwait with the help of the rest of the world proves that our military can handle any threat?"
Nop...if you read me right, you'll see I'm refering to the fact that the way the US is trying to handle their current "war" is kinda wrong (it's kinda dumb to call it a war instead of an ongoing concern [not a conflict, most definitely not a war]) and based on a wrong concept.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Jeruselam, Bet Hakerim. I'm a 1st year yeshiva student.
And I'm to far from the Arab quarter to smell sh!t. (seriosly, they just deficate in the streats it's nasty)
Sheesh... I hate anonymous posters.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
"an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"
- Mahatma Gandhi
Will the US military killing 3000 foreigners make the world a better place?
You missed my point. What should it matter if 3,000 people died here or there, what color they are, or the justifications for doing it. You seem to think that human life has different values depending on were you come from. It needs to be stopped. They killed our people, they want to die doing it, how else are we going to stop them if they don't value life?