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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.
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?
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
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
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."
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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).
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.
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.
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));
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.)
"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.
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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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?
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.
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