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Dawn of the Airborne Laser
Yonzie writes "As you may have heard, there are a number of competing franchises working on a functional laser weapon. Popular Science has an interesting story about `The Wall of Fire', an airborne laser designed to fit in the belly of a 747. Apparently, this is powerful and precise enough to destroy enemy intercontinental and intermediate-range missiles in mid-flight.
I can imagine the use of laser turrets as protection against missiles, but I really can't see the use of a laser mounted in a 747. IMHO, it's way too slow compared to the missiles, and will not be able to scramble fast enough." This is the big daddy of the JSF laser that we've mentioned before.
Hmm, I believe these are the kinds of missions where they make sure n number of planes are always in the air. Sounds really expensive in terms of fuel, but I've heard of several occasions where they do this kind of thing...
I really can't see the use of a laser mounted in a 747. IMHO, it's way too slow compared to the missiles, and will not be able to scramble fast enough.
The speed of the plane is pretty much irrelevant when you're talking about a plane that can fly at high altitude with a weapon that can hit a target less than a second after hitting fire, every time. There would be no reason for the plane to 'scramble' anywhere.
but I really can't see the use of a laser mounted in a 747. IMHO, it's way too slow compared to the missiles
The whole point of having it mounted in a 747 is altitude. From a few miles up they can take down the missiles while they're still hundreds of miles away on accent, long before they come over the horizon for any "laser turret" to be able to shoot. This way you're not raining flaming debris and whatever nasty warhead shards down on your own toops, but rather on theirs. As far as speed, yes, have them up there 24/8
--I don't want the world, I just want your half.
Shiny missile.
Seriously, as cool as a big laser is it seems as though the defense to this multi-billion-dollar system is to polish the outside of the missile to reflect the beam.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Huh? Did you read the article? Silly question. How in the name of common sense did you come to the conclusion this is a destabilizing weapon? This has much less to do with ICBM (usually Nuclear) than with shooting down short range tactical missle (possibly equiped with nuclear/chem/bio payloads).
The Gulf War featured numerous Scud missles launched by Iraq with no more than a general "gee I hope it hits my enemy not my friend".
In short this would be a normal battlefield weapon used to increase the effectiveness of our military and reduce friendly or innocent casualties. It "destabilizes" no more or less than the USA developing a better gun or fighter.
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose."
Guess what...war begets war. Weapons beget weapons.
Uh, no. War begats peace. Overwhelming weapons begats non-proliferation.
Why do you think the world has as much peace as it has? It's the called the US Military. The bigger the imbalance of power between the US and the rest of the world, the less the rogue nations will be tempted to invade their neighbors. Unfortunately, expansionism is alive and well in the middle east.
Someday all the countries of the world will be stable democracies, but that day is not today.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Basically, I do agree that if you do the math, these are only useful as weapons designed to follow-up with a pre-emptive attack. These are hence profoundly destabilizing and so they will provide no security for the US.
That only works for stable enemies. If we only had to deal with relatively stable foes, such as the USSR or China (or even N. Korea!), then we wouldn't worry.
But our enemies since, oh, 1990 have been, without pause, rather unpredictable cooks.
Overwhelming weapons begats assymetric warfare techniques.
This has been shown to be true in every region where it occurs, Israel, Chechnya, America.
And too often, assymetric warfare techniques mean a concentration on the civilian populace as victims.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Cute idea, but it assumes a lot. Off the top of my head....
1) Clear flyable weather. While you can detect the thermal blooms of launch, you can't rely on that for tracking, thus the need for a ranging laser. Will this work if you've got 5-10k ft of cloud cover to visually confirm the target? How about minor-major turbulance?
2) Total aerial supremancy. As with AWACS, you'll need to dominate the skies to the point where SAMs are not making the plane suddenly jink and miss the shot at the wrong time.
3) Target overload. If there are a "lot" of thermal blooms, how long will it take to determine which one is shooting the real missle? Which is just an fire/explosion on the ground? Recall that Iraq is tasked with destroying 100+ short-range ballistic missles. How do you tell a 200km range missle with a nuke vs. a 50km one with conventional explosives. You have 20 shots to figure it out.
4) Equipment. How long to reload between shots? Fast enough to take a second shot? What sort of stress does this put on the plane and the internal equipment? If you do miss, can you still track the missed target?
5) Limited range. From the description it can cover a few hundred square miles. Say 400 square miles or an area of 20 miles by 20 miles. Expand that by constantly flying large fig-8s and you got maybe an area of 3000 sq. miles covered for about five minutes every hour. Lots of luck tracking down the right five minutes of launch...
If this was fully operational during the 1991 Gulf War, it might have saved a few lives and eased the stress level in Israel and Saudia Arabia, but I doubt it would have gotten more than one or two missles. And this works only on that level. A battlefield defense versus an enemy with some ballistic capability, without significant air support, and limited firing capabilities.
It is a big step forwards though. I'll give them a few years to see if they can miniturize to limited fighter usage. Now THAT would be worthwhile.
"I may be Love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it."
R. Bowman also advocates using a nuclear arsinal as a deterrent. Wouldn't the *ultimate* deterrent be a system like THEL or ABL that could neutralize an inbound short or long-range ballistic weapon?
Sure we can continue to build ICBM's and other intermediate range nuclear missles, but the history of warfare is such that once a weapon is found it's only a matter of time before a defensive counter-measure is built. Should the US sit on its thumbs while other countries build these defensive weapons?
Someone will eventually acquire similiar technology that could neutralize an incoming ballistic missle. At that point does the US have the right to pursue development of these defensive weapons?
Of course, maybe then it will be too late to defend ourselves.
Eric Sarjeant
eric[@]sarjeant.com
That's the whole point, though.
If you make inflamatory comments (read: North Korea) and suddenly these planes are flying overhead, it makes attemping an armegeddon solution much more tenuous. Now, you have to begin your preemptive attack with another attack on a plane. The element of complete surpise is gone.
Sure, you can push the button. But now, there's a chance that this will do nothing other than assuring your instant demise.
In other words, even if you're willing to commit suicide to kill your enemy, there's a chance that even that won't work.
Think of it as sitting down to play russian roulette with someone and they insist on adding more bullets to the gun.
Do you want to go first?
The more dangerous we make war for those who would want to wage it, the more of a chance we have of fear of war convincing people to pursue peaceful solutions.
-Brett
How many times has war broken out in Western Europe since the advent and proliferation of jet aircraft, missiles, nuclear weapons and ICBMs?
Since the massive armament of Israel and Egypt following the 1973 war, how many times have they fought? How many times did they fight before the US armed the crap out of both of them?
How many times since the United Kingdom and Russia got nukes and horribly dangerous arms have they fought over Central Asia? How many times before 1914 did the Russians and United Kingdom squable over Central Asia?
How many times since France got nuclear weapons have the Germans invaded them? How many times before that did the Germans invade them?
Since the United States and the Soviet Union got nuclear weapons how many citizens of either country have died from the use of those weapons in a war?
The United States and Soviet Union along with Egypt and Isreal since 1973 have illustrated that having the ability to destroy your enemy along with leaders that care for thier people and thier nation makes for a more stable and lasting peace than disarming or waging a defensive strategy.
If one were to make a missle with a huge mirror exo-skeloton, what would happen? Would it just burn through the mirror on would it melt the plane?
No, you wake up.
War is bad but there are plenty of things that are worse. Ask any survivor of the concentration camps who was liberated by the Allied Expeditionary Force whether they think war is 'cool.'
Pacifism can be more evil than killing people in some circumstances.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
--this is true except for two points. As a proof of concept platform they can be shown to work.
Yes. Assuming the ABL is in enemy airspace when the missile is launched. Hust having them even a hundred miles off shore probably wouldn't help any.
Point two, I don't see anyplace in the fine print that says you couldn't use these against normal old aeryplanes, or ground based targets for that matter. I mean it IS the deathray thing, and it's still in the musket stage as far as it's evolution is concerned. It's only going to get more powerful and easier to aim and have more bool-eets in the clip with advancing technology, to mangle an analogy.
Yes, but only has enough reactants for a few shots. This would be of limited use against normal airplanes. A far less explensive fighter would be less vulnerable and carry more offensice weaponry.
All in all though, my opinion is we need a missile defense, it's just a natural logical progression. Within 10 to 15 years the planet earth gonna have to decide once and for all who is getting the oil and who ain't, because there SURE ain't enough so that 6 billion people will all have cars and central heating and whatnot, it just slap ain't gonna happen. And china gonna be RIGHT there with the huge giganto army, all the tech their manufacturing plants can pump out, and a need for oil and water they can't ignore. Things gonna get pretty interesting then, if not even before then.
As for BMD, I think the only defensible BMD is an interceptor system with ground-based interceptor rockets and then only a small number of them.
Of course the hit-bullet-with-bullet is made more complicated by MIRVing, decoys, etc. The problem is that we should be prepared for an incoming set of no more than 5 ICBMs. Doing more, developing space-based laser battlestations, the ABL, etc. are not going to help us against a country which decides to launch an ICBM against the US in a premeditated way. These weapons are comparitively vulnerable and short range, so they are only practicle where there is no premeditation, so they are only useful in preventing retaliatory strikes. This means countries like China and Russia might decide to increase their number of ICBMs and when North Korea gets them, they won't just settle for one or two. They will also need battlefield control radar arrays,and other means of coordinating a response to a US strike. So of course they would develop these too.
Mark my words, these weapons make the world a more dangerous place.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
War begats peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
Deterrence only works if your enemy has sense enough to want to avoid destruction. If that's not the case, all bets are off. The Soviets and the U.S. deterred each other from using nukes during the Cold War because both sides understood, and wanted to avoid at all costs, that kind of exchange. But, if your enemy is a loon, nothing may deter him.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Unfortunately the last decade or so our technology has become such that such things aren't nearly as rare as they once were. So now we tend to monitor the plutonium or enriched uranium. I suspect that will become problematic soon as well, for a variety of reasons.
It really is a miracle no one has nuked anyone since WWII.
Everyone is stuck on the anti ballistic job being touted as the primary and seemingly only ability this platform would be capable of performing.
UMMM imagine an awacs and a couple of these things being used for air deffense. Picture an awacs circling in friendly airspace right behind the zone of conflict. Two airborn platforms circling some optimum distance away to cover maximum territory also in friendly skies with a reach of several hundred miles ( longest air to air missle range in US inventory is still the Phoenix at ~100 miles. ). In sight are all the primary airfields of the enemy. AWACS detects fighters being scrambled in response to an allied sortie. They slap their gear up and then get lit up like the fourth of july. No million dollar missle expended, no multimillion dollar interceptor and its priceless crew placed in harms way penetrating enemy airspace to engage the enemy. Just a single shot from an energy weapon system that can provide far more shots than can be physcially carried in the form of a missle. IE you spend 200 million building the plane but get thousands of shots from the system vrsus 200 million for 200 missiles with a million dollar price tag... which I belive is roughly the current cost of an AMRAM.
If they have line of sight to a ground target they can light it up as well with less potential for collateral damage from shrapnel and initial explosion that you have from current convetional munitions, less likely hood of a targeting malfunction. Granted thats only as good as your intelligence but unlike current munitions your percentage of hitting what you aim at would be essentially 100%. Secondary explosions, damage from fires started would still be an issue.
This is like putting a howitzer on a 500mph mobile platform that has speed of light ammunition 40,000 feet up in the air... its INSANE what the potential is for an aireal laser with sufficient power to be a weapon at line of sight distances from jet cruising altitudes.
And I hope no one says targeting is an issue... I garontee targeting subsonic and low supersonic munitions succesfully to their subsonic, low supersonic targets is FAR more difficult than hitting a subsonic, low supersonic target with a beam of light. Were pretty good at the former, the latter is a piece of cake by comparison. The trick is building a mobile laser with a directable enough beam to take advantage of our ability to target and the speed of light.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
The last war on Iraq did not bring peace.
On the contrary, it brought a lot of peace ... to Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, who was next.
Millions more people have died as a direct result of that war because of the sanctions imposed on Iraq.
*cough* Are there actually people who believe Hussein's propaganda? "Millions" (not that many, but let's pretend) have died because of SADDAM HUSSEIN. They have plenty of money, and plenty of food. Hussein intentionally starves his people so that he can feed his military machine.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
War begats peace. [...] Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
I should just ignore something this absurd, but... it's kind of frightening that someone moderated it up.
The word "is" in this context means equivalence. "Freedom is equivalent to slavery" is a contradiction, as is "ignorance is equivalent to strength".
You'll note that nowhere did I claim that "war is equivalent to peace", and in fact, the whole concept has nothing to do with the subject at hand.
The word "beget" means "leads to". Too many people have no concept of what "peace" really means. Stop and think about it for a second... WAY too many people think that "being in favor of peace" is some noble position to take. It never occurs to them that EVERYONE IS IN FAVOR OF PEACE. DUH!
It takes no courage to advocate peace, because there is no one who doesn't advocate peace. Everyone's goal is peace; the only question is how to achieve peace.
You cannot achieve peace by appeasing military dictators with expansionist goals. It's worth pointing out that the same debates took place in the 1930s during Hitler's rise. Imagine if the world had had the guts to stand up to Hitler at the time. Everyone knew he was dangerous, but everyone wanted "peace at any cost". And that lead to millions upon millions of deaths.
The peaceniks seem to think that if we just disbanded the US military then suddenly the world would join hands and weep with joy at world peace suddenly attained.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Secondly, it doesn't work on ICBMs, because it has to be within a few dozen miles from the launch in order to catch it in its boost phase. It's kinda hard to hit objects over the horizon with a lazer.
You are right about the need to be close, but wrong about ICBMs. It does not matter what type of missle it is (bigger is better in fact) it only matters whether you can get close to the launch site. You may also be underestimating the range. At 40,000 feet the horizon is much further away than a few dozen miles, and even if you are trying to hit a target in the boost phase the target will still be well above sea level. I'm too lazy to do the calculation, but at a guess a 747 at 40,000 feet could probably see an ICBM at the top of its boost phase (which for ICBMs is very high) from several hundred miles away.
I would think that range would have more to do with the power of the laser, than the horizon.
And then someone will come up with a defense for the laser. And so it goes, as it has since the first caveman put an elk skull on his head to protect him from Throgg's club and Throgg started aiming at the knees instead.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch