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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...
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.