Slashdot Mirror
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...
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.
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.
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.