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Contractor Proposes Laser Rifles for US Military
The Fryar writes "Well, folks, it looks like the future really is now! It seems the Defense Review has uncovered a submission by Stavatti, a sort of "free market" defense contractor, to the military for a laser rifle. The submission comes in response to the Army's LFLAN requirement - the quest to provide "Light Fighter Lethality After Next" technology, or lasers/phasers/sabers/advanced weapons for use some 20 years down the road. Needless to say, I also considered the category "Star Wars Prequels" for this article."
Lasers And Their Potential For Tactical Military Use
These weapons have been long under research and development. Interestingly, this paper seems critical of the gasdynamic laser. The paper is nontechnical and relatively brief.
* silent
Perhaps. However, the gas generated lasers I have seen tend to be quite noisy due to pumps and compressors and injectors.
* no recoil
True, but someone with good marksmanship training can easily and quickly reacquire a target with even heavier caliber (7.62mm) light platforms. However, having a rifle with no recoil would be an advantage.
* less resupply problems (lay a power cable to the forward camp instead of moving trucks full of ammo)
Geez, can you imagine the logistics of this? This may work for defined areas of control, but this proposal is for light infantry. If that were the case light infantry would have to protect their power cable in addition to performing their mission. Given the current tactics of light infantry (in the USMC at least), there is no way this approach will work.
* if constructed right, can be enclosed completely = less susceptable to dirt, dust and water
Absolutely true, however optics would have to be protected and ruggedized, and any dirt on the optics would degrade performance significantly, possibly creating dangerous situations for those around the weapon.
* if using invisible light (IR/UV) doesn't give away your position through muzzle flashes
True enough for unsophisticated enemy forces. However, night vision optics are becoming more available and tuning them to "see" IR/UV is fairly trivial. Indeed there is evidence that Iraqi forces are using significant numbers of night vision devices.
* more accuracy due to a reduce "time to impact"
Indeed. Agree completely.
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Four problems: First, po-210 is rare; in the early days, tons of pitchblende had to be refined to get microgram amounts. Today, we let bismuth-210 beta-decay, which lets us get milligram amounts reasonably cost-effectively, but we're a long way from getting the thousands of kilos that would be needed to power these rifles. It might be cheaper just to build that army of giant robot samurai Bechtel's got on the drawing board.
Second, polonium is toxic, really toxic. Imagine ensuring safety at every point in a battlefield logistics chain, no mean feat -- and now consider what you'd do with all this toxic, radioactive waste after the 60-day powerspan cited in the article.
Third, of course, is the heat issue: how do you effectively shield the troops from the massive heat source sitting literally in their hands? One of the things that scotched the radioisotope-powered plane was the necessity of constantly ducting away waste energy.
Fourth is the terrific intensity of the alpha emissions of po-210. Alpha radiation is, of course, low-hazard, but po-210 is powerful enough to degrade virtually all materials it comes into proximity to -- you can work around that when designing a power system for a satellite, but I'm not sure what the ramifications would be for a handheld weapon.
In short, the contractor basically has proposed a weapons system that works great, except for all these massive technical hurdles that have to be dealt with first. I think we're a long way from Star Wars here.
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
Not really. Wounding a soldier is generally even better than killing him, because not only is he taken out of the action, but he now ties up any other soldiers that might try and help him. Wounded soldiers have to be evacuated, they require medics, etc. etc. You would be surprised how many weapons are designed more towards wounding the maximum amount of people instead of killing them outright.
boron nitride is still regarded as slightly exotic, using this in harsh environment might be OK but mass production of large scale items are not
storage problems are glossed over, for instance bringing a large number of radioactive items close together requires strict handling rules
environmental damage when a laser rifle breaks is not even mentioned, also militaries are strict about such things. For instance the US navy has stricter environmental rules than the British merchant navy...
reloading the powercell must be reasonably easy when you only have a half life of 138 days.
pressure is immense and boron nitride is not just hard, it is brittle. Protecting against shattering requires a bit more than a little injection moulded plastic. When this high pressure hot gas breaks free it is a good idea to stay away.
wavelangth is 10.6um which means it will be eaten up by the CO2 in the air so useful range becomes limited. This is not described properly.
the large wavelength makes for more diffraction but the opening aperture is not stated.
this wavelength chouce makes locating a shooter relativgely simple, just look for massive re-radiation in the CO2 band.
of course the massive constant power flux from the Po source makes for nice thermal targets too.
this wavelength is not eye safe. No, this is not a joke. The snag is that it can then be construed to be a violation of various convensions of war.
thrust is said to be big, yet recompression is said to be part of the plan in which case most of the recoil should be possible to compensated for. Why is this not mentioned?
and compression takes a lot of power, where does this come from?
the gas expansion is likely to cause a hideous noise and makes for even more simple location.
And so on. I could go on at lengths.
I does sound like something Cleese would write, but it was written by Andrew Marlatt.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
"Strangely enow, this SatireWire story lately has been zipping around the 'Net attributed to John Cleese. That's flattering and funny and all, but now I'm getting so many emails asking who "really" wrote it that it will make my life easier to nip it here. I apologize for any disappoinment, but the story was written by Andrew Marlatt. It first appeared on SatireWire on Feb. 1, 2002, and was subsequently published in several major newspapers, including this version still available at The Washington Post. So that's the deal. All the best -- Andrew"