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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."
Call me a peace loving hippy but I don't think the prospeect of a weapon thats designed to kill and injure should be put under a category that is about fun and enterntainment (toys).
Nah! That shit's boring! Lets focus our resources on developing more efficient ways of killing people!
Someone really needs to start an extra-American hyper technology-driven society with some priorities besides war-war-war. Brotherhood. Unity. Peace. Peace through power! One vision one purpose!
A few salient details should convince you this is as close to an April Fools joke as it's possible to get on April 2. If it hadn't been posted on DefenseReview I'd have completely ignored this.
..." like this one. Yep, that makes it likely this could ever work.
t ml
The polonium source is always hot, whether or not it is being used. The article states that "while the weapon is in a storage mode, in essence the system produces 104KW of heat energy." Imagine a bin of these replacement cartridges - it could run a small town. And when in use, each burst (of which you can fire 170 per minute) has an internal energy dissipation of 16.4KW. No kidding. You'd need several inches of shuttle thermal tile just to hold this thing.
The article states "Currently Polonium-210 is only produced in microgram quantities for research purposes at facilities such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory." Yep, THAT'S likely to change soon.
It specs a recoil force of 90 (yep, NINETY) pounds in the forward direction - enough to rip it out of the hands of a soldier. And it claims to be able to sustain 170 bursts per minute, at 0.35s per burst. That's about 59.5 seconds per minute, yanking at 90 lb on a soldier. No human could handle this thing for long.
The article states "Stavatti has not previously, nor is currently involved in an effort to develop a qualified small arm weapon system
Finally, the article is full of spelling and grammar errors.
Just in case you missed the pun, it's a carbon dioxide / nitrogen gas laser - hence the term "vaporware"...
BTW, their web page about this thing is here:
http://www.stavatti.com/armament_systems.h
I think Defense Review got hoaxed.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
Like caseless ammunition for infantry weapons -- loads of resources and weight are lost to shell casings. If the shell casing represents 15% of the shell mass, then eliminating it should allow for 15% more ammunition to be carried. More ammunition means less resources devoted to supply lines and more resources devoted to fighting power.
.223 rifle rounds would pack a better punch against hardened targets (buildings, bunkers, vehicles, helicopters).
Better targeting systems. One thing that gave us huge advantages over Afghani forces was our guys actually can aim their rifles -- lots of irregular forces just kind of spray and run, which wastes ammo. An infantry targeting system that could combine small, instantaneous adjustments to windage and elevation to compensate for motion, wind or other ballistic effects on aiming would go a long way towards improving the hit ratio. More hits, less ammo, less supplies.
It'd be great, too, to shrink the kinds of ammo available for the 25mm Bushmaster to be usable in rifles as well. High explosive, incindiery or other types of ammo while larger than standard
The term "free market" here is misleading. Free market economics (i.e. capitalism) is the philosophy of voluntary association: Nobody forces anyone to sell anything (or not sell anything), and nobody forces anyone to buy anything (or not buy anything) -- it is the complete absence of force in the market. Under a free market system, every transaction is done on a voluntary basis. Government contracts, on the other hand, represent the exact opposite of free market economics. Government contracting does not represent voluntary association but coercion: The consumer (you and I) do not choose for ourselves whether or not to patronize these businesses. We choose between paying our taxes, leaving the country, or going to jail. This is not market decision but a threat, and hence, the defense contractor does is not a true competitor in the free market. Their market share is not acquired through persuasion, voluntary association, and fair competition. Their market share is aquired through force. Therefore, to label a government contractor "free market" is completely wrong and backwards, and serves only to blur the distinction between free market economics and socialism.
Besides the basic durability issue, I would think these weapons would also be vulnerable to an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) device, which as I understand it, could basically knock out all such weapons within the range of effect...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Also isn't it strange that the Geneva convention would band weapons that cause permanent blindness yet allow ones that kill people?
"He's dead Jim, but look on the bright side he didn't lose his sight"
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
....that I see with this weapon is better shooting. With a ballistic rifle (aka: the M-16) you have to account for the arch of the round you are firing. The soldier firing would still have to rely on firing basics, breathing and trigger squeeze for instance, but not having to account for a bullets arch would be helpful.
One disadvantage to a system like this would be laying down cover fire. The adoption of the M-16, by the Army, made it easier for a soldier to lay down cover fire so that fellow troops could move into a better position to engage the target. This weapon system, IMO, wouldn't make a visible or audible cover fire that would force enemy troops to seek cover. That can be a good or a bad thing depending on the tactical situation.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
The more the U.S. kills people around the world the more enemies it makes. It needs to kill those new enemies. Better make better guns so you can kill more of those enemies...creating more enemies.
ok, speaking as an actual active duty infantry soldier and not some armchair general, the molle's actually pretty good. it's just not that much better than the gear we've got now to make changing over worth it.
the molle has a book and a video to put it together and wear it, but you're an idiot if you can't figure it out by yourself. it's really pretty easy to put together and configure.
as far as new weapons, I'm all for having a weapon that I don't have to carry a shitload of ammunition for. if all it needs is a radioactive power cell and it's good to go for longer than I'll be in contact with the enemy, fucking awesome.
the first gripe of any soldier about new equipment is weight. no ammo means less weight. a lot of soldiers will be happy with that shit. the M-16 has its weaknesses and I wasn't sorry to say goodbye to it and get my hands on my first M4.
the reason the military has a large budget is so we can continue to improve things by testing new ideas. we've made big jumps with gear. if this laser rifle isn't a good idea, we'll figure it out. we don't need someone that hasn't crawled in the mud and put bullets downrange second guessing new technology or telling us that the M-16 is fine as it is.
The World's Worst Webcomic!
I half expected to see airborne lasers used for boost-phase antimissile defense in the current war. I guess it's still too experimental. Then again, maybe they were trying to use it as the primary defense and didn't tell us. It seems like a smart approach to combine this with something like the Patriot missile. If the laser fails, then try the missile.
Also, it's probably not a visible laser, but if you really want to burst your enemy's bubble, there'd be nothing like having him launch his most sophisticated missile, and then seeing a friggin laser come out of the sky and shoot it down.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
So what do you suggest? Uninventing it? Destroying anything that could lead to its re-discovery? Kill anyone smart enough to think of something similar? Your working the wrong angle. Weapons aren't the problem. People wanting to kill people is.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
In this case, the customer is the government. That's why they are called government contractors, and not citizen contractors. And, yes the government contracting market (by law) is pretty damned free. Anyone is free to bid on upcoming contracts. If you have a small company, there are a number of SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) contracts available every year, from every department related to the government. The linked SBIR page is about NASA's SBIRs, but there are literally a total of thousands available from DoT, DoD, NIH, NIST, NIMA, etc. If you're a big company, then you go through a similar, yet more formal process to bid on contracts. As is the case with most government-related things, there's more paperwork to complete, and in some cases due to the sensitive nature of the contract, you might be required to have some level of security clearance before you can bid, but other than that it is really wide open. I happen to know of a few recent large contracts that have been competitively bid on by very small companies, so small businesses are not just limited to SBIRs (which are capped at $1M, I believe).
In relation to your statement:
You clearly don't remember history class in high school, or maybe you didn't take it yet. We live in a republic. We elect representatives to make key decisions for us...that's the whole point of a republic. If you don't like the decisions being made, well, that's the citizen's fault for electing a bad decision maker. You are perfectly free to vote, write letters to your representatives, write articles in the newspaper, put up a blog, participate in protests and rallies, and bitch and moan on /. to express your opinion. But please don't complain that you are being coerced and that you have no choice, because you do.
Actually I would suggest putting the billions of dollars that go into these extravagant military projects that find new, easier, faster ways to kill people into educating people so they don't want to kill people. And while were at it, how about some state funded medical insurance that doesn't suck.