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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."
Now attach them to shark's heads.
Fire the "laser"!
I also here that the BFG isn't far behind...
I'm with it as long as the use Red for one side and Blue for the other just like they did in the GI Joe cartoons. After all, you have to be able to tell who is shooting at you.
which humanitarian war will this weapon see the light...
This Laser Rifle? I got one of these stored away with my Power Armor Mk II.
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).
Alrighty. Lasers as weapons. Sure...I believe that one. I bet they've also got an evil bit to tell you whether the beam should be red or blue/green.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
This is a money pit for the government. The problem is the energy.. there's just no way to have that much energy mobile in any form other than chemical (explosive) as it is now. Nuclear would work, but they don't make those in standard NATO cartridges. Yet. I played around with building devices like these, but they didn't make it off the table because of the energy requirements.
The only effective laser rifles are those designed to burn out the retinas of enemy troops, and are easily defended against by regular forces. Nevermind that they're against the geneva convention, but that doesn't stop anyone these days, haha.
Hard to beat plain 'ol hot inertia at mach 5.
..don't panic
Would mirrors be effective?
Just make sure that the U.S. lasers are 'blue' and the enemy's lasers are 'red'
I am the lord of the pun. Dance Knave!
Anybody else think thats a little strange? Also, what happens when there's a dust cloud and enemies hiding behind it? Wouldn't that tend to disperse the beam? How lethal would this be? Could enemies protect themselves from it by wearing reflective clothing?
That term doesn't appear in the article, doesn't show up in a Google search and is completely incomprehensible to me.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Granted, let's hope they'll be better shots and not as prone to suggestions from old men in robes.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
Call me conservative here, but what exactly are the advantages of a laser weapon over more traditional methods or advancements to traditional ballistic weapons like caseless cartridges? I suppose that lasers *might* be silent and tuneable to different spectral frequencies, but the ballistic method is cheap, portable and quite effective over long distances that most light infantry will be engaged at (100-800 yds).
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
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!
If so, quite aside from the relative uselessness of a 1.3mm self-cauterising beam firing for 1/3 of a second ( ZAP! ... "Hey, joey, I gotta small hole in my arm. Hurts like hell, not bleedin' much") what happens if the laser unit itself is damaged? What stops the high pressure container ripping itself apart, taking the bearer with it?
For real comedic effect, they could also blow up their squad mates if too close. Wow... the US military of 2012... blowin' up like a line of lemmings ;-)
Don't you watch the Simpsons?
...
If you shine a laser dot onto someones pants, you trick them into thinking they have a spot on their pants and they drop them. Then when the spot is on their underwear, they think THAT is where the stain is and drop those.
I'm guessing at that point you just go in with conventional weapons since the enemy will be standing there with no pants.
Could I defeat this nifty laser gun by simply wearing mirror chain mail under my clothes and a nice shiney tinfoil liner under my hat? The would help to keep out the mind control waves to!
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
If this is at all like the movies, we wont be able to hit ANYONE with them. And they'll travel slower than bullets. And be about a half a foot wide and red. And they'll make a noise when going through the air. And they'll cause explosions and sparks whenever they hit anything. And we'll wear big clunky white armor which doesn't even defend against rocks let alone lasers which restrict our movement and cause us to act all stupid and that will be the end of us as they will fly a suicide bomber into the heart of our deathstar and blow us up and it will suck but make a killing at the box office.
Research plasma cannons. I wonder if Saddam is hiding some Elerium 115 with his weapons of mass destruction.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Lasers can be created by several things, most commonly electricity passing through certain types of gasses. The primary problem with this design is power - we don't have a portable nuclear power pack yet, and I sure don't want to carry one around and get shot at.
Since you can also get laser power from chemical sources, is it possible to make laser "bullets" that are basically chemical sources with an electronic trigger? Firing them from the gun passes a small trigger charge into the bullet, which lases (is that even a word?) the chemicals inside the bullet all at once - ejecting a large light pulse out the end of the gun at one time.
The bullet is then ejected and a new one from the magazine is loaded into the chamber.
Does anyone know how much power you can get in a short chemical laser burst like this? How large would the bullet have to be to have adequate power?
Any chemical laser specialists out there?
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
I see my grandson reading Slashdot and he clicks on a post titled "Contractor Proposes Death Star for US Military" from the that's-no-moon dept.
He's reading it....he clicks to enter a post...he posts a link to goatse. Damn. My grandson is a troll.
The only problems with Laser weapons are that they are illegial under the Geneva conventions, as are any weapons that are designed to permanently blind a person. While it may be possible to skirt the issue by using a non-visable wavelength, targeting becomes an issue... even low power lasers for targeting would be potentially illegial as they could/would be intense enough to harm the vision, OR if they are sufficiently low power, they probably disperse so greatly as to give away the position of the 'shooter'.
Now this is not free bait for trolling, so please do not reply with stupid comments about the U.S. not following the convention as is... this is not about Iraq or GitMo.
_CMK
Bad spellers of the world untie!
Such a system will probably be initially implemented for long-range sniper teams. Such a team using this particular weapon could move into an abandoned house nearly 3 times as far away as current sniper rifle's maximum range, could fire more quietly, and hopefully would have the distance and confusion to get away. In addition, this weapon prototype is tuned to replace the m-16 as a rapid-fire battlefield meat and potatoes weapon... lazers are more likely to begin its life as a stationary or semi-stationary weapon like machine guns in WW1 or grenade launchers. As an assassination tool, tuned to fire once but be hidden in a pair of guitar cases, it could be quite effective and available quite soon.
Replacing the M-16 seems like the wrong way to begin down the technology curve... More specialized applications like a cartridge-based sniper rifle, truck-mounted anti-aircraft lazers, or bridge / encampment defense lazer positions seem like a more useful... use. Their strength lies in distance, not power, and that is what they should be used for.
The ______ Agenda
Let not ignore the fact that one of these rifles would take approximately a million times as much Po-210 as has been produced in the entire history of the earth.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
The vast majority of bullets used in infantry combat are used to keep the enemy's heads down until someone can get close enough to kill them. This means you need loud bangs and puffs of dust, so the enemy knows it's dangerous. The only soldier's who rely on sharp-shooting to kill are snipers. On the other hand, I look forward to seeing parading in their mirror suits - it'll be oh so pretty. What baffles me is why they're proposing this as an infantry weapon, and not a large scale version for fighter aircraft and the like, which have they're own power source and integrated targetting systems. This would be lethal in dogfights.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Of the laser gun is Po-210. A milligram of Polonium 210 emits as much alpha radiation as 5g of radium.
To quote LANL Polonium-210 is very dangerous to handle in even milligram or microgram amounts, and special equipment and strict control is necessary. Damage arises from the complete absorption of the energy of the alpha particle into tissue.
The maximum permissible body burden for ingested polonium is only 0.03 microcuries, which represents a particle weighing only 6.8 x 10-12 g. Weight for weight it is about 2.5 x 1011 times as toxic as hydrocyanic acid. The maximum allowable concentration for soluble polonium compounds in air is about 2 x 10-11 microcuries/cm3.
Also polonium 210 is very rare in nature. It is usually produced by bombarding Bismuth 209 with neutrons (typically in a nuclear reactor). In the current form, this weapon is an invitation for radioactive contamination disaster.
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.
However, here in Oklahoma Guns and Toys are synonymous. In fact why else would you need shooting ranges, hunting licenses, ... Hunting is a sport, sports are games, guns are used in hunting, therefore guns are toys (albeit dangerous ones).
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."
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
This is already done -- in a sense. The larger belt-feed weapons overheat from firing for too long. The solution: use two of them -- first one fires for a bit, and then the other. I believe the military calls this "talking gun".
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
Googling for 'radioisotope power cell' gives several sites including:
http://cndyorks.gn.apc.org/yspace/articles/amps.h
which describes such a cell to be used for NASA space missions. On that site: So in order to produce ~2kW, the cells are going to be BIG - and before anyone points out the 15-25 years bit again, even THESE cells don't exist yet, they are still being developed.
Looking at Stavatti's claims - the gas reservoir is therefore going to contain plutonium, and gas at 2200K and 270+ atmospheres.
a) What are they going to make it out of - that can withstand that temp and pressure - and guarantee not to rupture, releasing the plutonium. Never mind the fact that the material will have to contain all of the heat - a 2000K temp gradient - how thick would that need to be ?
b) What sort of idiot is going to want to not only HOLD one of the things, but take it into an environment where it's likely to get damaged (and go BOOM) ?
There are much more sensible ideas out there that Defence cash could be wasted on.
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
....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.
Does anyone else see a problem with using a weapon that can be blocked by the shiny side of tin-foil?
I'm sure some here have read ringworld. There's a brief discussion of the difficulties of using a laser against someone wearing clothes of the same color as the laser.
When something is a certain color, what does that mean? It means it reflects light of that wavelength. If the US army were to use it you know it would have a standard color... what's to keep an enemy force from charging wearing surplus santa suits? "AIM FOR WHITE FRINGE! THAT'S THEIR VULNERABLE PART!"
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!
Ok, this thing is going to weigh 15 pounds, use exotic materials, requires the mass production of Polonium, and it produces 104 kW of heat energy in storage. The use of a nuclear power source means throwing away powercells every 60 days even if the device is not in use. That's going to make these things hard to keep ready for use.
But let's say we overcome all of that. Our boy has his laser gun and is out there on the battle field. Let's take a real stretch and say it's a hot and a dusty battlefield (I understand that's happened once or twice). One of the funny things about light is that it likes to reflect, refract and isn't too adverse to being absorbed by things. So let's say we fire, immediately loosing a significant amount of punch vaporizing dust particles on the way to the target. Along the way we hit a nasty, sharply defined inversion layer that refracts our beam to a brand new target. Let's say the new target happens to have a nice big searchlight with a parabolic mirror. Terrible, random things ensue.
This ain't your grandpappy's ricochet.
Somebody's gonna put an eye out.
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
Let's assume this thing actually works, why not simply dress in reflective material? Maybe this would simply reflect the laser beam and render it harmless?
Any firearm can accidentally discharge. It's rare and not an everyday occurance, but it can happen. Woe be to the maggot who drops their rifle during basic training.
Any case, something civilians NEVER realize is that the military accepts CASUALTIES. They don't like it, but they deal with it.
Slightly off topic, but still in the same thought pattern:
Quite frankly, I'm amazed that the U.S. hasn't lost more troops. If I was an Iraqi soldier, I'd booby trap and landmine every fricken room, door, approach, etcetera. Every video image coming back from the field shows the boys kicking in doors, flipping mattresses, etc. Prime places to make someone's day become a shrapnel filled surprise. But, I'm an ex-Combat Engineer, so these thoughts come naturally to me....
I hope that they come home safe.
Now all we need is someone to develop shiny white plastic armor that looks cool, but is disturbingly inadequate for stopping a laser blast.
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"?
OK, speaking as an active duty Marine Corps grunt, the MOLLE sucks. The chest harness/load carrying gear is alright but MOLLE violates the most important rule-KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). I don't know how many broken MOLLE packframes I've seen and the amount of little straps and pouches I've seen lost or torn is unbelievable. YOU may like MOLLE gear but I don't and my organisation; the United States Marine Corps doesn't like it especially after the ops in Afghanistan when the MOLLE system failed miserably. THAT'S why the Marine Corps is replacing it. Thanks for the insults but I do know what I'm talking about. The first thing I did when issued the MOLLE gear was go out and buy a large ALICE pack (called a mountain ruck by Marines). Best pack I've seen in the military.
This guy is way out there
Why would Captain Kirk want to stun gentlemen? He always seemed like the "it looks more like a women than Spock" type.
It take more faith to believe in evolution than it takes to believe in God
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.
Axis of Evil Wannabees
.we're the
by John Cleese
Bitter after being snubbed for membership in the "Axis of Evil", Libya,
China and Syria today announced that they had formed the "Axis of Just as
Evil", which they said would be more evil than that stupid Iran-Iraq-North
Korea axis President Bush warned of in his State of the Union address.
Axis of Evil members, however, immediately dismissed the new Axis as
having, for starters, a really dumb name. Right. They are just as
evil...in their dreams!" declared North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
"Everybody knows we're the best evils . . best at being evil .
best."
Diplomats from Syria denied they were jealous over being excluded,
although they conceded they did ask if they could join the Axis of Evil.
"They told us it was full," said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. "An
axis can't have more than three countries", explained Iraqi President
Saddam Hussien.
"This is not my rule, it's tradition. In World War II you had
Germany,Italy and Japan in the evil Axis. So, you can only have three, and
a secret hand shake. Ours is wickedly cool."
International reaction to Bush's Axis of Evil declaration was swift, as
within minutes, France surrendered. Elsewhere, peer-conscious nations
rushed to gain triumvirate status in what has become a game of
geopolitical chairs.
Cuba, Sudan and Serbia announced that they had formed the "Axis of
Somewhat Evil", forcing Somalia to join with Uganda and Myanmar in the
"Axis of Occasionally Evil", while Bulgaria, Indonesia and Russia
established the "Axis of Not So Much Evil Really as Just Generally
Disagreeable".
With the criteria suddenly expanded and all the desirable clubs filling
up, Sierra Leone, El Salvador, and Rwanda applied to be called the Axis of
Countries That Aren't the Worst But Certainly Won't Be Asked to Host the
Olympics".
Canada, Mexico and Australia formed the "Axis of Nations That Are Actually
Quite Nice But Secretly Have Some Nasty Thoughts About America", while
Scotland, New Zealand and Spain established the "Axis of Countries That
Want Sheep to Wear Lipstick". "That's not a threat, really, just something
we like to do", said Scottish Executive First Minister Jack McConnell.
While wondering if the other nations of the world weren't perhaps making
fun of him, a cautious Bush granted approval for most axes, although he
rejected the establishment of the "Axis of Countries Whose Names End in
'Guay", accusing one of its members of filing a false application.
Officials from Paraguay, Uruguay, and Chadguay denied the charges.
Israel, meanwhile, insisted it didn't want to join any Axis, but privately
world leaders said that's only because no one asked them.
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.
Inevitably a soldier's laser rifle will get blown up (most likely by friendly fire, judging by the current state of things). There would suddenly be an invisible radioactive hotspot on the battlefield and drifting plumes of radioactive particles. Would all soldiers be forced to carry geiger counters? Would medics refuse to treat contaminated soldiers? Will chem/bio/rad suits become the permanent uniform of our fighting forces?
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
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.
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.
Crotchdot? Hmm...
Hey, Taco...I have an idea...
Human Evolution consists of at least 5 million years (from the moment there were appe like creatures that started to try to walk upright).
One of the most common traits during the history of humanity is cooperation. Cooperation between human groups is what gave us huge advantages: the young taking care of the old, and that way preserving knowledge for longer, the childless protecting the childs of others increasing the chances of the species as a whole, you name it, you are human so you can find more examples like this.
It is only when we compete for scarce resources that we turn against each other. The problem is that we are being so succesful that the groups tha lose a showdown can't just move to a different lace and prosper there.
We exhibit the same kind of violent behaviour as those rats that were allowed to overpopulate in a controlled experiment. All went pearshape: violence, carelessness for the young, killings and in general mayhem.
Evolution guided us trhough a bening path, it is only our own success and the finite amount of resources in this planet that has determined that we kill each other, but that is not pre-ordainde, if we were wiser we may decide to let the steam off by means of using our brain to go back to our communitary roots as a species.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Sure, why not? We're talking 15-25 years away, right? It worked for John Connor... and they'll have discovered lasers that fire slowly enough to look good in a movie by then, too.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Seriously, what part of gasdynamic LWS providing LFLAN capability with a Polonium-210 thermal source pumping an STC-catalitic-converter-stabalized CONHe lasing cavity through a supersonic aerospike expansion region following a constricting annulus do you not understand? ;)
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Each Laser rifle will be shipped with a Baseball Bat(tm) as a backup device. =)
It's a little late for first-person "experience" of World War II. (Closest you can get is something like "The War 1939-1945," edited by Desmond Flower. Amazing book, mainly because it's almost all first-person accounts and it includes any perspective you can imagine.)
If WWII is your model, doing a Google by "D Day" and "invasion of France" has just got me around 5,000 hits.
For a party that makes a big deal out of not being "politically correct," our R'pubs do seem to have a problem saying this word all of a sudden. Iraq's another sovereign state. We may have all sorts of legitimate reasons for doing it, or not, but sending troops into another state to depose that state's government is being called an "invasion" by sympathetic sources like The Japan Times and unsymathetic ones like This Singapore newspaper.
Lord, how Orwellian we're becoming. "Liberate" is okay, but "invasion" isn't? Can I say "war" or do I need to say "police action" -- because we're supposedly enforcing the resolutions of the body that was so divided over whether we should do this? C'mon, give me some guidance here -- I'm not sure how to adhere to the party line. Re-educate us, comrade.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
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.
So what do you suggest? Uninventing it?
Lets go back in time and un-invent the rubber ducky. That way everyone will grow up angry and mean.
lick the cancle button (at least thats what our Chinese QA says)
From the spec sheet:
An Integrated High Energy Density Power Source (Po-210) That Provides Continuous Energy, And Resultant Weapons Use, For Over 60 Days.
With a 2-month lifespan, the power packs would hardly "litter the battlefield", and besides the military is already very conscious of the necessity of not leaving behind anything that can be used as a weapon. When I was in the army, I found it quite amusing that the LAW rocket was designed to be a "disposable one-shot" design, but then they cautioned us that we were to never leave even so little as a fiberglass tube (e.g. LAW rocket launcher) behind, lest the enemy convert it into a mortar or something.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.