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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.
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.
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
Would mirrors be effective?
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
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!
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.
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!
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).
* 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."
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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)