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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 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!
That will be used unless the evil ones are really evils, and turn off the bit disregarding RFC and Geneva conventions, in that case the good ones will change the bit to look different.
Fortunatelly they will not be used in the Iraq war, because invaders (the ones that you traditionally call evils) and iraqis (the evil ones according to US) will use the same color.
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.
"Before a weapon like the TIS-1 could be adopted, a number of technichal hurdles would have to be successfully negotiated, such as..."
1. Getting the guns to make that "Peww!" sound whenever they shoot.
2. Making the lasers shoot at a slow enough velocity so that you can actually watch it travel from the end of the barrel to the target in no less than 0.4 seconds. This way massive hallway gun-fights involving garbage-shoot-getaways look that much cooler.
Personally, I'm with it just as long as they make one that looks like a broomhandle mauser.
No kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom! I vote to name this the Illudium Pu-36 Explosive Space Modulator.
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"