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Warfare at the Speed of Light
unassimilatible writes "From the They Said It Couldn't Be Done Dept., the Oakland Tribune reports that the Lawrence Livermore Labratory is ensuring that the Pentagon, inside of a decade, could be armed with a beam weapon that is near-instantaneous, gravity-free and truly surgical, focusing to such hair-splitting accuracy that it could avoid civilians while predetonating munitions miles away - perhaps someday even being mounted on Humvees."
Leaving aside the technical issues of "can you do it," there are the political and moral issues of "should you do it." Precision guided, 100% accuracy is fine until you target the wrong point. The notion that we can have zero collateral damage assumes that we can distinguish between combatants vs. innocents and allies with high accuracy.
This invention might lower the tragedies of war if we have the intell to discriminate accurately. It might also increase collateral damage/friendly fire if the device inspires overconfidence in those who press the trigger.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
..but I'm scared of americans. They're too paranoid, and they have too many weapons, and they're expanding.
... but who wants to guess that colleteral damage, as the military has come to calling it, or the slaughter of innocent civvies, as I tend to call it, will still happen? A gun is still a gun, and there's still the possiblity of human error. And that's a very real possibility.
Peter M. Dodge,
Chief Executive Officer,
LiquidFire Studios
Platinum Linux - www.
And yet it can't be used defensively?
How about the following quotes?
"What we're building... Is a laser for cutting through mountians (roads, mines etc.)"
"What we're building... is a laser to defend our skies, country against missles"
"What we're building... is a laser to cut underground bunkers on the moon"
"What we're building... a giant popcorn popper"
This is kind of sad, when we just exploit technology with weapons in the forefront of our minds and not research or domestic uses! I mean I know they're from the DoD, but with war on their minds, goodness knows what else they're up to.
International treaty forbids the use of lasers for blinding people. But there is no legal ban on striking humans
You know, if you take a laser pointer, and you point it at a fluffy poodle being walked by a little old lady at night, she might just get startled and scream a little bit. Not that I would know firsthand or anything...
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Absent human intent and use, technology stays on the shelf. Getting on a moral high horse about new weaponry will not stop people from deciding to war on each other, It will only ensure that they use more primitivw weapons.
War won't diappear if we're afraid to use new tools. People will throw rocks at each other if they have nothing else.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Well one of the labs in the running is actually developing them for use in fusion, this is a side effect kinda thing, and the military paying for the weapon would help fund the research side of things. NOthing pushed forward technology like military spending
Whether we like it or not, the US spends as much on defense as the next 10-15 countries combined. Many R&D innovations start off as defense-related technologies and only later get applied to civilian problems. That's because our government is much more likely to fund research that has military uses. Other countries (e.g., Japan, Germany) are more likely to help corporations with their R&D project. Not the US.
GMD
watch this
What is stopping the "other side" from coating their shells with a reflective surface? Especially if only one particular wavelength is used by the military, it should be straightforward to create a coating that'll effectively reflect close to 100% of the LASER.
The simple answer is "dust". The laser has very high energy. It hits the mirrored surface. The dust on the surface absorbs a large amount of energy very quickly. It essentially explodes, pitting the mirror surface. At this point, your mirror isn't a mirror. Game over.
The same applies for absolutely anything that can stick to or affect the surface, like skin oil or tiny scratches. This ignores the fact that you can't make a 100% reflective mirror, so it's going to heat up, and if you have enough energy you disrupt it anyway. Even a tiny fraction of a percent of inefficiency will take you to the cleaners.
That said, never say never. In the foreseeable future, it isn't a practical solution, though.
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Except for the fact that they light up really nicely and make a great target for conventional bombs. So, pick how you want to get scratched...
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Will the enemy start using mirrors? Keeping in mind that it can cut through inch-thick steel in two seconds, mirrors -- polished metal -- probably won't hold up too well.
Matthew G P Coe
http://mgpcoe.blogspot.com/
That's because you are correlating timing between objects with different frames of reference.
2 things: relativity of simultaneity and moving targets
Any gravitational affects on the weapon beam would have affected the light coming from the target in the same fashion.
only if they are the same path (still object) and the same frequency (index of refraction is wavelength dependent)
A Usenet Troll Triumphs on Slashdot
Come on, is this an article about optics or military equipment? For all conventional intents and purposes, "near-instantaneous" is correct and "gravity-free" almost so. And you know what? In four words, the article has thoroughly described this system's advantages over other weapons.
Of course, you are probably being facetious and my extreme boredom has driven me to type this reply.
This would actually be a legitimate application for "smoke and mirrors". The article did refer to problems with particulates.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.