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Factory Testing of Airborne Laser Cannon Completed
Acid-F1ux writes "Lockheed Martin has completed factory testing of the optical benches for the Airborne Laser's Beam Control/Fire Control (BC/FC) system. The Airborne Laser (ABL) is the first megawatt-class laser weapon system to be carried on a specially configured 747-400F aircraft, designed to autonomously detect, track and destroy hostile ballistic missiles."
I wonder what color the laser is...
I hear the green ones burn out your eyes.
The 747-400F could be Airforce One (if it's not already), so it would be understandable if these lasers were mounted to it for tracking incoming sidewinders or surface to air missiles. Not sure if it's fast enough for that, or could be. While the BC/FC may be designed to take out larger missiles, this weapon system might make a really smart pro-active chaff system, to secure the President from harm during flight. I think it's a little strange the BC/FC is being mounted on such a large aircraft, with slow scramble speed and low maneuverability, unless the US is planning to have many planes airborne, around the clock, which does seem somewhat wasteful. Nothing is said about the range of this laser, so I'm not sure if it would work from space or not.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Lockheed Martin has completed factory testing of the optical benches for the Airborne Laser's Beam Control/Fire Control (BC/FC) system.
and in other news..
Reuters reports that the gyroscope that keeps the international space station stable and in the right position stopped working, just hours after a new two-man crew moved in for a half-year stay.
Someone in Lockheed Martin's Black Ops department is rubbing their hands together gleefully right now!
A little planning goes a long way...
first megawatt-class laser weapon system to be carried on a specially configured 747-400F aircraft
Hmmm... I thought they were going to use a five megawatt system on a B-1B.
Call me when they manage to strap the fricking thing to a shark :)
Apparently an early test went horribly wrong when the laser misfired, hitting the home of the project's director (who also runs a school for gifted teenagers), and cooking a large amount of popcorn, which eventually expanded to destroy the house.
And it's only been 19 years since Real Genius gave 'em the idea!
a bunch of popcorn and an evil professor's house.
I wonder if Lockheed did a little industrial espionage and miniturized the Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator.
I'd like one to get rid of some vermin around my house.
MP3 Search Engine
the red star on the side of the ICBM.
I'd be interested by their definition of autonomous - are we talking this thing cruising around looking for a target, or are we talking an operator flagging a missile spotted by something else and the machine taking over from there.
Either way, brace yourselves for a thousand Terminator/Robotic master references.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
So what is your idea? To point it at some spot in South Dakota for a couple of months in order to gather all of the cats in the country into one spot?
And then what? Attached buttered toast to the backs of the cats, drop them, and solve the energy problems of the world with the resulting perpetual motion machine?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
And for God's sake, stop playing with yourself.
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
The laser is on a plane this size because a laser powerful enough to destroy missiles from miles away is a big fat bulky ass piece of equipment, that won't fit on a fighter plane.
I bet the neighbors are happy all those unsuccesful tests seem to be overwith.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
Won't that do nothing but make popcorn and anger the Dickless guy from "Ghostbusters"?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
your base belong to ***ZaaaapPP***
Sig it.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
"FIRE THE LAAZER"
Dr Evil must be up to something.
The laser is really just for communications. Or at least that is what we are saying for the benefit of the invading Kzinti fleet.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I don't see it mentioned in the article, but the last time I read about something like this, it required a truck full of dangerous checmicals for every shot.
Does anyone know whther this is the same thing?
It seems kind of useless if you need that much raw material, you'd only get one shot per plane.
Some time ago, Popular Science did a story on this aircraft. The laser beam originates at the tail end of the 747, and is deflected up and over the nose to allow the mirror in the nose to aim the laser in wide arcs.
So, will this technology make the fighter jet obsolete? I mean, you can't very well out-maneuver a laser. Which means that bombers will have laser weapons on the front, back, top, bottom and sides. Kind of like back in WWII when bombers had machine guns all over the place.
This certainly changes everything.
The article lack some technical specifications... Like what is the usable range of the laser, can it fire through clouds. How long can the plan stay in flight.
I suspect that the range must be short (few hundred milles at most).So it may be used only for targeting stuff in small countries (as flying a 747 over an hostile country is a recipe for disaster).
You also need to have a 747 fly for 24hrs a day (this can be managed with several plane but it will surely cost a bundle) Now how many planes will you need to cover all the potential enemy launch sites?
Then anyway, if a country plan to launch some balistic missiles, it can just send a couple jetfighter to down the 747. That is probably a fairly easy task.
Shortly after the news conference, Lockheed then announced its plan to create a moon base, from where it will fire the "laser" on Earth's major cities. The "laser," was created by Dr. Parsons and shall be known as "The Alan Parsons Project." according to confidential reports.
Lockheed's shares closed at one hundred million dollars...
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
Remember the U-2 spy plane, we found out about that almost 50 years after it was put into service!
...
Dude, the U-2 had its first flight in 1955. So according to you, we first find out about it a year from now.
I think you can expect a knock on the door from some nice gentlemen from an obscure government agency
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
" designed to autonomously detect, track and destroy hostile ballistic missiles."
does it leave the friendly ballistic missiles alone?
(hey, minime, stop humping the laser!)
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The laser isn't for aircraft defense - it's for shooting down ICBMs.
Clear, Dark Skies
... springs to life, opens up one eager eye ...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
It is going to be mounted on military aircraft. The idea (relating to gulf war I terms that we can all recall) is to put one of these over saudi arabia and have it shoot down the scuds coming out of iraq 300 miles away. It would rely primarily on burning a hole through the propellant casing of the missile causing an explosion. You then rely on things like the patriots to hit anything that gets through.
Perhaps you are confusing this with "Aurora", which doesn't exist (yet)(maybe).
FYI, the basic U-2 airframe is still in use, now designated the TR-1. The airplane part isn't particuarly secret, it's the payload (cameras, radar, ECM, etc) that is secret.
Where are the sharks with the fricken' lasers attached to their heads?
The U2 wasn't around for 50 years when it was discovered. YOu may be thinking of the SR-71, which was around for maybe 25 years before they started talking about it in public.
http://radio.weblogs.com/0103443/
I think I can remember reading something about the use of the laser initially would not be to protect the 747 carrying it, but to protect other aircraft in the area. Sort of like how one AWAC covers a battlefield, one 747 could cover a battlefield destroying all enemy missiles.
Of course, with the increase in terrorist threats (and I'm from the UK where we keep having scares about missiles being fired at passenger planes flying out of London) there seems to be an increasingly valid non-military use.
As a patriotic American, I for one look forward to my duties punching missile remnants in the Arabian desert.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Do you think they could test it out here also:
1541 Glenfidditch Avenue, Apt 101
Montreal, Quebec
Lat: 45.5092
Long: -73.5539
Mr. Jason Baumgarinagger
He plays his stereo too loud at inappropriate times.
So, would a mirror coating on a missle be an effective counter measure to this laser?
That shouldn't be too difficult to do... heck, I was silvering mirrors in highschool chemistry class.
Reading between the lines: This could imply that:
A less than megawatt laser system may already be mounted and in use on the 747-400F.
A megawatt laser system may already be mounted on other (than the 747-400F) type(s) of aircraft.
A megawatt laser system may already be in use in the military for purposes other than the destruction of ballistic missles.
Call me a tinfoil hat guy, but when the military talks about its secret stuff, often what they don't say is more informative than what they do say.
That is not a bug, its a feature. Just in case we have to fight the british again.
http://www.airbornelaser.com/
http://www.airbornelaser.com/
The offical project website with pics progress reports et al.
Cos if its on the bottom of the plane, its going to have to be generaly above the missile, and then if it misses, i wonder what that beam is going to hit?
If you bothered to do some research, you'd have found out it's a US Air Force project to provide boost phase intercept missile defense. Take a look here.
The Soviets never threatened the Americans. You bought into it, hook line and sinker: the cold-war myths created by the Zionists and their minions in the corporate media.
It's hard to tell if you're joking. If you RTFA, you'll see that this is aimed at ICBMs - the article talks about shooting them down before their warheads separate etc.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
..but what happened to the space shuttle isn't. Remember when some photographer got a shot or two of the shuttle as it was breaking up over california heading east, and his camera caught this long purple flash that allegedly looked like it was hitting the shuttle? From what I remember, they flew the camera back to texas, they hemmed and hawed about it, the actual photos were never released to the public (AFAIK) then the story evaporated. I WONDER what that was, because the way they described it it wasn't just ablation or burning stuff on the shuttle, but something else, like a "beam" of some sort.
hmmm, just one of hundreds of lost stories
they want their intellectual property back.
Now Deal of the Century and UCAV's well that's different.
British guy getting shot at by the damn thing not so funny. Pilot the next day who noticed the stupid system had locked on to him and adopted the 'get it before it gets me' strategy - damn hilarious!
I think what he meant to say was that the U2 was put into place in 1905, which is 50 years before we found out about in 1955. Of course, the 1905 model of the U2 spyplane was made of bamboo and oilcloth and flew a mere 9 metres above the landscape of the Russian Empire it was spying on. Stealth was achieved by a man with a megaphone yelling out "Don't look at me!" in Russian.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Anyone else have the willies that the thing is autonomous? Last I heard this thing had some serious range and could heat up stuff pretty hot. What if it misses? As it is there is nobody to blame, just a plane doing all the work. Its kind of hard to court marial an aeroplane.
Maybe it would be better if it autonomously detected and tracked, then popped a windows popup that said "Would you like to have being destroying a ballistic missile now Yes/no?". Put a noob in front of the monitor and you're done.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
A-10's sometimes attack british APC's too. This time I think we know who's going to be showing whom where they can stick that feather. It's all fun and games until it's your macaroni....
. . . It is that these lasers *never* hit their intended target. We would be better off trying to perfect the first Transformer. Now you know.
Monster Zero is the reason we cannot live on the surface, but must live forever live underground like this.
Old hat... Real Genius Clicky
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates when he said, "I drank what?"
True, true. We have more to fear from Kim Jong Il giving Al Qaeda a nuke and having it shipped/flown/dragged into the US than some tiny country launching a missile at us.
We can combat this two ways: kill everyone who doesn't like America, or make America the good guy again by improving the lives of people. And not killing them in the process.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Which terrorist state is next?
Watch out Canada!
That's not the point. The idea is to cruise for a long time over the battlefield, and zab ballistic missiles during the boost phase, should any take off. Think of the first gulf war (not the iran-iraq one, the one with iraq vs the rest of the world), when a big concern was mobile launchers launching scuds out of nowhere.
The missiles are easier to hit in the boost phase, since they're not moving that fast yet, and there's a big and hot rocket plume behind them. They are also easier to destroy, since they're still full of rocket fuel. Also if they have nasty NBC stuff in them, it lands back where the things was fired from (more or less) as opposed to where they was aimed (more or less).
"An object declared as type _Bool is large enough to store the values 0 and 1." -- 6.1.2.5, C99 standard.
...install the system on a dead badger.
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
You point this laser mounted thingy at your enemy's head, likes so... then their head asplode. This will change everything!
Just want to know what to expect from the leader of the free world in the future...
The firing was off due to interference from Val Kilmer and Gabriel Jarret re-aiming it to their professor's house after discovering that their experiment was used for the military.
Popcorn (and broken glass) for everyone!!
(If anyone doesn't get the reference, see the plot summary for Real Genius.)
Religion is for people afraid of going to hell.
It's for theater defense. An aircraft like this is all but useless for ICBM's it has to be within about 200 KM of where the missle is boosting. So we have to own the airspace it flies in, and suppress the air defenses. With that done, it can defend the theater from ballistic missles. Great for scuds and such. Probably ass for cruise missles. North Korea would be saddened by the news of this weapons system becoming operational, Russia more or less uninterested.
Geneva conventions or no, this would make a pretty sweet version of the AC-130's. Stand off range of somewhat less than 100 miles, blind a bunch of enemy combatants with very low fatalities. Dummies might even seek medical attention with reports of "I saw this bright light."
Fly it past Mecca, start a new religion. (On April 1st obviously).
So, what happens when the laser misses and hits a tree, a car, house??? Is that where spontanious combustion comes from?
hmm... let's see...
U-2 Shot down over Soviet Union 1 May 1960.
subtract "almost 50 years"...
Wright Brothers were still working on wheeled landing gears in 1910...
Lockheed Skunk Works rules!!!
Actually this is the final product of the same research that was the backdrop of that movie.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
of this plane,(45 thou maybe?) and how they heck can they use this in a direct shot at some place thousands of miles away? I don't mean how powerful the laser is, I mean, having line of sight to boost phase from someplace say in east_borscht siberia or we_love_rust china or something where the hostile missiles might originate? Whenever it came into direct line of sight seems way too late to me, but I don't know, just asking... Seems like they would need to bounce it off a satellite to be effective for those targets. Or maybe that ICBM deal is just a design theory and for public consumption, a "feel good" deal there to help sell it to the public, and it's really meant for direct shots to space, and just getting it up as high as possible to help eliminate blooming in the dense atmosphere at the surface and near to the surface. Higher you go, less atmosphere obviously, better your laser works. And even more speculative, maybe it's really designed as an air to ground closer range weapon, like a "super spectre" of some kind. they DID say it could be adjusted as to "spread" and intensity I guess, think zapping a battlefield full of "enemy combattants" and blinding them or burning them all at once over a big area perhaps, or other suitable targets.. rioters maybe,massive crowd control and siruption at a really safe distance, meant to put complete fear into people.
I dunno, just don't get it on hitting stuff way over the horizon "in time" with a line of sight weapon like that. To me anyway. Of course, I don't know at what altitude the missile separates stages to the actual payload, perhaps it's high enough then for line of sight shot.
The military was testing airbone pulse lasers out the back of C-130's back in the early eighties! They could get about 4 shots off before the battery packs were depleted. The offical release as to why they were discontinuing testing of the weapon was "The blasts tended to blind the enemy." Excuse me....? I thought the idea was to render the enemy incable of fighting in a war? I was in Jr. High when I first heard about these tests. They were mentioned briefly in the news before it got quiet.
(No this isn't a "conspircy theory".)
The Truth is a Virus!!!
See for an explanation.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Unguided missile weapons are typically termed "rockets." They would be useless against modern jet aircraft, and no ballistic SAM systems currently exist.
"The Beam Control/Fire Control system will point, focus and fire the laser to provide sufficient energy to destroy the missile while it is still in the boost phase of flight, before separation of its warheads."
So this would be good only if we fly near the source of the missle? What about when the missle is already in fligth heading towards its target?Mark
Were these the ones designed by Apple that you had to throw in the trash when the batteries were dead?
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I hope that the RIAA doesn't get it's hands on any of these new 747s.
ummm.
t ml
Tanks with electric force fields - Why not planes?
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,54641,00.h
I'm guessing something to do with the best defense being a good offense..
You should read up on IFF , Safe Passage Corridors, Army procedure and their uses together.
Some people here on Slashdot just think it's as simple as a trigger-happy autonomous system. Think about what these systems (Patriot, ABL) have to do and realize that it's not easy.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
I see you are drunk and are trying to hit the toilet bowl. Would you like help aiming?
in that case, you might as well assume the military has anything you want to believe, seeing as evidence is no prerequisite in formulating a conclusion. also, did you ever consider the fact that that article was not written by a member of military, but by an e4 journalist? ah wait, he's secretly being paid by the military, because that's what circumstances could possibly allow for.
simply because something could be true doesn't actually make it true. you could spend all day filling in the blanks of info in press releases from everywhere. fun speculation, but worthless, insignificant analysis.
...a launch problem, or a design problem?
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Read and heed RealErmine's advice. If you thought ballistic missile defense was tough, try doing theater-level air defense. The operating environment is a lot busier.
Nearsightedness, or astigmatism, is caused by the shape of the eyeball being different. That is one powerful laser pen to have warped your eyeball!. Are you sure it was not some sort of force-field projection gun?
Call me when you can nail a six inch spike into a 2x4 with your penis.
When a theater ballistic missle can say....oh carry a nuclear/chemical/biological weapon, or drag israel into a war and disintegrate a coallition, the 100 or so mile range of a weapon that flies above the clouds, 24 hours a day, multiple planes included, is plenty cost effective when waging war is affordable at a billion dollars a day and your enemy is looking to tack on an order of magnitude.
As for shooting down a US millitary air craft with a jet fighter. GOOD LUCK. You'll need it. I'll direct you to the combat record of the F-15. 101 victories, no loses. Soon (2008) to be replaced by the F-22 which makes it look like a heap. And with a stand off range of 100 miles or so and an altitude likely in the neighborhood of 7 miles or so, a shoulder fired missle or RPG isn't going to cut it. Firing a bunch of ballistic missles is a much better bet, but under the watchfull gaze of the airforce and navy you've got better employment opportunities as Darth Vader's emergency messange delivery boy.
I guess it's a lovely proof of concept but... How many missiles could one of these 747s destroy in one "sortie"? My guess is very low. It wouldn't be much use for any country-sized adversary. Countries like North Korea have a limited supply of plutonium; they have no trouble producing missiles. All the have to do is fire off a conventional missile every couple of minutes then fire the live ones. This lovely new system would just serve to ensure that LA got 20-30 minutes more warning than it would have had?
...pictures. Have you? Why weren'tthey released, they released all the other pictures, but NOT the purple flash ones as far as I know. As far as I know, again, they were never released, NOR given back to the photographer, and according to what I remember at the time, the reporters who saw them, along with the quotes from the nasa worker who first saw them and arranged for them to be transported by special jet back to texas, they were QUITE extraordinary.
REMEMBER this little gem. Remeber how the government SWORE up and down and sideways with all kinza tame scientists and cia analysis that TWA 800 had an exploding fuel tank, despite all the eyewitness testimony. Are you aware they very quietly admitted they were totally wrong last year, BUT, offered no other information about it as to cause or "who did it?". That story appeared like in two paragraphs on page 16 then disappeared again, leaving 99.99% of the people out there stuck with the impression in their minds that the "magic exploding fuel tank" story is still true facts, when it obviously ain't and they admit it now. Just like the magic 9-11 burning towers all falling perfectly down, despite no other similar occurrence ever with any similar towers and fire, despite actual eyewitness testimony and recorded video and audio of firefighters IN the burning buildings swearing there were set charges used, and despite the videos that you can see the poofs as the charges go off. they swear it's from burning kerosen fuel. Uh huh. ande building 7 was hit with which plane again, to have this fuel in it? Oh ya, IT WASN'T HIT.. Yes, that's available to view, but the mass conditioning media is not bringing that stuff up, nor is the 9-11 whitewash commision.
I REMEMBER details like that, crackheads don't remember squat. Crackheads deny what is in front of them, they can't see the elephant in the living room,they'll even deny it vigorously, just like career alkys.
Is there some sort of Godwin's Law for bringing Darth Vader into conversations about space weapons or war-lasers?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
CAP - Combat Air Patrol
"Hi, I'm George. - I've got this 34 year old airplane that's nice and all, but it's really lacking something. I was hoping you nice folks over at MTV could help me, Pimp My Ride!"
Not unless the technology is scaled down several orders of magnitude in its power usage, and stabilization technology improves. A large portion of the 747's cabin area is occupied the laser system; it seems highly unlikely that a bomber could carry multiple laser assemblies, while having all of the associated things a bomber has (such as bombs). And then it's unlikely anything other than a larger aircarft could carry the laser. Fighters would stick to missiles and guns, and would fight with each other.
You're looking at only half the statement, therefore you are 100% off target.
... designed to autonomously detect, track and destroy". They had an airborne laser mounted in a converted KC-135 (707) during the Vietnam Era. It was a CO2 gas laser that also operated in the infrared region (about 10.6 microns I believe).
The important part to look at is "first
The autonomous operation of the laser is the 'new technology'. The Vietnam era version was used for ground attack and was targeted by the pilot flying a specific path since the laser was in a fixed mount. A 'bombadier' triggered the laser at the appropriate time.
If this is meant to defend against balistic missles fired at the US mainland, wouldn't the planes have to be in the air all the time? Seems pretty wasteful for the low likely hood of attack.
A better use of this would be as a battlefield deployment. Something like the first Gulf War and defense against SCUDs. Not sure what the range is on this laser, so you might have to be pretty close to the source which might make this impractical.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Pierre Salinger, the human sheepdog, swore up and down that he saw a squadron of 5 Colonial Vipers repainted with the Halliburton logo shooting down the plane. Either that, or it was light reflecting off of the dandruff flakes in the eyebrows that hang over his eyes.
"Just like the magic 9-11 burning towers all falling perfectly down, despite no other similar occurrence ever with any similar towers and fire"
Let's google for other "skyscrapers destroyed by jets" stories. Yes! There are HUNDREDS of them! You are right! IT never did happen this way before!
"Yes, that's available to view, but the mass conditioning media is not bringing that stuff up"
Yeah. Conditioned to believe only what happened. But you know better. Those natvan.com comic books have the REAL truth!
Coocoo! Coocoo!
Oh, I dunno...
Frickin' Sharks.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
I thought USA had signed a protocol that bans or at least makes the use of these types of weapons a possible war crime.
5 3/D7A6A26E31A44739C1256B66005A07B4
http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/iwpList1
We can combat this two ways: kill everyone who doesn't like America, or make America the good guy again by improving the lives of people. And not killing them in the process.
In the case of Kim Jong Il, we probably can't do #2. He is not ready to accept anyone's assistance as far as improving the lives of his people.
1. They hate Americans.
2. They love pot.
3. Weird accents.
4. Women are pretty enough they don't need to be pre-baged.
5. Good skiing.
dude... lets put a huge ball of jiffy pop in the deans house, then sneak into the secret military compound and reprogram the targeting system so that it'll fry the deans house and give us a tasty treat!
that'll stop them from using science to effectively kill people from great distances!
genius! really! (crap im lame)
|plastic....or gasoline?|
Hope it can defend itself with those lasers too. A 747 seems to me a very easy target...
Would making a highly reflective surface on a missle be an effective counter-measure to this type of technology?
Your puny "lasers" won't even get past our navigation shields!
Does the laser run Linux?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
No , the US Patriot is defective , even the new one , both in hadware and software , thats why the Israëli made/use the arrow instead
Even today, they bounce harmlessly off Darth Vader's open palm.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
i was wondering why the weather satellit
:P
...
image of north america was showing some very
interessting cloud patterns in the north-east
of TEXAS a few days ago (yesterday?).
you get a water cooled nuke reactor to have
a fairly far seeable "smoke"stake", so maybe
firing this megawatt laser might have it's
real work cut out for "weather control"?
last i heard, canada needs some serious rain,
and america needs some serious alternative
power-source. just imagine a fusion powered
laser
seems like OAKLEY stocks are on a slow but
steady rise in the next few decades (especially
when they finally get that "science project
laser" on to the moon
I never said that the things that I postulated are true but I do think that they are conclusive.
should have read:
I never said that the things that I postulated are true but I do not think that they are conclusive.
I guess I deserve all the flaming that leaving the 'not' out of that statement might incite . . .
The first thing I think of when I see this is that it could be used for a blinder/dazzler with an immense range. Instant air superiority.
Someone said "green lasers burn out your eye..." This may or may not be true of green lasers but I understand that their wavelength is much more subject to diffusion by microabrasions in such materials as glass. If they're shone at car windows, supposedly the effects vary from a large blinding spot on the window to turning the entire window into a brilliant green sheet.
I understand that blinding lasers are against some Geneva accord. They're so different from blinding grenades, and blinding napalm, and blinding shell fragments, don't you know... Whether or not we respect the Geneva convention at all anymore, or whether such a ruling might just be trampled on by us if we ever got into extremis such as a fight with another technological power, I can easily see us using a theatre-wide laser this way. The benefits would be huge.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
Google didn't help. It mentioned KC-135s being used to drop "Laser Guided Bombs", but nothing about destrictive lasers.
As Far as I remember, the first high powered lasers (red only) were invented in the late 70s. Lasers that were not powered by excited rubys were first invented in the early 80s. Liquid Lasers, not long after.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
This information may be a bit dated, but gives more detailed info on the YAL-1 ABL Airborne Laser, as well as many links to related articles.
-Malfaetor
Reviled did I live, said I, as evil I did deliver
I was prepared to laugh.
I was left wanting.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
they had an airborne five-megawatt system at Pacific Tech, though all it was good for was making popcorn.
"Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself." -Richard Feynman
we only take cheap shots at you because we're tight like that, right. We got your back, and when the shit's on, we know you got ours. Those french fucks on the other hand.... I hope you guys imported a couple of Germans to guard the chunnel just in case. Or just stored a couple of cardboard cut outs, really.
The effective range of this is anywhere from 500-1500 miles. The real problem isn't the range, it is the targeting system. It is fairly difficult to accuratly target a laser through the atmosphere at that range. I happen to know some of the people who worked on the logic for this, and the gist of their research was that this was a really really bad way to do things. There are cheaper alternatives to this technology.
If at first you don't succeed, redefine 'success'
The Track Illuminator Laser (TILL) illuminates the body of a missile to determine where to point the high-energy laser. Then, the Beacon Illuminator Laser (BILL) is used to determine atmospheric distortion in order to correct the shape of the high-energy laser to shoot down the missile. Tarantino's reach knows no bounds!
"The bigger the lie, the more they believe." - Det. Bunk
For people that think it's too slow/big/whatever. Take a look here on the abl page. It fly's a ways away. Basically, if fighters were scrambled toward it first, the US would know a war had begun. If missile are launched first, it can take a few down before it has to run from the fighters.
For people that say it has no use because ICBMs are cheap and so many would be launched: China and Russia have lots of ICBMs. Not many others do. It costs a LOT of money. Because the first time you have to use it it HAS to work, you have not only the missiles, but the silos, the staff, the training (continuious), the fuel care, etc, etc, etc. Maintaining a stockpile of ICBMS is a LOT of money. And not easy as russia showed by boinking 2 sub launched ICBMs during Putin's dog and pony show before the election.
Also, remember, it's limited shots because it's chemical. This isn't some type of perfect solution to fighting in the sky.
also remember that this is focused on exploding the fuel tank on a ballistic missile, nothing else.
Also, the Kenetic Interceptor contract has been awarded for development of a boost phase hit to kill interceptor which will provide layered defense with the ABL. These things create a launch area denied, not blanket coverage that means no missile will ever be launched.
The grey beards among us will remember with a chuckle that "experts" and "researchers" and "respected academics" predicted utter and complete failure for all onboard-laser efforts.
Don't you remember all these naysayers about "SDI won't work" and "you can't make mobile high power lasers"?
I wonder, I really wonder why so many very clever people wasted their time "proving" that it couldn't be done while lowly engineers were busy making it work. Think about what a horrendous, freakin's waste of human energy this was: Clever people fighting to prove that something cannot be done while others just do it. A horrible doubt suddenly assails me: Could it be a case of ideological blindness?
Naaaah. Our academics are very open-minded. They wouldn't oppose a project just because it's pushed by politicians they dislike. That would be so low, so crass, so intellectually corrupt... Whew! The horrible doubt is gone. And now, if you'd excuse me, I have an appointment with Santa Claus.
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Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Checks post history
O.K., maybe it's pretty rare that I say something funny. Sorry.
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Allen Zadr
there's never been a skyscraper collapse like the wtc buildings from any fire, even fires that burned for days. No place. Never. And again, what plane hit building #7? How did that mysteriously fall down just like the others? And the video with the firefighters talking about it-they reporting a series of explosions right before the collapse- is about to hit the bigtime, you'll see it if you want to, it's out there now. They-the government spokesweasels- even lied about the firefighters radios not working at the time, now they admit they were working just fine.
The net is too good to get facts out now, the governmental coup plotters and liars are in spin and damage control now, so thanks for playing, but you fail it.
100s of billions of dollars very well spent. Yep. Yessiree Bob. And there are no conservative academics.
OR whichever country is NOT threatening america this year!
NO SIG
What Marillion song is THAT lyric from?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
...just a complex arrangement of mirrors.
Sorry, I had to laugh out loud at this:
http://www.airbornelaser.com/fun/
"Fun stuff: This section has been removed at the request of AirborneLaser".
What do you mean, the Pentagon has no sense of humor?
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Wha...? He knows it works. That is why he went after a major terrorist leader. It ended up deterring Kadaffy.
All that they tested was the fire control system and the targeting lasers. The big bad boy laser itself hasn't fire a shot yet. That will come in an integration test later this year.
The Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL) does require a large amount of chemicals, however the current design allows for an adaquate number of shots before it needs to be reloaded. I've usually heard numbers in the range of 20-50. Keep in mind that it is inteded to melt/fatigue the missile in the boost phase, when it is under a lot of internal pressure, to cause it to blow itself up. Depending on range, atmospheric turbulence, transmission, and other factors, each shot will take different legths of time to cause this to happen.
End of Line.
You can get the American Physical Society's report on boost phase missile defense here - its in lots of pdfs.
There is a lot of cool stuff in here. Airborne lasers are covered on pages 293 - 342.
Here are their conclusions from the executive summary
"Our main conclusions are the following:
1.Boost-phase defense against intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) hinges on the burn time of the attacking missile and the speed of the defending interceptor rocket. Defense of the entire United States against liquid-propellant ICBMs, such as those deployed early by the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China (China), launched from countries such as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Iran, may be technically feasible using terrestrial (land-, sea-, or air-based) interceptors. However, the interceptor rockets would have to be substantially faster (and therefore necessarily larger) than those usually proposed in order to reach the ICBMs in time from international waters or neighboring countries willing to host the interceptors. The system would also require the capability to cope with at least the simplest of countermeasures.
2.Boost-phase defense of the entire United States against solid-propellant ICBMs, which have shorter burn times than liquid-propellant ICBMs, is unlikely to be practical when all factors are considered, no matter where or how interceptors are based. Even with optimistic assumptions, a terrestrial-based system would require very large interceptors with extremely high speeds and accelerations to defeat a solid-propellant ICBM launched from even a small country such as North Korea. Even such high-performance interceptors could not defend against solid-propellant ICBMs launched from Iran, because they could not be based close enough to disable the missiles before they deployed their munitions.
3. If interceptor rockets were based in space, their coverage would not be constrained by geography, but they would confront the same time constraints and engagement uncertainties as terrestrial-based interceptors. Consequently, their kill vehicles (the final homing stage of the interceptors) would have to be similar in size to those of terrestrial-based interceptors. With the technology we judge could become available within the next 15 years, defending against a single ICBM would require a thousand or more interceptors for a system having the lowest possible mass and providing realistic decision time. Deploying such a system would require at least a five- to tenfold increase over current U.S. space-launch rates.
4. The Airborne Laser now under development could have some capability against liquid-propellant missiles, but it would be ineffective against solid-propellant ICBMs, which are more heat-resistant.
5.The existing U.S. Navy Aegis system, using an interceptor rocket similar to the Standard Missile 2, should be capable of defending against short- or medium-range missiles launched from ships, barges, or other platforms off U.S. coasts. However, interceptor rockets would have to be positioned within a few tens of kilometers of the launch location of the attacking missile.
6.A key problem inherent in boost-phase defense is munitions shortfall: although a successful intercept would prevent munitions from reaching their target, it could cause live nuclear, chemical, or biological munitions to fall on populated areas short of the target, in the United States or other countries. Timing intercepts accurately enough to avoid this problem would be difficult."
Which leads to the question: what other stuff could they zap with this?
Automobiles, busses, trains, homes of political dissidents, protest marches, perhaps even individuals walking down the street.
Zeus had his bolt of lightning, now GWB has his.
"The flight attendants will now point out the locations of the emergency exits using a laser pointer. Wait!! not that pointer!!!!"
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
after taking out the missle, they should train it to vaporize the bastard that shot it. Wouldn't that be fun.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
isn't necessarily the size of the laser, but hitting the target. The ABL is designed to shoot from 100s of kilometers away, so it doesn't have to be all that maneuverable.
Hitting the target is the problem. A missile has a nice bright plume to acquire it optically, a nice pointy nose to provide an excellent reference for the rest of the body, and a fairly low frequency (spatially) flight path (meaning it doesn't juke and jive). All you have to do then is compensate for atmospheric turbulence and it's an easy kill. Other targets aren't so nice. Remember the goal is to hit a spicific part of the missile (the high internal pressure areas).
I'm not saying it's impossible, good image recognition techniques can do what is necessary, but the problem is usually speed. The missile tracking algithms are fast beacause they are pretty simple. The more advanced can't be done at the necessary rate (we're talking around 10k times per second) or latency for this application.
End of Line.
which is at 1.315um. Happens to be a nice transmission gap there.
End of Line.
Have you played Command and Conquer Generals Zero Hour? They use lasers to shoot down incoming missiles. That game was out like months ago. This is old news...
I think he or his generals are loopy enough to be that rogue nation. Throw in any Muslim country that gets taken over by Islamic Fundamentalist as well...
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Box cutters are a lot cheaper than 747+lasercannon. And FedEx'ing some unguarded Iraqi uranium to a NYC reservoir is cheaper still. These clowns in the National inSecurity Apparatus prefer fighting the Cold War to admit losing the Terror War.
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make install -not war
Moron. Do a Google search on libyan leader and you will see many valid spellings. However, as you have been lying about Iraq in order to defend the terrorists and Saddam's former regime, I doubt you to be interested in the truth. You are the one who needs to volunteer to go to Iraq: you appear to know nothing about the place or the conflict.
would be a problemsince high reflectivity mirrors are usually kept really clean and protected, which would be tough with one flying through the air at high speeds. Also, the atmospheric compensation and targeting subsystems utilize the reflectivity of the target to get the information to do the compensation. Having more light coming back to you improves the results of the process, which would result in a better focused, better targeted laser. I don't think it would help all that much.
End of Line.
1) Muammar Qaddafi 2) Mo'ammar Gadhafi 3) Muammar Kaddafi 4) Muammar Qadhafi 5) Moammar El Kadhafi 6) Muammar Gadafi 7) Mu'ammar al-Qadafi 8) Moamer El Kazzafi 9) Moamar al-Gaddafi 10) Mu'ammar Al Qathafi 11) Muammar Al Qathafi 12) Mo'ammar el-Gadhafi 13) Moamar El Kadhafi 14) Muammar al-Qadhafi 15) Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhafi 16) Mu'ammar Qadafi 17) Moamar Gaddafi 18) Mu'ammar Qadhdhafi 19) Muammar Khaddafi 20) Muammar al-Khaddafi 21) Mu'amar al-Kadafi 22) Muammar Ghaddafy 23) Muammar Ghadafi 24) Muammar Ghaddafi 25) Muamar Kaddafi 26) Muammar Quathafi 27) Mohammer Q'udafi 28) Muammar Gheddafi 29) Muamar Al-Kaddafi 30) Moammar Khadafy 31) Moammar Qudhafi 32) Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi
By the way, the country is spelled Libya, not Liberia. Bet you had NO idea!
The ABL program has been anything but secret. While I was in the AFRL supporting this there were several conferences that I attended that openly discussed the physics and engineering behind it and ways to improve it. Try looking for the ABL technologies conference at the SPIE website. Held during the Aerosense conference in Orlando. It was never classified while I was there, there was much university involvement (it's a damn sexy problem), and often foreigners attended the conferences.
I repeat, this isn't secret stuff, just stuff generally ignored by the public.
End of Line.
all we need now is a huge anthill.
If I recall correctly, there was a pretty serious problem with the laser because it could only be shot once and the gasses generated from the chemical reaction were toxic and would kill the crew that was using the laser.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
Although the range of this system is "limited" to a few hundred miles, it has substantial capacity within its engagement radius. 1. It can nail missiles v.v.quickly -- it doesn't have to notice them launching either, because it will be que'ed through sensor fusion technology, such as JSTARS, AWACS and the DSS (might have the wrong name) satellites which, among other things, are specifically designed to see rocket launches. 2. I must have missed the Death Ray observation -- this has high value for snapshots at someone like ... say, Osama.
3. On the Geneva Convention and Blinding. The current administration is big-time on the record as stating that it follows the GC, and that the GC _only_ applies to _Lawful_Combatants_. The Current Administration is explicit in calling Al Queda et alia -- terrorists in general -- unlawful combatants. ERGO, the current administration does not believe the GC will prevent them from burning the eyes out of a bunch of terrorists.
Also of note: the GC addresses blinding weapons, not weapons which happen to blind as part of their normal operation.
4. I suspect there are some interesting anti-infrastructure/anti-material applications we haven't mentioned yet. F'rex: starting area fires, burning down oil storage facilities, elec. dist. systems
These apps are doable w/o laazers, but an ABL might leave a more difficult-to-diagnose footprint.
5. how q(.)(.)l!!!
One aircraft can shoot down several missiles in succession (multiple launch scenario). Additionally it is going after ballistic missiles. In order to get the accuracy it needs, predictive filters are in place to intelligently guess the kinetic position of the missile as it flies. The filter use models that are based on what a ballistic missile does. Deviate too much from that and the accuracy goes to pot. Couple that with the fact the the lasers don't go off untile the target is above the cloudline and the only mistakes that are likely are if North Korea decides to send a man in orbit during a war. (Wasn't there a cartoon about that)
End of Line.
Finally, the deterrent factor doesn't exist. Until someone works out a way to eliminate (or hell, even FIND) Ohio class (or the soon to be deployed Virginia class) ballistic missile subs at sea, our deterrent is very, very, very safe.
I don't think any country in the world, even Soviet Russia at the height of their might doubted the US' ability to retaliate. So if you're going to lose anyway, when would you use it? When you've already lost.
The ABM is an offensive weapon for attacking nations that do have missiles. Let's say the US wants to invade e.g. North Korea. They may have a missile, but there's no way in hell they'll launch it without provokation. And if they did, this plane would be too far away anyway.
Instead, imagine that the US was invading North Korea. They may decide to go out with a bang instead of a whimper, and launch everything they have. In comes the ABM-plane, and knocks them out. That is what this plane is for. It's not for defending the US, it's an offensive weapon to prevent counterattacks. No more, no less.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
the aiming mirrors in the laser are extremely exotic heavy materials and expensive and function in a air tight clean-room environment.
A missile flying through the air isn't going to be covered with that kind of material and it would be marred pretty quickly...
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Grampa: What the hell is that?
Frink: Why, it's a death ray my good man, behold. (Frink fires death ray)
Grampa: Hey, feels warm, kinda nice.
Frink: Well it's just a prototype, with proper funding I'm confident this little baby could destroy an area the size of New York City.
Grampa: But I want to help people, not kill 'em.
Frink: Oh, well to be honest, the ray only has evil applications. You know my wife will be happy, she's hated this whole death ray thing from day one.
Theater high energy laser. It was/is a joint US/Isreali project to destroy smaller missile of the type that frequenly come over from Lebenon (Katyusha rockets I think). It uses a HF/DF (helium flouride/dueterium floride) laser. Not on a tank, but on a couple of trailers that are not quite so mobile. Worked pretty well in testing, was able to hit multiple rockets in quick succession. They never deployed it, but decided to start working on a more mobile version instead.
End of Line.
... when will this one show up in C&C Generals? Wanna kill those Scud Storms at the boost phase! ;)
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
Also, the AIM-54C Phoenix missile has a range of around 100 miles, (+/- a lot, I'd look it up, but I'm lazy. I've heard 80mi, I've heard 150.) which is probably greater than the range of this laser, and certainly cheaper. The reason they put it on a plane as opposed to being ground based is so it can get higher in the atmosphere, which will difuse the laser energy.
Flash-bang's do not blind, they disorient, and the effects are temporary. Blinding via 5 megawatt lasers is permanent. Napalm (which we don't use) and shell fragments are meant to kill, which they do far more effectively that blinding.Blinding anythings are against the Geneva conventions because they are weapons with the intent to maim, (which is bad) as opposed to weapons that are meant to kill. (which is ok)
On top of that it's in the interest of the US to abide by the Geneva conventions because it gives us all the more righteousness when we fight enemies who don't, (witness Iraq in 2003) and if our enemies do fight a purely conventional war, we really won't have any difficulty beating them. (witness Iraq in 1991) Breaking LOAC (law of armed conflict) is in absolute violation of US principles and values, to say nothing of the disadvantage it puts us at militarily and politically.
Furthermore, you know those helmets pilots wear that have the visors? The purpose of those visors is not just to block glare from the sun, but to block range-finding/guidance laser beams, which have a disturbing tendancy to temporarily blind people, which really sucks when you're trying to fly a plane. That's why they wear transparent ones during night-flights. (unless the flight is going to be during the night and day, in which case they just use the tinted ones and flip it up during the night portion, and hope they don't get lased.) It wouldn't work.
Did you actually read my whole post?
Did you read and retain the part where it says "...if we ever got into extremis such as a fight with another technological power?"
I'm not referring to rousting the goat-herdsmen in stony wastelands, which is what we're currently doing.
You talk about flight helmets which prevent people from getting blinded by guide beams. Last I checked, they aren't using lasers of that power level to detonate missiles in the air.
Hmmm, how silly of me. You're right, this system won't work anyway! Threat nations can simply coat their missiles with the same material your magic flight helmets are made of. End of problem. We must warn the pentagon before they spend billions more on a system whose beam can be stopped by a simple mylar sheet! And you're right about the US always abiding by the Geneva Conventions. Like treatment of prisoners.
I'm not even going to address the other asinine points you raise. You're out, next batter please.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
There is a mirror in the nose of the 747, used for aiming. If it is so hard to make those mirrors, how would you explain that one?
That doesn't seem to be correct, either. According to this and other pages, YF-12 was first acknowledged in 1964. That was only two years after A-12 flew for the first time. A-12, YF-12 and SR-71 are the same plane. Either to confuse the purpose of the airplane or being unable to decide what use that high-speed/high-altitude plane had, they kept changing names till they settled for SR-71.
As soon as YF-12 started breaking world records, they went public. I think the people who read about the plane those days had an impression that YF-12 was one of those experimental palnes (X-planes). I remember a magazine article about the world records. (I was collecting back issues of an aircraft magazine.)
My major concern is that some terror group (you know, those guys that hate us and are willing to die for their cause) gets ahold of a warhead and drives it someplace interesting. Not sure how a missile defense shield would help that.
My bigger concern is that this missile defence shield could make countries which want to harm us develop closer ties to these terrorists. Or adopt terrorist means themselves with plausible deniability (letting the US know that a nuclear warhead was stolen a few days before it detonates in New York Harbor on a container ship, or suppose it is smuggled onto a sailboat and sent up the Patomac to Washington, DC, or flown in on a small plane which was purchased from drug smugglers and them moved by Ryder trucks to somewhere else in the US (NYC?, DC?, A city near you?)
I for one think that this is not a good idea, and that we should be focusing on technologies that enhance global stability instead.
Why?
Because no terrorist which obtains a nuke will embark on a ten year R&D project to develop an ICBM.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
"...track and destroy hostile ballistic missiles."
Do they define what a 'friendly' ballistic missle is?
The US will never engage in air combat with an enemy ever again. Terrorism is the future of warfare. If you don't understand this, read over twenty years of world history. Read about dirt-poor Palestinians bringing the Israeli economy to its knees for a few dollars. Read about Chechnyan rebels killing Russians in Russia for pennies. Read about American fundamentalists blowing up other Americans for practically no cost.
The military is buying toys for boys so the boys can get paid. This has zero, zilch, nada to do with pending threats to the US, but many small-brained people like to think so.
CAP - See "hat" n. 1. A covering for the head, especially one with a shaped crown and brim. 2. 1. A head covering of distinctive color and shape worn as a symbol of office. 2. The office symbolized by the wearing of such a head covering. 3. A role or office symbolized by or as if by the wearing of different hats: wears two hatsone as parent and one as corporate executive.
IANALOOA
How long before people start building shiny silver missiles?
Trust me, this is not what we want to be doing. Next thing you know some guy will be firing this thing through a system of lenses at your house and popping enough popcorn inside it to break all the windows and destroy the foundation. You'll end up being pushed out the door by an ocean of popcorn. And you HATE popcorn!
I know a person is much smaller than a SCUD and not filled with explosive fuel and not spewing fire out their feet to track them, so it's a harder task. But if you could target a person, I imagine it would be very useful in, say, Najaf.
How can this be? Of course not. It is defensive, since it is used against offensive missiles AFTER these offensive missiles are launched in an attack.
As for Kadaffy, here: have some money
This sounds alarmingly like the "Crossbow" project in the movie "Real Genius."
You're wrong that since ICBMs are so expensive, only a few countries will be able to field them and if they can, they'll be in sufficient quantities to overwhelm ABMD.
Poster boy case is Kim Jong II. He's sufficiently deranged that he's poured huge amounts into developing both nukes and the missiles to deliver them. It's not clear if he has an ICBM but as it turns out, he doesn't need them. All he needs is to be able to threaten South Korea or Japan which he can with the missiles he currently has. China has a some 500 missiles pointed at Taiwan. Though she probably won't launch against Los Angeles, she could easily launch against Taiwan and claim it was an internal affair. If we don't act to neutralize those kinds of threats, Taiwan and Japan won't have much option but to develop their own nukes. I'm one who thinks the fewer nuke-bearing countries there are, the better off everyone is.
An airborne laser system, if it can be made to work, serves to nuetralize those threats.
You're also wrong that you have to be flying over the hostile country to take out the missile. You only need to be able to see the missile to kill it. Line of sight at 35,000 feet lets you see over 230 miles, which more than covers North Korea if you place planes in both the Yellow and Japan sea.
Missile defense just has to kill some missiles to be worth the cost - it doesn't have to kill all the missiles. In Rick Atkinson's, In the Company of Soldiers, he writes of a couple of incidents where the Patriot stopped Iraqi missiles from hitting massed Americans. Though the Patriots did not perform well during Desert Storm, they appear to have improved markedly over the intervening 10 years. Granted air borne and Patriots are different beasts but my point is that given time and lots of real testing as opposed to the shit testing the Air Force has been peddling for the Alaskan ABMD, an air borne laser may prove to be a very good weapon to possess.
"There's no defense like a good offense"
The sum of all fears.. i rest my case what sucks is... thier bomb was wired to camels... i smoke camels....ah shit
Several people here have pointed out that no rational (or even irrational) world leader would launch a WMD tipped ballistic missile against the US or its allies because they know that 30 minutes later their country would be reduced to radioactive ash by a small fraction of the US ICBM arsenal.
But despite the world-wide opinion (that we have worked hard to culitivate) that US enjoys inflicting death and destruction upon random people around the globe, we really do not. Espcially, we do not want to (again) convert mass numbers of perfectly innocent people into a toxic cloud just because they happened to be born in country run be some crazy dictator who is completely un-accountable to the people he/she rules.
For whatever reasons you want to name (morals, sense of fairness, whatever), the US would probably be very hard pressed to actually push the retaliation button if we knew the target country had already shot off everything they owned. OK, if all of London or LA was ashes, so would be whoever fired first. But suppose we weren't sure how much damage there really was, or it wasn't THAT big of a nuke, bio-bomb, etc. Would you still feel justified in wiping an entire country off the map? And if you wait more than a couple hours to judge the effects of attack, you basically lose the pure rage and will needed to retaliate en-masse. And no matter how bad the destruction of the hostile attack was, try explaining why that meant another 10 million random people needed to die when the history books are written, when the next election comes about, or when the inevitable attempts to lodge war crimes start? (respond to deliberate mass killing of civilians with the unfortunate killing of civilians in a poorer country? not allowed!)
So the net effect of this is that the US deterrent isn't is absolute as it was with the Russians. So if you are a pissed off dictator with nuke and a missile handy, why not take a role of the dice? You may well find yourself dying of old age rather than radiation posioning.
And that is why the US is very interested in developing ballistic missile defense systems, we can no longer depend on ourselves to provide the assured destruction needed to effectively deter everyone, and they are starting to realize it.
http://www.mast.queensu.ca/~nagydani/missdef.pdf
"...designed to autonomously detect, track and destroy hostile ballistic missiles."
Or turn a gigantic bag of corn kernels into an entire houseful of the delicious treat.
"Number two is the only way to salvation..."
Let's assume for the moment that they intend to only shoot at airborn targets. What happens to any object on the ground that might be hit by the beam if it misses its moving airborn target?
And who's going to pay for that damage? (the American tax payer?)
like SCUDS. It isn't and never has been intended for ICMB use. You all pooh poohed the Patriot missile because they SCUDs still hit something, even if it wasn't the intended target. This was developed so that the SRBMs wouldn't even get out of the country of launch.
Again it is not intended for nuclear ICBMs.
Furthermore, to the Irans and North Koreas of the world, it is very costly to come up with many missiles, enough to get through the ABL system. If they are spending tons of cash trying to overwelm the ABL with multiple launches (which have relatively low military utility) they are not likely going to win any conflict.
Next time do a little research on the subject.
End of Line.
... and that is a very real possibility. Thanks for the article. Wonder why they don't release the photos though? If it's just a camera glitch? No notice in the article if that has happened, if so, my apologies, just haven't seen it, and it'simpossible for me to keep track of everyhting, try as I might.
I'm not saying it was shot down with some death beam, I just find it funny (funny odd, not funny ha-ha) they do these things. I work, very reluctantly, from a default skeptical position of:
-government has been caught in so many critical event lies that you should always be suspicious. I WISH I didn't have that opinion, I would much rather spend my time doing something else, if I didn't think it was so important to constantly monitor what they do and say, for obvious reasons, plain old fashioned patriotism and wanting to NOT see my fellow humans screwed over all the time. I do my best as a teamof one guy to do this. Spend a lot of time doing it. If I get updated and corroborated data,I am more than willing to accept it, adjust my position, and move on, acknowledging the changes most readily.
It's their fault, because they have the proven track record of being chronic serial liars, all the way from very minor issues that don't mean much to covering up murders, on both a small scale (assassinations and other sorts of individual persecutions) and on to a mass scale (illegal trumped up wars based on total lies, instigating coups all over, illegal experiments on civilians and their own employees in the services, etc).
When they stop doing that,I'll stop pointing it out, or pointing out circumstantial clues or anecdotal evidence that might point towards illegalities or coverups, etc. Balls in their court all the time on that, their move.
What I've always found interesting is that those who take issue with the U.S. defensive ABM program seem to have no qualms with the U.S. offensive ICBM programs. Which is more likely to provoke war? Which is more directly meant to protect?
posting nothing that refutes the observation on high rises.
This system isn't designed to take out an ICBM, it's designed to take out short range ballistic missiles. Like, for example, the Katusha rockets that Hezbolla fires from Lebanon at Israel every month or so.
It would be silly to have a 747 (big, easy to shoot down) orbiting over china or even north korea just waiting for that ICBM to launch. (Remember, this is designed for shooting it down in the boost phase, which means the airplane has to pretty much have line of sight to the launch site). How many seconds do you think it would take china to take out every 747 that had line of sight to their missile silos if they were going to start a nuclear war? Even if you take a wide view of "boost phase" and assume you can sit over the middle of the pacific and shoot down a missile from china, it's not hard to blow away a 747. They are big, slow, can't manuver, show up trivially on radar...
However, assorted terrorist groups that fling missiles at Israel don't generally have the ability to shoot down a plane; furthermore, it can be circling inside Israeli airspace, with line of sight to all plausible launching sites for a missile with a range of tens of miles.
And additionally, the missiles have historically been launched a few at a time. So if the laser has only a dozen shots or so (see other posts about how this is a chemical laser, and thus has limited number of shots), one or two of these planes would have the ability to shoot down the size of salvo that has historically been used. And a dozen of these planes would be able to shoot down every missile the terrorists launch in a typical year, so you could even stop them from stockpiling and doing a single big strike.
Sure, they'd just move to a different tactic. But shutting down a tactic that terrorists are known to use, and have been using for decades, is worth some investment...
It's certainly feasible that secret government projects had high powered lasers prior to 1974 - but I highly doubt that after 30 years, this would still be a secret.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
I wonder if they could us the old ground based "lasing" to direct this thing to ground targets? Maybe thats what happened to the Spinal Tap drummers.
At least here this info can get out and be looked at by many many people, unlike places like neoconjob republic and dorks underground where embarassing items that might embarass "their team" get the memory black hole treatment"
The nutjobs that think that Bush is a socialist are always good for a laugh.
The whole point of using ICBM's is that it's practically impossible to stop them once they're inbound. Even if you could accurately target it, you'd need to vaporize a good portion of it to render it inoperable, and it isn't like they're are explosives inside that will take care of the job for you like in mortars or missials. Unless you've got a really powerfull laser, you're only hope is disabling it in the boost phase, or destroying it in orbit before reentry.
I believe that right now the military is developing all three, boost phase interceptors, sub-orbital "kill" vehicles, and frikin' powerfull lasers.
So far we have a roughly even ratio of comments: (3) comments for Dr. Evil's Laser Weapon (shark or moon based), and (3) comments for a 5 Megawatt Laser Ready By Mid-May.
And as long as you're reading this, let me compliment you on your fantastic bunny slippers.
Remember the Iraq war and all those anti-aircraft rounds flying into the sky? Those weren't tiny little bullets - they are expensive shells. What goes up must come down.
There is no way to fight a war without the risk of killing innocent people. We should of course try to avoid war as a result. However, if one does go to way, fewer people will die from the laser (not targetting people) than from a ballistic missle (possibly targetting a population center).
Did anyone else notice the small graphic depicting the opening credits scene from Dr. Strangelove? Of course that plane was carrying a nuclear payload, not laser....
-blar
-blar
Perhaps you are confusing this with "Aurora", which doesn't exist (yet)(maybe)
Well, common sense says they have *something* better than the SR-71...
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
This seems like a slogan for one of the Atheist faith, but then you realize that Atheists hold no truck with creationist theories at all: it is evolution all the way: and human beings (who happen to ride bicycles sometimes) are nothing more than evolved fish.
The "man with a God" is more likely to believe that fish never evolved to the point where they could ride bikes.
Put this heresy in your pipe and smoke it.
There are those who claim to not admire Nazism or fascism at all, but claim that Hitler was in certain ways a great leader (if you ignore the Holocaust, etc.). However, he wasn't smart (didn't make smart moves as you said), and look at what he did, comparing Germany just before and Germany just after his reign:
he took an impoverished independent Germany and turned it into an even more impoverished Germany that was bombed to bits and owned entirely by several other countries.
That's a big "whoops". He doesn't even succeed as a military leader: as one, he led his military to defeat by using it to provoke much stronger enemies. Tick off the US? Grind your vaunted armies to powder against vast Russia? Yeah, what a genius.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Whatever your religion tells you
Also, these fuels would not vaporize as you might imagine. Just as likely that 50% or more of the fuel in those aircraft were absorbed into carpet, paper and other permeable materials long enough to provide a torching effect. Plenty of oxygen would be available from under the effected floors via stairs and elevator shafts. Your own lying eyes would show you that fires continued until the moment of collapse in both buildings.
So shut up.
Yet, all the truth in the world can't penetrate the flimsiest of tinfoil helmets!
Moderators, this message was partly written as a joke. Please lighten up before you automatically moderate.
Hmmm... Pie...
The COIL is a huge laser system. However, jump around the net for info on the ATF (advanced tactical fighter) and you'll find people's wet dreams for a slab laser mounted in the fighter. Not for missile defense, more for nearby self defense or precision targeting of ground items.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Your post shows ignorance of the PATRIOT system (it's an acronym: Phased Array Tracking Radar and Intercept Of Targets, I think), its design goals, its complexity and your dependance on media sensationalism.
You should look up what Arrow is meant to be used for (missile defense only). You should also look up what PATRIOT was built for. It was designed to shoot down airplanes and helicopters. It was built as a "plain old" Surface to Air Missile system (SAM). The Army decided after it was built that they wanted it to shoot down ballistic and cruise missiles which are orders of magnitude harder to identify, hit and kill. It is a compliment of PATRIOT's abilities that it was given this task.
THAAD (Theater High Altitude Area Defense) is also being built for large area protection from tactical ballistic missiles (TBMs). It will be the compliment to the Patriot system and PATRIOT's eventual successor (MEADS?, Medium Extended Air Defense System).
You say that Israel uses Arrow, but when was the last time it was used to intercept a TBM in wartime operations? PATRIOT was designed 30 YEARS AGO and to this day it remains the only system proven in battle to do so. Notice that neither Arrow or THAAD are being built with the range of capabilities that PATRIOT has. It seems that the military and engineers realized that TBM intercept is hard enough that having other intercept abilities are an overbearingly daunting task. PATRIOT proved that TBMs can be intercepted and neutralized as a battlefield threat. Newer systems will build upon what was learned in the PATRIOT effort.
PATRIOT is a dynamic system. Its hardware and software are continually updated in order to meet the challenges of the battlefield. To say it is defective downplays the daily efforts of thousands of dedicated engineers.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
does this not remind you of command and conquer zero hour?
mmm...lasers...mmm *homer drool*
Insert Pithy Quote here.
I never said that the lasers targetted the missles. All I said was that the plane was attacked, and the planes carried the defense system.
The referring to the laser system.
This is what you said:
Except that laser point defense is already used in aircraft. Civilian ones too.
To protect a plane, you don't need to destroy the missle. It just has to miss. When the missle is detected, a relatively low power laser can disable the seeker head on an IR missle.
Remember the two El Al jets that were fired upon in Kenya? They were both equipped with this system. There is consideration that this system might be installed in American jets. It's automatic, and the pilot doesn't need to know if it's decoyed missles. Nothing he can do anyway.
Now to me, that statement says "The El Al jets that were fired upon in Kenya were equipped with a laser point defense system." Absent mention of any other stated defense system (Flight Guard), one would assume you're referring to the stated laser defense system as being the system used.
but when you talk to me, you're getting the most up to date information available in the world
I'll be sure to remember that the next time I need any more incorrect rumors.
I don't think it matters too much, as the gap is being filled by a combination of satellites (for fixed targets) and smaller more expendible RC aircraft for transient targets.
Of course, you could interpret "better than the SR-71" to be exactly what the Predator/Global Hawk/Dark Star, et. al. are.
I really think moving to the RC systems makes a lot of sense, as in the long run, they should be able to outperform manned aircraft. In the short run, they are certainly better on the "what if one gets shot down?" front. The RC vehicals seem to be easier to adapt to be part of a real-time intelligence system for ground troops as well. That's always been a huge problem for the U-2/SR-71/TR-1 - getting data to the people who need to actually kill the target.
The one thing the RCs really lack is coolness. The RC planes just don't have the cache of the SR-71. Then again, very, very few planes do!
Well if the laser is for ICBMs, yeah I can see why that would be, but to detonate sidewinders or SAMs? You'd not need nearly that much to have these things on fighters. They'll do it in the next few years. Just watch.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
It seems to me that all of our aircraft rely on circuit borads and microchips. In order to hit these nukes with this lazer there must be some pretty advanced electronics. I was under the understanding that one high-atmosphere airburst of a powerful enough nuke could send an emp that would knock out something like an entire hemisphere. What kind of defense is this if one shot can wipe it out?
let's call the whole thing off
This is not the first laser-equipped aircraft. An NC-135 was equipped with a chemical laser back in the 80's, and it met with limited success. Also, point defense lasers (Known as DIRCM, or Directed Infrared CounterMeasures) are currently in use, mainly by the military and heads-of-state. Plans have been drawn up for use on commercial airliners, but the cost is REALLY high.
can probably be made to burn out the laser or the plane that is carrying it...
A victim's widow's website, seeking 9-11 answers
A prior knowledge database and archive
David Schippers, impeachment prosecutor and ex mafia buster/ prosecutor, tries to get Ashcroft's attention to warn of pending imminent attack, gets ignored
Priot knowledge of impending attacks transmitted to US government by other governments, including by Putin: Financial ireregularities in airline stocks up to that day: other indications of government priot knowledge
LetsRoll911 extensive 911 archive and links section, along with logs showing who is interested in the site, worth a look
Fed agents ordered to NOT investigate terrorist ties once they get close to saudi arabi and bush family
More:FBI agent whistleblower tells he was blocked by "orders" from following terrorist money trail
Infowars.com 9-11 archive, the grand daddy of them all
There's lots more, LOTS more,any search engine out there is slap fulla links to news articles and views and dataon this subject. The above is just a small sample of the real info out there and the interest. I can guarantee you neither I, nor all these other people are going to "shut up" over this reichstagg-fire coup d'etat that took place.
But,thanks for the opportunity to reply! And it doesn't bother me a whit to be called names, or be disagreed with! After you have been beat, gassed, threatened with death, been lied about in court, had evidence planted, and various things like that...plus getting to know quite a few insiders in the system who are willing to talk off the record and clue you in to some *quite interesting things*, people who are honest people and true patriots... well ..anything someone on the net can say to you is sorta silly in the way of "hurt", as in "neener neener". It just won't work, but thanks for playing!
Everyday, people all over the net are reading similar posts, and going to look for data for themselves. That's how it should be, take a gander at the evidence, see what ya think, it's the american way and stuff. And someone is going to read this, maybe not reply, but go look for themselves, and get hip. It's a good thing.
In the case of Kim Jong Il, we probably can't do #2. He is not ready to accept anyone's assistance as far as improving the lives of his people.
Ah. So that's why the North Korean government has appealed for international humanitarian assistance to deal with the mess left by that little train oops, and why there's a UN humanitarian mission on its way there right now?
Insightful, my ass. Anti-Anti-America != Insightful.
Damn, now I've done it, I'm sticking up for the evil commies. I'll send you a postcard from Cuba.
Gee, to think that in Dec. 1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright made their historic "flight," and then two years later (according to this theory) we had a jet capable of aerial photography at 55 THOUSAND FEET.
Grandparent: Score -1, Asinine
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
One advantage to the system is that the business end of the weapon and the targeting system are both lasers. I guess that since they'll paint the target before switching over to the destruct-o-beam, chances of missing the target would be slim-to-none.
Of course, I'd think that a miss would result in some scorched divots on the ground. I wonder what effect such heat would cause to dirt, asphalt, sand, a car, a head, a sunbather, a pond.
Come to think of it, I wonder if some bright boy at the test lab hasn't already considered barbequing...
-J.
Q: Your best bet against WMD?
A: Duct and Cover...
> Remeber that there were stratigists in the USSR that thought a nuclear war could be won
e ar.htm)
Those were OUR strategists (or Reagan's, more precisely - http://www.colorado.edu/AmStudies/lewis/2010/nucl
Partially wrong. It's true that the eye is more sensitive to the green wavelengths, but flashlight/laser enthusiasts are picking up new green laser modules that have greater than 15mw of power, as compared to the typical red laser pointers that hit only a few mw. FYI, the legal limit for "novelty" laser pointers is 5mw.
Fixed defenses are of limited use in a modern war. It is unlikely that a foreign power will use non-conventional weapons in a first strike manner. The notion of Mutually Assured Destruction guarantees the need for a suicidal maniac to be in power in one of the opposing nations for first strike attack to be considered. A nuclear strike is a death rattle, not an opening volley. It is therefore likely that a battle between developed nations would engage with conventional missiles, airpower and support from the sea. It is likely that most fixed installations would be destroyed in the first round of the attack (this is also most likely true in the case of a non-conventional attack). Just as the above poster pointed out, the US kept an upper hand in the cold war through the used of mobile deterents in the form of nuclear submarines and stealth bombers. This airborne missile defense system is the mobile deterent of the new war. The Bush doctrine has us taking it to the terrorists. It also has us attacking and undermining the powerbase. 5-10 years from now, when Iraq and Afghanistan are stabilized (at tremendous cost to the United States - both in dollars and lives) America is going to be looking to combine the democratized Middle East, and Iran is the next domino. Iran has significant missile technology and while they may not be able to hit the US, they can certainly hit 10-15 US allies, including Turkey, Kuwait, and Qatar, the other 'stabilizing forces' in the region, not to mention Israel. A fleet of planes like this could be used in combination with Patriot Missile systems to protect our allies (and our bases in their territories). Take the war to the terrorists. Take it to them in their training camps. Take it to them in their mosques and Whadist enclaves. Take it to them wherever they use religion as a guise for hate speak, its a new goddamned millenium and its time for the end of theocracies and dictatorships. America didn't ask for a war of idealologies, but if streets of the middle east want to have one, then we're right here, standing behind the tanks, missiles and other 'implements of destruction', as Arlo Gutherie would have put it. However, if anyone's interested in an open dialogue, a good place to start would be to stop burning our flags in your streets and stop applauding deluded children for massacring others.
I'm sure somebody has thought of this already, but Ill throw it in...
What if I just put mirrors all over my rocket?
Will the laser still be able to "focus" on the target if it reflects everything? (The answer probably has something to do with the wavelength of the laser, right?)
I can't believe it.
I've just trying to read some good articles about computing in slashdot, but what I've found in slashdot, on another hand, is several WAR articles, WAR weapons, WAR technology, and so on!
What hell is it?
Slashdot is news for ungry americans, or news for nerds?
Who is the ter... of the world?
Who is the people that thinks most of times in WAR?
The googles do nothing!
Your confidence is the giveaway that you talk more than you know. Full frontal war against the US is pretty well suicidal, that's out of the question. It's all about terror and manipulation now. Which is done with threats of violence and reasonable likelihood of carrying out such threats. Look at our current condition, the terrorists wanted to mess with our heads and strip away our freedoms and that's exactly what the government has set about doing on their behalf.
The reason those missiles are expensive if the design, as well as the maintenance that must exist around them. But they are sold. And someone is bound to have a couple we would prefer they didn't. Crumbling governments are wonderful covers for weapons movement.
The real use of any of this is to hit things that aren't yet moving. If there's opportunity to do that, that's what we'll do. Trying to hit a moving missile is stupid if you can hit it while it's still. Especially if the missile is designed to repel laser attack while in flight. That topic has been discussed here before.
No rogue nation is going to put enough of an assault together that they can't claim plausible deniability and blame it on a sect within the country. Doing otherwise is genocidal, and nobody is going to do that.
-theed
So what you are saying is that Mr "I'm the H in The History Channel" was one of the truly great Lords of the Lemmings?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Here's a picture of the device that emits the laser: link
And here's a picture of the laser itself: links
and I want one for my car.