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Anti-Missile Laser Weapon Successfully Tested
xPertCodert writes "A latest attempt to build a futuristic laser weapon appears to be a success.
Joint Israeli-US developed laser destroyed a large caliber rocket in a latest New Mexico test. The press release also contains links to some interesting video and photo material, related to THEL (Tactical High Energy Lasers) defense systems."
...the mutated sea bass.
If the missle has reached warhead separation, your screwed. This is catch them in boost and guidance phases. If shot down early enough the warhead(s) don't asrm and just punch a small hole in the ground.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Well, like this post or not.....it IS funny
Kiss my shiny metal ass
So the first thing... is I'm all for solid defense, and the tools needed to prevent assault to the safety and well being of Americans on their own soil. I am absolutely interested in peace in the world, and the serious search for the means and methosd to attain and maintain that peace. I am however clear, that there're people in the world who think that the word conversation begins with the letters "BOOM". So I have no problem with the idea of working towards a sane and effective shield or better deterent to missile attack.
However, we need to be realistic... we need to look at the results of the tremendous, time (over 20 years), effort (millions of man hours), and money (over $100,000,000,000) spent, all to produce precisely DICK! Nada, Bupkiss... ZERO! When will I get to say, come on guys, you can stop blowing smoke up my panties, I'm sporting a pair of fully cured hams at this point and any more will simply ruin the fine smokey flavor...
Every sane scientist on the planet says;
The only place to stop an intercontinental ballistic missile is at launch... all other points in it's tragectory pose insurmountable technical problems making a missile defense system untenable, impractical, and for all intents useless. I could go into the LENGTHY discussion about the endless problems facing detection, isolation, aiming/targeting, communication, and defense of sensing and defensive satellites... just leave it at, it cost them pennys to evade, and us billions to detect... not a sane plan under any logical method I've ever heard of.
The added problem of blasting missile where they launch, is that folks in other countries tend to get a wee bit antsy when we go around hovering high energy weapons over their heads... "just in the off chance" (and just for the "screw them if they can't take a joke" croud, you have to remember we've already burned a little international karma with this whole Iraq thing.)
That leaves what little interesting we have left from that $100,000,000,000 blank check we wrote the defense departments and it's friends. The results from that research fall into three categories;
* high energy devices that throw metal slugs at speeds up to 13 miles per second,
* massive pulses of high energy particles from neutrons to atomic nuclei to x-rays,
* and last but certainly not least high energy lasers.
Outside of the atmosphere these weapons have some range, but will almost certainly be unable to fid their targets. Inside the atmosphere their range is terribly limited. For mass throwers, particle or slugs just don't go very far, or in a predictable way through air. For lasers there's blooming and a variety of other problems that are very difficult to overcome. You just can't hit a target very far away in the air with a high energy weapon.
Lasers end up being the best of a bad lot, in a high energy terrestrial based antimissile weapon lottery. So for a quick overview, what you have is a multibillion dollar weapon, that's only good for a few miles, desparately trying to lock onto an evassive flying target that travels at several mach and is highly manueverable. You have only seconds between target identification. You have to instantly site a target only inches across, lock on it no matter how it changes it's path, and aim a laser at it with the precision of inches fired at 3 to 7 miles. All of that and there are simple brute force methods that are by comparison dirt cheap, and orders of magnitude more reliable. That, and these are just the simple technical problems...
They don't even begin to address the fact that nobody is going to be firing missiles at us in the foreseeable future, or that the next big bomb to arrive on American shores is most likely going to arrive via Fed-Ex. Add to that the fact that a sane international diplomacy, might have prevented the need for any defensive weapons in the first place, and I have to ask those that are for this silly boondoggle... please give me the tiniest of rational explanations why
"Why don't you gentleman have a Pepsi?"