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Laser Cannons Coming to an F-16 Near You
dxprog writes "Reuters is reporting that the US Pentagon is designing a laser cannon that's small enough to fit onto a fighter jet yet powerful enough to knock out a missile. "The High Energy Laser Area Defense System (HELLADS), being designed by the Pentagon's central research and development agency, will weigh just 750 kg (1,650 lb) and measures the size of a large fridge." Now all we need to do is make fighter jets space worthy for that true Star Wars feel."
4 out of 5 swinging dicks recommend more steel plates for their humvees, not another toy for the flyboys.
They can put these things up there, but how will they really be powered? 15kW of energy is a lot to expect from any sort of battery system, unless the weapon can only be used once... Next they'll want to strap a nuclear reactor on the fighter planes to power the next version of the laser (150kW). And if they do have a way to power this for multiple shots, why isn't that same energy storage technology being used in my damn car so I don't have to pay $3 a gallon to fill up the tank?
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-U
I dunno, something the size of "a large fridge" seems pretty bulky to strap to a fighter. Seems more suitable for a bomber somehow.
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No, to conform to the geneva convention, it just has to be powerful enough to kill you outright. The issue is blinding lasers. They would be classified as maiming weapons, and thus not really cricket. If it blows your head clear off, then it's all fine and dandy.
The lasers use mirrors. The mirrors in the laser have to be able to withstand the energy of the laser. Therefore there IS a mirror that can reflect the laser without absorbing enough of it to do damage.
By the same token the other big SciFi myth of the 80's ...the acid spitting alien that creates an acid that can burn through anything in seconds doesn't work either... how does the alien survive if it's acid burns trough anything (including aliens of the same species)?
will the pulses keep travelling in a straight line and vaporize whatever is in front of them on earth?
i mean, the laser has to be powerful enough to work at a distance of several km, and a plane is only several km off the ground. normally if a missile does not hit its target it detonates in midair (raining debris on the ground), but this seems a bit more problematic.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Well yeah, but one can reason that If your head is blown off, than by law of unintended consequences you'll be rendered blind? Can you be dead and blind at the same time? Granted the inability to see properly (aka blindness) is inherent in most dead people. Or must one be living in order to be blind?
...in bed
The same way we can Mix together steel-strength epoxy. In 2 parts. If the alien had 2 separate glands that each spat out the components of a super-acid, then he'd just have to worry about rotten teeth! (eeeeewwwwww.....)
Maybe something else, though-- An Immune system. Our own immune system will attack anything that's not us. It doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to think that an aliens 'white-blood-cells' or equivalent would also do so...even if you toss a mouthfull of the little troopers at something else-- and we're back to 'eeeewwwww.....'
Sig currently under construction. Mind the gap....
It's easier to keep the mirror clean and highly reflective inside the laser, than outside and on a battlefield.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
So you're saying that in prior wars, the enemy didn't try to blow up vehicles with boobie traps?
The cake is a pie
I think you are thinking of the M-4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_Carbine
And the 5.56mm round wasn't put into service because it "maims" better than a 7.62mm NATO round, its because for the equivalent weight a soldier can carry more 5.56mm ammo.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
The answer to this paradox, IMO, is that war is simply incompatible with civil society.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Is it just me or do you think that someone was just watching "Real Genius" and turned it into a news story? I mean, they're talking about a "chemical laser, but in solid, not liquid form." (that's a quote from the movie and almost identical to the press release). Also they talk about achieving an "order of magnitude." It's like they turned that one scene into an article. So, I guess after everyone goes out drinking to celebrate, Laslo will convince them to sabotage the whole project...
but doesnt it make sense to have them manuever in space the same as in the atmosphere? that way a pilot doesnt have to think about what medium he is in. i think it would be easier for the pilot if both are the same.
It would take a ludicrous amount of fuel to make a spacecraft fly like a jet fighter.
It would also prevent the pilot from doing many maneuvers that can only be performed in space.
Of course, by the time we have genuine spacefighters, piloted fightercraft will be a thing of the distant past. Remote-piloted and autonomous vehicles can perform many feats that would kill a pilot.
Movies that have piloted spacefighters are like the old sci-fi books where computers still use vacuum tubes. It's storytelling based on what we're familiar with, and because piloted fighters give us a sense of chivalry and danger.
Maybe in the FAR distant future, if the human race survives and advances enough, it might be technically possible to have piloted craft like in Greg Bear's Anvil of Stars, where they're protected from G-forces by advanced physics, and their mental functions are sped up by other systems that create "virtual neurons" closer together than the real ones. But it will still be more practical to use AI systems designed for that task.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
This is the most blatant karmawhore I've ever seen on Slashdot.
"See, the thing about soldiers is, they need to kill people"
You don't know many soldiers do you? Yours is a fuzzy sentence but it's hard to read it in any other way than that you're saying they have some basic need to kill out of their own volition. Some people do have such a need but those aren't fit for anything really, least of all things military duty (yes they get screened out and denied). Does killing and war break some people? Of course, but extremely few have a "need" to kill, quite the opposite.
If you have a society that makes every soldier into a "must-kill" caricature of the human beings they are well then the military is truly the least of your problems. The only society I know of where this could be even remotely close to being the case is North Korea (and even there it's unlikely that even if they try to do it they actually succeed).
Soldiers are human and it doesn't make sense to take the "human" out of them - it is counterproductive and realized to be so by just about everyone associated with any modern military force (which excludes people who think children suicide bombers is a good idea or communism and facism which instigated programs like Hitlerjugend and Red Pioneers).
"The answer to this paradox, IMO, war is simply incompatible with civil society"
You're beating Jacques Chirac, the master of the art of speaking without saying anything, at his own game here - are you a politician?
FYI I'm a former military officer in a european country and I can assure you that my opinon on this is not in the minority.
Anyways, since you can't make anything perfectly reflective, it will burn through if it's powerful enough or stays on the same part for a long time.
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
"It is impossible for most psyches to kill a human they have not dehumanized
You give people alot of credit where none is due. People do not have to dehumanize anyone to kill them. Case in point? Most murders (76%) are comitted by people that know the victim. 22% of the murders in 2002 were comitted by family members.
Logically it would semm to be much more difficult to "dehumanize" (whatever the $%^@ that referrs to in a psychological sense) someone that you know personally than a total stranger. Seems to me like it takes knowing someone to be able to to kill them, not the other way around.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Until all the world is a civil society, there will be the possibility of war and the need for civil society to defend itself. The solution to the dehumanization and aggression problems that you mention are solvable via the institutions which "manage" these functions in society.
Torture and violations of human rights didn't happen simply because we taught a our guys to kill. They happened because the institutional protections broke down. When Gonzales wrote his memo stating that the Geneva Convention was quaint, the President and the rest of the civilians in charge of the military showed where priorities lay. By not showing the required leadership, they failed to fulfill their duties and minimize the risks of such self-defeating actions taking place.
Had their been leadership shown or at least a sense of accountability within the institution, as there has been in the past, we would not have seen this much abuse, nor would it have weakened our global standing as much. The spin of a few bad apples is fooling no one outside of the US, which makes one wonder why half the population of the US and it's executive institution believe they can bullshit their way through the problem of global terrorism and radical fundamentalists.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
Torture and violations of human rights didn't happen simply because we taught a our guys to kill
Right. It happened because some people are assholes, and some of them got jobs with the National Guard, just like some got jobs with the Post Office, and some work the cubicle down the hall from you. Further, some are in the chain of command supervising (or not, in this case) the people pulling guard duty at a prison. If your theory is correct, and this is policy all way from the top, there would be many, many more instances of what we saw in that particularly disfunctional unit. We're talking about a force of a couple hundred thousand people. What's your ratio of losers per thousand people you know? How about of losers per thousand bosses?
No accountability within the organization? Do you even personally know any people in the armed forces?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Sometimes I think it's just people that are incompatible with civil society.
Everything the US did in Europe in the last century was seen as in the best interests of the US. Many Europeans found that that suited them just fine and have been forever grateful. But to suggest that 'Europe' has any obligation to the US is stupid. There were no US towns firebombed. It wasn't US citizens of being herded into camps outside Tulsa. Tanks didn't obliterate an entire county in Virginia.
Fact is, 'Europe' knows what all that shit is about. And too many in the US don't have a fucking clue. Tie a yellow ribbon, man.
As to your question, a powerfull laser could also make air warfare obsolete.
You do realize that the same was said for gunpowder. And the Gatling gun. And the battleship, aeroplane, tank, gas, a-bomb...
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
war is simply incompatible with civil society
Some would say that civil societies won't exist if they're not willing to make war.
why dont they use a mushrooming or fragmenting bullet head
Because hollow-points, frangibles and the like have been banned by various international treaties.
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It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Or perhaps war is the inevitable result of the existence of politics. Politics is necessarily competitive and adversarial. The rewards are immense and the most desireable seats are naturally limited (the smallest bodies governing the largest areas have the most concentrated power and the highest prestige).
Politicians need to be seen to be "doing something". Successfully governing a quiet Utopia will be boring and look easy. Rivals can offer 'more' or 'less' or 'cheaper', and some number of people will fall in line. Good, stable governance is not safe from agitation.
And when things are going really bady: throw a war. Everybody will show up for the first year or two, and by the time they have realize how much you have screwed things up, you can say things like "stay the course", "don't change horses in mid-stream", and "we would dishonor the memories of those who have already died if we didn't kill a bunch more."
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain