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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."
Will there be friggin sharks on them too?
Now they just need to be mounted on those damn sharks.
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
Once we get them into space, will they make roaring, whooshing noises and manuever just like they did in atmosphere? 'Cause otherwise, forget about it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The High Energy Laser Area Defense System
So what's the other L for?
I swear, the military just loves acronyms, whether they make sense or not! And what's an area defense system?
There are 11 types of people. Those who understand binary, those who don't and those who are sick of this lame joke.
4 out of 5 swinging dicks recommend more steel plates for their humvees, not another toy for the flyboys.
But will it cook a Jiffy Pop container 20' in diameter?
That's right, I read at +2 and post at +1. Not even I care what I have to say.
I just did some quick searching and found only this on laser weaponry in the Geneva Convention:
"Protocol IV on Blinding Laser Weapons prohibits the use of laser weapons specifically designed to cause permanent blindness to the naked eye (or to the eye with corrective eyesight devices). Countries that are party to the Convention and Protocols will not transfer such weapons to any country or other entity."
So I guess to conform to the Geneva Convention, the lasers will just require the same stickers that they put on childrens water guns: "Point Away From Face"
"0101100101? It's just jibberish. *looks in mirror, gasps* 1010011010@!? AHHHHHH!!"
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?
I don't think the Geneva convention includes energy weapons, it dates back to pre-world war 2 I believe.
You may be thinking about weapons in space, if I remember correctly the USA and Russia agreed not to militarise space, which essentially meant no orbitting satellites with either lasers on them or nuclear missiles. (it may have taken kinetic weapons into account too, i'm not sure on that)
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-U
I can see the headline now: Air Force "reflects" on decision to purchase sexy new laser, after a test backfires when attempting to shoot down a mirrored missile...
& yes, defending against laser is that simple.
source http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2585
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose."
HELLAD DARPA PAGE
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Pew pew or Brzzap?
I dunno, something the size of "a large fridge" seems pretty bulky to strap to a fighter. Seems more suitable for a bomber somehow.
-- Conserve binary trees; recycle your email. --
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.
From TFA: Great, does that mean it'll eventually get to the size of mini-bar fridge?
a 150-kW beam and capable of knocking down a missile will be ready by 2007
Hmmm, I'm torn.
On one hand, IF it hits its intended target, that is one less "consumable" missile defense that has to be manufactured and paid for--> not a "one and done" defense.
On the other, it's one thing when stray bullets strafe a school like in New Jersey, but oh my, imagine the holes this could leave.
Ignorance is not a crime; neither should it be a way of life
Congress control $ = inmates run the asylum
No, we're going to see lots of brighly colored targets for optically-guided cruise missiles.
How about a honkin' big jet turbine engine?
Actually, I seem to recall reading (albeit in a 'Popular Mechanics' or some such light fare) about the larger all-liquid versions. These things apparently derived their power from a chemical reaction, the reactants being stored in big tanks. I believe that was a big reason for needing a 747-sized platform.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
I'm too close for lasers, switching to Scientology.
Hello Mr. Enemy Pilot, may I Audit you?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
and measures the size of a large fridge. Cool! Lasers have been used for measurement before, but I bet this is the first time the military has been able to measure your fridge in your kitchen from 20,000 feet. The small hole in the kitchen ceiling is a small price to pay for this protection from oversize fridges.
Some versions of the JSF will have a laser system installed in the empty cavity used for the second engine in the VSTOL variant. The last thing I read on this suggested that the firing rate would be once every 30 seconds due to cooling requirements. I doubt any F-16 based system mounted on external hard points would be any better.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Nothing is perfectly reflective, and if you cover yourself with a 99% reflective surface you're still going to couple with a LOT of energy. Maybe you won't be vaporized a la War of the Worlds, but you'll be burned pretty bad.
> I'm too close for lasers, switching to Scientology.
> Hello Mr. Enemy Pilot, may I Audit you?
Maveric: You don't know the history of frickin' lasers on sharks' heads. I do!
Goose: We regret to inform you that your son is broke because he is stupid.
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.
F-16 operating ceiling = 15.240 kilometers
Minimum LEO satellite altitude = about 150 kilometers
I couldn't find any information about the range of the HELLADS system; that information is probably classified. However, TFA claims there will be a 150 kilowatt version of the laser by 2007. Any laser experts know if that power of laser can take out a target 135 kilometers away? Is the idea even feasible?
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
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
To quote a friend from the Israeli army that is sort-of relevant:
"M16's are not designed to kill, they are designed to maim, because a wounder soldier is more of a liability to the enemy than a dead one."
But we still use M16s... odd... (well, WE use M2's or something like that)
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
Cool if it works. But how does the laser know there's a missle on the way? And how does it keep focused on it while the pilot is trying to pull a 9-G turn? It would take gonads of neutronium to maintain a straight course while the missle is heading your way.
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.
Yes one must be fucking living to be blind. Just like telling no tales, the dead don't see shit..
For all of the people who criticize your "mirrors" proposal: ablatives.
You can even combine defensive concepts. Missiles being relatively small, relatively mass produced items, processes that normally cost a lot can be proportionally cheap compared to the cost of the guidance systems, propulsion system, and handling costs. So, for a multipart defensive system:
* A "shiny" ablative system on the nosecap and leading edge fins - perhaps something as simple as silicon-impregnated cork mixed with aluminum, silver, or gold (better at IR) powder.
* The nosecap and leading-edge fins made of silvered (again, with a good visible/IR reflecting material) RCC (again, since they're small and the process to make them can be automated, the costs shouldn't unreasonable). RCC can take extreme temperatures without becoming ductile.
* Other parts of the body made out of unpainted, shiny aluminum or a silvered surface.
It's less extreme than other defensive mechanisms used for various kinds missiles - MIRVed warheads, anti-ship missiles that hug the water and then take a sharp climb and descent, etc. And it's certainly simpler than many of the counter-countermeasure methods used by modern missiles.
Are there any deer in the theater tonight? Get 'em up against the wall.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
This story reminds me of the ABL...
e s/aviation/12380334.htm
Latest article I could dig up:
http://www.kansas.com/mld/eagle/business/industri
Website about the ABL:
http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/abl/
I want my! I want my! I want my Eee PC!
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 modern M16 fires a 5.56x45mm NATO round, while the previous generation (original AR15 platform) used a .223 caliber Remington round. The NATO round is a very standard round used in quite a few weapons. The newest weapon in wide use is actually the M4, which is also based on the AR15 platform.
The M2 is a retired weapon, and pretty much has been since the 60s. The AR15/M16 was adopted to replace it then. It wasn't really accepted until the 80s, however.
The 5.56mm NATO round is also used by the Steyr AUG, FN FNC, British L85, FAMAS F1, HK23/53, the Israeli SAW and TAR21, several Berettas, and the standard police rifle (Remington 7615). There are quite a few more than those, though, these are just popular.
The older 7.62mm NATO round was used in a lot of weapons, including the M14, M60, Kar-98k, and the Winchester model 70. It was very popular, as well.
The M16 isn't designed to maim, but they are easy to do this with. They are rather accurate, have a good range, and don't do full auto. One of the major design goals of the platform was penetration of combat helmets at range. It was designed to kill, like most other modern firearms. The general exception to that rule is for things like PDWs, where the goal is defense of wielder. They will still kill very effectively, but you're aiming a lot less.
The typical claim is that SS109 bullets are dynamically unstable in flesh, though they are stable in flight, so they begin to tumble upon entry, doing lots of damage along the way.
Personally, I find this claim doubtful, though I have no hard evidence one way or the other.
High Energy Laser Area Defense System
...or
I think Gasseous Optical Nuetral Area Defense System would have been a better name. What do you suppose would instill more fear in the enemy?
"Run for your life! The HELLADS are coming!"
"Run for your life! The GONADS are coming!"
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I love your writing style - it reminds me of a Star Wars into crawl.
Episode IV: A New Lack Of Hope
It is a period of civil war. Rebel guerrillas, striking from hidden bases, have won their first victory against the PENTAGON. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to America's ultimate weapon, the MISSILE FRIGATE, an armored aircraft with enough power to destroy an entire peaceful wedding party.
Pursued by the sinister agents of CONGRESS, Princess Raghad Hussein races home aboard her taxi, custodian to the stolen plans that can dominate her people and change type of tyrannical rule in force in the country.
Are there any deer in the theater tonight? Get 'em up against the wall.
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
It's not the Geneva convention, it's the Hague convention, and the relevant part is "In addition to the prohibitions provided by special Conventions, it is especially forbidden - ... To employ arms, projectiles, or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering;" http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/lawofwar/hague04 .htm#art23. Maybe you're thinking of the Geneva Protocol to the Hague Convention which outlaws biological and chemical warfare? The Geneva convention mostly outlines basic minimum treatment of enemy POWs.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Actually, the biggest problem with chemical lasers is not heat, but the output of the chemical reaction. On THEL (Tactical High Energy Laser); while firing, a plume of NF3 would be emitted, which required all personnel to be at least 5 kilometers away.
Solid state lasers are the one with heat problems. I.e. with supplied electricity at 10% efficiency, (like wall power), that's 90% heat that has to be put somewhere. So for a 150 kW laser, that amounts to 1350 kW of heat. That is a lot of heat to deal with on a fighter plane.
I would also like to know what they mean by a "liquid" laser. I used to work in the laser weapon industry, and I have never heard of such a thing.
"I believe in Intelligent Design. It was all done by Benevolent Space Aliens. How else can you explain Tom Cruise?"
You call that benevolent?
I went to U.S. Airforce Space Readiness Briefing while I was a Congressional intern this summer.
Lasers were covered and I had a brief chat with the Air Force representative after the briefing.
The USAF is sticking lasers in 747's and the army is testing ground-based systems.
The aircraft-based lasers cannot inflict any physical damage. They are powerful enough to scramble electronics. The goal is to target a missile shortly after it is launched so that its guidance systems fail and the missile lands in the enemy's territory, never reaching its target (us). Their goal is to use this as a powerful deterrent by making it very risky to launch missiles.
The ground-based systems can inflict physical damage, but are nowhere close to being airborne (they're much too massive). They are, as I was told in July, still "in the lab." (I later saw a full-page ad in "The Hill," a capitol hill newspaper, promoting Lockheed Martin's ground-based laser systems as though they were about ready. I'll trust the USAF officer's discussion more than the corporate advertisement.)
A key misunderstanding of lasers is in the kind of damage they inflict. Lasers will poke holes through objects but do not cause a target's destruction or explosion -- however, shooting through or over-heating a target's fuel tank will cause an explosion. And of course, to re-emphasize my major point, we don't have airborne laser cannons --- their goal is basically to inflict a kind of EMP-like damage to missiles. I asked about getting these things into UAV's and was told they'd love to do it, but don't expect anything for another 50 years.
So what happens if the (intended target) missile's surface is extremely reflective?
(Honest question, I don't know...)
By the way, you write like a schizophrenic dope head. Nothing personal. I'm just glad you're in the NRA.
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...
I'm sorry, the Mauser Kar98 actually fires 8mm Mauser rounds or 7.92x57mm. Which is essentially ballistically identical to 7.68mm NATO or .30-06 Springfield, though the .30-06 has a little bit better range.
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.
The problem at that range usually isn't the accuracy of the weapon, but the accuracy of the shooter.
At that kind of range, the only way to hit a small, say 6-12 inch target, is to be in the prone position, with proper hand position, proper eye relief to the scope/sight, and shooting between breaths AND heartbeats.
I was a Marine designated marksman and even after sniper school the biggest factor was still the shooter and not the accuracy of the weapon. There are VERY few people who possess the skill to shoot to the accuracy of a good "civilian" rifle.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
I believe the Joint Strike Fighter program was already considering the concept of a laser-mounted weapon. As I recall, the Marine version of the JSF has a large ducted fan in the center to provide VSTOL capability. Since the Air Force and Navy wouldn't be needing that ducted fan, that large space in the middle of the fuselage, with substantial power already provided in place by a driveshaft from the engine, would make a natural selection for implementing a high-energy laser weapon.
It was badly worded. I meant soldiers are needed to kill, not that they have a need to kill.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
"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.
I won't disagree! But a LOT of people THINK they are. Most deer rifles in these parts (TX) are zeroed at 300 yards but most shots are not taken at that distance and if they are most are misses. I wonder how many hunters know the charts showing the drop of thier shot at each distance with a given bullet and powder weight. I'd be lucky to consistently hit a 6" bullseye at 100 yards unless I was shooting from a bench or maybe the prone position. I'm just not that solid standing.
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.
When "Star Wars" was heavily funded in the '80s, the Russians did a little bit of investigation into what it would take to thwart both kinetic vehicles and energy weapons. The actually deployed the Topol-M, which has a lower arc and "jinks" in-flight, makeing it almost impossible to hit with another missile. It takes so long for your interceptor to get to the intercept point that a really tiny course deflection on the part of the target means you'll miss by a hundred miles.
On the energy side they came up with ablatives (which could be refitted to existing missiles) with, literally, a twist.
Since you have to hold the laser on a specific spot for some length of time (governed by the power of the laser, atmospherics, etc), you could significantly enhance the survivability of the missile by having it slowly rotate during the launch phase. We're talkin' about a reasonably simple software change that makes it 10x harder to shoot down with a laser.
"If Europe would pay back the US for are protection, then we could diverta Lot of tax payer money into other things."
Ah! Now I understand why the US is trying to force it's RI/MPAA and copyright/patent laws on Europe!
"europe used to be as bad as the middle east."
True...but that was in the 18th century...about when you had some unrest too.
"a powerfull laser could also make air warfare obsolete."
Yup...just like missiles made dogfighting obsolete.
"[x] is actualy saving lives because it is incredibly more accurate then technology used 60 years ago."
Hoo-boy, do you have an awfully simplistic and very much incorrect view of the world. History has taught us that technology makes for BLOODIER wars instead of les bloody wars. Look at what happened when the (cross)bow was introduced...or gunpowder, or cannon, or the machinegun. Bodycounts went up, as did civilian casualties.
And since you mention the last sixty years (conveniently discounting Hiroshima et al), what happened in Korea? Or Vietnam? Or the Balkan? HUGE civilian losses. Now tell me that "A lot of money spent on 'destrustion' is actualy saving lives because it is incredibly more accurate then technology used 60 years ago.".
That's just bullshit; have the balls to just tell it like it is: a lot of money spent on 'destruction' is actually spent on making technology more accurate so we can kill more people in a shorter span of time.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
No, to conform to the geneva convention, it just has to be powerful enough to kill you outright.
That's not entirely accurate. A dum dum bullet to my heart would kill me as easily as a FMJ bullet. It just so happens that unless you kill, you're likely to leave a maimed person. Same with lasers, it doesn't matter if the laser is strong enough to kill, if it means someone who managed to duck for cover, or everyone that was around and looked at its reflection go blind. While obviously an ideal that can never be met, the general idea is that weapons do one of two:
a) Kill, and you are dead
b) Injure, and you can be healed
not
c) Injure, and you are horribly maimed for life
Maiming weapons are those that do a lot of c), regardless of their purpose or capabilities otherwise. Dumdums are designed to kill, but maim horribly and are thus a maiming weapon. Something designed to fry electronics systems, but collaterally maim people (e.g. give them cancer or something of no military value in combat) is a maiming weapon.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Hey, I can fully support a policy of "If you're going to kill someone, stop jacking around and kill them". The whole "incapacitate people so that they wander off to die of starvation and a twisted ankle in a ditch" thing just seems rather sloppy.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
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
Not by design. As with Assualt Rifles, it sometimes happens that landmines maim rather than kill, but (unlike blinding weapons) landmines were not designed to be non-lethal (hence the high-explosive and shrapnel).
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
This weeks New Scientist has some interesting statistics that will be relevant here. (The article isn't online, unfortunately.)
"researchers have documented how soldiers will often go to great lengths to avoid firing directly at enemy soldiers, especially if they can seem them - and the distress they suffer when they do kill.
A famous example is the Battle of Gettysburg, where thousands of soldiers on both sides loaded their weapons over and over to avoid having to fire them. Similarly, during the second world war, S.L.A. Marshall, a US army historian, found that on average only 15 to 20 per cent of American infantry troops actually fired at the enemy when they had the oportunity to do so."
The article goes on to talk about how the US army managed to increase the firing rate in later wars by de-humanising the enemy and training soldiers to shoot on impulse.
The main articles are about the Post-Traumatic Stress suffered later by the soldiers as a result of this.
A latent existence
Actually the F-22 Raptor already has a laser system that's been designed for it and [I think it] fits in place of bombbay doors.
It is the F-35 or the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) that has a laser on the drawing boards.
The thing about a laser system like this is that it need a lot of electricity to run, and the vast majority of fighter aircraft do not produce the kind of juice needed to run one of these. The thing that makes the JSF capable of handling a system like this, is the way the VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing) version of the aircraft was designed. Unlike previous VTOL fighters (AV-8 - Harrier and the Boeing consept for JSF) which use a series of nozels to redirect thrust the engine was already making to get vertical thrust, the Lockheed JSF (the one that was selected) has a secondary fan, driven by a shaft from the main engine and door that open above and below the fan.
Using the lift fan in the VTOL plane means that the engine in the CTOL (Conventional Take Off and Landing) and CV (Carrier Varient) has the capacity built in to drive a shaft, and the aircraft themselves have a lot of room right in front of the engine/behind the cockpit. This shaft can then drive a large generator to fire the laser.
I used to be an analyst at the company that builds the engines for the F-22 and the JSF. I worked on both programs.
The laser is ultraviolet, thus it would allow an F22 to loiter in an area and attack ground targetes (Geneva conventions state that we can't attack people with lasers) However, we can cut the truck they're driving in half and thus detonating the fuel tank...
Conventional fuels (gas/diesel) do not detonate unless they are vaporized, or atomised. They will burn pretty fast though.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
The M2 is a retired weapon, and pretty much has been since the 60s.
.50 cal machine gun. Although initially adapted for infantry use in 1921 (from an earlier aircraft weapon), derivatives of ma deuce are still in service today.
I don't know why the M2 is coming up in this thread about rifles, since it is a
See http://world.guns.ru/machine/mg04-e.htm for details.
"The good reader is a rarer swan than the good writer."
I have seen said video. I have also seen the "extended cut" in which one of the "farmers" carries an RPG into the field and deposits it. Do a little more that to go by the name of the file.
If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.
--Kurt Vonnegut
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
> through anything less than a polished mirror.
A fact which I would expect countermeasures to take into account, and perhaps even exploit.
Could the target be protected with a thin, easily-penetrated secondary hull and a layer of opaque-when-vapourized material in between? i.e., laser burns through the outer skin, hits the inner material, vapourizes it, and then wastes all its energy burning through the resulting rapidly-changing vapour/plasma cloud.
(Exactly the same idea as reactive armour, basically - defeat a specific munition by disrupting it with an in-armour triggered-active countermeasure.)