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Sci-Fi Weapons to Join US Arsenal?
marct22 writes to tell us CNet is reporting that the next weapons coming out of the US arsenal could be stepping right off the pages of science fiction to be there. From the article: "By the end of this year, the Air Force plans to conduct a first, fully loaded test flight of its Airborne Laser, a jumbo jet packed with gear designed to shoot down enemy missiles half a world away, at the speed of light. The ABL also packs a megawatt-class punch--it's not exactly your garden-variety laser pointer."
[...] designed to shoot down enemy missiles half a world away, at the speed of light
That's a pretty impressive feat. Does it shoot the laser straight through the Earth's core? Or have they managed to get the jumbo to fly at the speed of light?
"it's not exactly your garden-variety laser pointer."
Wait, Laser pointers grow in gardens?? THAT, is a plant I would grow.
just like that other one....
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
Is quantum computing sci-fi ? Is the space elevator sci-fi ? Is nuclear fusion sci-fi ? Is a laser cannon sci-fi ? No.
Nothing to see here move along.
If you emit X Joules of energy in over one second, you have X Watts. If you emit X Joules over one microsecond, you have X MegaWatts. The difficulty is not in getting the MegaWatts up, but keeping the laser trained on the same spot for long enough to penetrate the skin of a remote missile and cause it to malfunction catastrophically.
This has been on the drawing board for years. Call me when they field the JSF laser armed variant- a laser powerful enough for a AA kill packed into a space not that much larger than the trunk of my suburban.
Assuming your world is not larger than 600 kilometers across, that is. Or do they mean that the plane's going to be in the Middle East? In that case, an M-16 is able to kill enemy soldiers half a world away, too.
shooting a laser at the speed of light!?!?!?1 Wow, that's AMAZING! i never thought that lasers could go at the speed of light!!!one1
So... this isn't something I should use as a cat toy?
As with all "Class 200000" laser products, care should be taken to avoid looking directly into the laser. Do not point the Airborne Laser into other people's eyes or stare into the beam.
Hmmm...a big laser pointer....and a big plane....
Does Homeland Security (and FAA) know?
Hope they don't point at other pilots or ppl on the ground....(though don't think there's anything in the law that says that pilots can't use laser pointers and point them towards ppl on the ground...the vice versa is prohibited.)
I've read the article and nowhere does it mention how they implemented the necessary "Freakin Shark" component. Either they are holding it back for the sake of national security or they are preparing themselves for a million dollar blunder.
This is nothing new, this kind of thing has been underdevelopment since late in the Cold War. Unlike perceptions in the pentagon, times have changed. These missile systems will not prevent projectiles like rpg fire; we need defense platforms for the present, not the past. There's no point in building an anti-missile laser when Iran or whoever developes a nuke can completly skip the missile. Whose going to build their nuclear weapon onto a missle delivery system if they know we can shoot it down? Not being able to shoot them down was the reason we put nukes on missiles in the first place.
Cut the funding, dump the project and reassign the personel to more useful projects like laser based fusion power, or robotics, or composite smart armor development.
Demented But Determined.
I didn't bother reading the article, but how powerful is this thing? Like, 5 megawatts?
Man, what I wouldn't give to see a 5 megawatt laser fire, just once.
imagine a beowulf cluster.
We all know the real reason America is winning the war in Iraq.
3 00.swf
http://tinyurl.com/r2t8q
But on a more serious note, check out this video footage of new age technology
http://media2.foxnews.com/040606/040606_fr_tobin_
I have a very bad feeling about this.
Hitler lost the war by micromanaging his army into the ground. But he had blind faith that technology would save him, and he always talked about the "fantastic new weapons" (jet engines, etc.) he was expecting from his scientists to save the war. Blind faith in technology is no substitute for a well run army.
But we must not compare any contemporary politician to Hitler- that wouldn't be "responsible".
Seriously, where's the giant bowl of popcorn?
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
But can they do 1.21 gigawatts. If they could, it would make the beam go back in time and destroy the missile before it was ever launched!
Can it cook a giant tub of popcorn!
"Can you point an 8" spike through a rail road tie with your penis"
This is what I called Powerpoint presentation.
For the test, they should pack a house in the desert with a huge foil ball of popcorn, then attempt to pop it with the laser from 30,000 feet. That could cause the whole neighborhood to errupt into zaniness!
Good thing we have Marty and Chris to stop them!
"The Crossbow project, there's no defense like a good offense."
"No, Sir, this thing would take the skin right off, of Air Force One if you wanted."
And how does something like that help us fight an enemy that puts up a roadside bomb?
Troops need body armor and armored trucks. Not, useless debt building toys that are made to fight a cold war enemy, long gone.
Want more info http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/25 30001.html
I remember the first time I saw that movie! It was called the Crossbow Project, right?!? And Jordan...don't get me started on Jordan...perfect woman!
Dave
Am I the only one here who looks at Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq and thinks our money would be better spent on a few crates of AK-47's, body armor, and more benefits for the troops?
Math is math. Regular expression is regular expression. The tools are there. The future is now.
Now if only we could find a giant shark to attach the laser to...
Lazlo, call me for the coordinates of Professor Hathaway's new house.
Just what indeed IS a garden variety laser pointer?
I mean, if you just wanted to point out flowers, you'd normally use your finger.
> I think the bigger question is this: Can they mount those frickin' laserbeams on sharks?
Does slashdot have a policy on censorship?
Yeah - any time anyone says "frickin'", it automatically converts it to "frickin'"
YES!
w w.geocities.com/wisgarytorres/bejeweled.xml
http://www.google.com/ig/add?moduleurl=http%3A//w
Star wars fails miserably, so they decided to move the laser from a stationary object to one moving at mach 2. Sounds like a plan for success.
Lets look at the bat bomb:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb
How about project pigeon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon
The Japanese had their fire balloons that killed one person
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_balloon
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Remember what happened with the CIWS missile intercept system in 1991 and 1996?_ in_combat_.28at_sea.29/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS#Phalanx
Just gotta be careful of hitting friendly targets... After all, this is no ordinary laser pointer!
Rumsfeldt - Yeah... I know exactly which evil-doer country we're going to test this new breed of weapons on. You know that annoying country between Iraq and Afghanistan.
Bush - I see... you mean China, right?!
Can it fill up Dr. Hathaway's house with fresh hot popcorn?
I don't want to put the blame on anyone but when few years ago US was 'freeing' Jugoslavia flying off from bases based over here (Bulgaria), it was happening that from time to time they accidentally were dropping their radioactive bombs over houses in our capital city (I'm not kidding).
I just hope this new weapon doesn't make it too easy to destroy wrong targets when your aim is kinda off, given the power and distancees we're talking about.
Not that I blame anyone. But I don't want a hole through my house (or me).
Its cool to see its in public light, but a friend of mine actually worked for a company that designed the power units for this, and other high powered lasers. One of the more impressive ones was mounted on a flatbed truck (this sucker was huge, or so i am told) and could, I BS you not, burn through a tanks armor in under 30 seconds. Very scary, very cool. Now, i cannnot confirm the legitimacy of this, but i can say for sure that i trust this guy, he isnt the kind to BS.
The Geneva Convention says you can't use lasers to blind people on purpose, but if it just happens to blind people while using it for its primary purpose, it's OK.
"You know you're narcissistic when you quote yourself in your sigs." -- PRoPAiN!
I think we've all heard this before.
So if we're developing lasers that shoot down missiles "half a world away" why on earth are we also developing a missile defense system that uses other missiles to shoot down incoming ballistics? It's much easier to shoot down an incoming missile with something that will get to its target almost as soon as it's fired. This becomes an even more relevant question given that the missile defense system hasn't even had one successful real world test yet!
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
They've been working on this for a long, long time.
But the article is correct in one thing - there's more directed energy weapons along the way... and they won't need a 747 to house them.
Your tax dollars at work....
Well, I'm all for megawatt class lasers - as this means the technology is about 1/1000th of the way towards using lasers for something useful: Beamed Laser Launching of hardware into space.
Liek Myrabo of http://www.lightcrafttechnologies.com/ has been developing beamed power launch technology for some years now. In my correspondence with him, he has estimated that a 1-ton payload can be launched into low earth orbit using a 1-Gigawatt class pulsed laser cannon.
This ground-based launcher is the ultimate tool, and if you build a ring of them around your country, you can be pretty well assured of having utter domination of not just the sky above you, but the skies above everywhere. The first to deploy the network wins the game!
There is almost no end of uses for this array of gigawatt laser cannons:
1) Beamed Laser launcher, with total cost to orbit of just cents per kilo.
2) Inbound missile melter, extraordinaire.
3) Extreme Bug-eyed alien tamer. Unfriendly invaders might think twice before tangling with a species capable of focusing better than 100 Gigawatts of energy at inbound bogies.
4) Surgical Strike weapon par excellence. Reflected back to earth via large space-based mirrors allows you to wave the thing in a decreasing spiral which will turn your neighbours house to molten slag, but barely singe your fence.
5) Galaxies' brightest Search and Rescue spotlight: defocused in orbit, and reflected to earth to illuminate areas currently under search and rescue operations.
6) Illuminate work sites on the moon during the long luna night. Defocused to make a nice night light back on earth.
7) Interplanetary messaging system: embed knowledge into the beam, and send it to likely looking planets. Long term payoff - unknown.
8) Asteroid deflection device: light pressure alone is enough to deflect an inbound near earth object. Just 2cm/s velocity change is enough to deflect most inbounds.
9) Interstallar probe launcher: lightsail driven robot craft accelerated to a decent %age of light speed in fairly short order.
I'm sure there are other uses too - but these would seem to be the obvious ones.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
LASERGUNPEWPEW
I won't admit I'm paranoid...or the people listening will know they've won.
go look at the senior pentagon and goverment staff and how many of those where fighting the cold war ?
they are all back and in full effect, its party like its 1970-1990 all over again for them
you can't teach an old dog new tricks
What increases the protection of the missile most effectively? I realise this is probably all top secret, 'mums the word old chap' etc.
the navy plans on having rail-guns replacing the 16 inch guns on ships by 2011 (wikipedia rail-guns article) - in the same manner, the US military is also looking into using rail-guns to replace mobile howitzers (such as the M109 Paladin)
Unbeknownst to the reporter, these weapons were actually created by Bob The Angry Flower
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
Hitler may have lost the war, but he sure had a great plan!! Yeah, you know - what he planned on doing to "the people".
Yeah, providing them an inexpensive car. I mean - those Volkswagen Beetles were great!!
Wait, Laser pointers grow in gardens?? THAT, is a plant I would grow.
Do not look directly at garden with remaining eye.
Doesn't this weapon smell of the 80's flick, Real Genius?
"Hitler lost the war by micromanaging his army into the ground."
Hitler actually lost the war because he decided to split his attentions and attack the Soviet Union, who were perfectly willing to sit out the war on the sidelines till then.
If Germany had smashed Fortress Britain instead of being greedy and turning east, the US would not have had a launching point for D-Day (unless you count the idiotic idea of attacking up through Italy from North Africa), and the US would not have had the millions of Soviet cannon fodder to grind down the Wehrmacht.
Western Europe would have been fascist German lackeys for the last half-century, and the European Jews would have vanished without a trace.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Exactly. That alone completely justifies everything we spend on this system.
But these Tactical High-Energy Laser systems aren't limited to just shooting down ballistic missiles, they make perfect anti-aircraft and anti-satellite systems as well.
And the Israelis already had a ground-based THEL deployed - not for use against ballistic missiles, but against the cheaper missiles used by terrorists.
I've had reports from a close colleague of mine that similar projects were researched before by the US airforce. Granted, targets were not incoming rockets, but ironically it was the oxygen supply which was provided to the enemy pilots via a small tube. This was in part due to inefficiency of older day lasers which had to be carried in huge airplanes which stored immense chemical tanks that powered a single laser (one such airplane can be seen at the Wright Patterson Airforce Base in Dayton, OH). So, a huge airplane was flown in an attempt to cut such a tube by melting the cockpit window and cutting of the oxygen supply on a supersonic jet. If you ask me, this was more of a madness than sci-fi...
Yeah, well the implications are much more impressive. The acquisition, tracking and targeting system will be most impressive if it works well enough to fully utilize the lasers potential. But what may be most intriguing is how this could be used on stationary targets... say... Saddam's bunkers, (pastense) or perhaps... North Korean and Iranian nuclear potentials. And don't be so naive to think that the chicoms don't want to be on level ground with us strategically...they've been doing some major muscle flexing in the pacific rim as of late... the end of the USSR does not mean the end of potential threats to our way of life (translation, loss of ability for geeks to hang out at /.)
And it was bomb then too
So when are we going to get one of those? Give it a few solar panels and some fat-ass capacitors, it wouldn't be hard to do. I'm sure the satcom devision in our military would LOVE to perform an assassination on Bin Laden with this.
Life is not for the lazy.
Have we really slummed low enough that we are using cheesy 80's movies as inspiration for national defense?
Oh, but cloning new organs with stem cells isn't cheesy 80's sci-fi as well?
Changes are, given the brightness it would be at 5MW, even with minimal dissipation... you might only ever be able to see it "just once"
How the hell was that a troll?!? Because I didn't put a little, stupid smiley faces at the end of it to signify that it is a joke?? Volkswagen Beetles were, in fact, one of the coolest cars ever made. Didn't you ever hear of "double entendre"?
what about Ace Combat 5's (by Namco) SOLG (Strategic Orbital Linear Gun)? ---- one letter off from being the same...
I don't believe the pentagon cover story for the ABL. Big laser on a plane I believe, that it is intended (or would work very well) for ICBMs I find highly questionable. At best it would be a closer range weapon, perhaps to use as a blinding laser against enemy aircraft or very unsophisticated shorter range tactical artillery rockets, or for use against selected softer ground targets. Even crowd control in riots for that matter. Targeted assassinations like they use hellfires from predators now, along those lines maybe.
And all of that is a big maybe.
I think this is just another example of a huge mil/industrial complex pork project, like most of what they develop. A jobs program- "ooh, lasers, shiny!"
Well ok, it's not quite as funny online. Guess you have to imagine those quotes are actually air quotes.
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
Wow, that was quick!!
Well, now - since you are so easily swayed, I demand that this comment be modded as Score:5, Offtopic.
Do it, I say!!
Can anyone think of a "non-lethal weapon" that wasn't eventually used as a form of torture, whether deliberately or not ?
Rubber bullets that tear off chunks of flesh when they strike glancing blows, tasers, "shock belts" put on unruly prisoners with the trigger given to the judge. Never mind the good old truncheon.
So if we're developing lasers that shoot down missiles "half a world away" why on earth are we also developing a missile defense system that uses other missiles to shoot down incoming ballistics?
Oh, that's easy. You see, the missile-based defense system was just to distract the liberals in America while the real laser-based ABM system was silently completed (with the help of Israel).
A very worthy expendature. The Democrats were so busy frothing at the mouth over the ABM missile tests, they didn't even see the ABL coming and weren't able kill it in congress.
Now that we finally have a real, working ABM system, MAD, and the possibility of nuclear holocaust, is forever dead.
Hate to break it to you, but sci-fi weapons have been in our arsenal for years.
Namely, the geostationary communications satellites that are the backbone of our military communications system (and not to mention the later GPS system). If you told a commander in the field in the early 1970s (in, say, Vietnam) that he'd be able to have maps with his location pinpointed by meters, or that he'd be able to guide a cruise missile air strike just by pointing a pencil-sized cylinder at a target, or that he could have a live, secure telephone call with anybody in the world from anywhere with open sky, he'd cream his pants.
They're such a part of our everyday world now that many people forget (or never learn) that the notion of communications satellites were invented by Science Fiction author Arthur C Clarke.
Yesterday's science fiction is taken for granted by tomorrow.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
If this works, sure, our little F-16's and whatnot can use them. But what is the feasibility of mounting these things on satellites? No need to bounce them off mirrors on satellites, just mount it on a satelite on the first place.
Yep. I noticed this in the last month on a government website that maps NOTAMs.
It is quite common for there at the national scale map, to see a purple dot. This purple dot indicates that there is scheduled laser activity in the area. Frequently a laser light show. The NOTAMs advise altitude and range for which precaution is advised.
Then suddenly broad sections (that can only be assumed to be flightlines) stretching from Texas, down the Gulf of Mexico (just off the Mexican coast) to the Yucatan penensula and over to Florida. These NOTAMS frequently advised precaution of several thousand feet "below the aircraft" and "above the aircraft" and for a range that makes the "light show" type NOTAM seem laughable.
Real Genius was probably making fun of the Star Wars Defense project (and military-academia links, among other things.) The sad thing is that, yes, for 20-30 or more years, our military has been pumping billions into this prime example of the military-industrial-congressional complex.
The script had some jabs at Caltech (coordinates for the house were a mortuary near Caltech) but I suspect they had MIT equally in mind.
Please help metamoderate.
The laser pulse is so short and intense that the missile rotation does not matter. Same for mirroring. For all practical purposes, the rising edge of the pulse will destroy the surface layer of any mirror very quickly, and then the rest of the photons will be nicely absorbed.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
If I were the enemy - and want to disable those laser/high tech planes, all I have to do is explode a nuke high above the atmosphere. The EMG will knock out all those planes with those fancy laser+computers for hundred miles - half world away :)
Now we just need enemies to justify this thing. Actually we seem to be pretty good at making them lately.
They know it too. From an article on new war machines in the Jan, 06 Maxim Magazine:So would it be infringement if I made a movie or designed a truck that resembled the Aliens vehicle; but not if the military does it?
What happens when they miss? Obviously if their aim is true, those underneath the target missile get little chunks of MissileShit raining down upon them, but is some family in Tokyo going to get a nasty surprise if they aim a bit low?
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
It could be a jumbo with Ballmer, and a chair. He could f*&^ing kill those missiles!
My dad is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Air Force. During the 1970's, he was stationed at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, as an Electronic Engineer. One of his projects was working on an airplane virtually identical to this. He spent part of his time working on the electronic controls for the aiming optical mechanisms.
This project was almost identical in every way (I went over the limited information in the article and almost every technical fact my dad could say 'we did it that way too' to). We even have a picture of the modified airplane (only noticeable addition is a dome on top).
The project was abandoned because it produced no viable results other than a few test cases in extremely optimal conditions.
the latter video is just a small scale variation on this
note they refer to it as a 'virtual' force field.
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
http://www.g2mil.com/ABL.htm
Remember??? They had this secret base under a drive-in movie theater, where the movie screens turned into giant laser-charging thingies that would send their laser pulse to a satalite to bounce around and hit a target. Only problem was that they missed the russian Nuke they had a couple of spies reprogram and fire at the US as a test. Luckily the spies reprogrammed it in flight and caused it to change course and detonate away from everyone! Then they all played risk...
tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
It isn't an anti-rpg platform but it is in the realm of what could be encountered in a "Long War" scenerio (the mine issue is definitely present day thinking.) And once again some tool brings up the fallacy that if this wasn't being researched that other things would just magically become possible because people would be reassigned. Why yes, let's move the physicists on a high energy project and have them now work on a materials issue. Author also doesn't take into consideration that the pentagon has to consider scenerios involving China or better yet North Korea deploying ballistic missles. It also makes the assumption that if this is going through R&D that the desired anti-RPG platform is not going through R&D - another fallacy.
Post is based on poor logic, poor assuptions, poor mods and smacks of didn't RTFA.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
I never understood how you protect similar systems from enemy action. If you allow for weapons in space, what prevents the enemy to park a shotgun near your mirror, and fire it five seconds before the missile? I assume that the cost of the counter-measure would be orders of magnitudes less than the relay system.
No good deed goes unpunished...
How would this stop an attack wherein an enemy places a small nuke in several cargo containers and has them go to every city with a port on both coasts, hooked up with a gps system set to blow them as soon as they get in range?
No fancy airplane laser will help with this. They are still fighting the cold war. All sounds like an excuse to transfer money from US taxpayers to defense contractors.
I mean serriously, would any enemy worth his salt fire a big honking ICBM at the US? I mean, I could fit a single warhead from a soviet MIRV missile in a car and drive it into the middle of DC and detonate. And thats just me, thinking off the cuff, imagine what the chinesse are thinking up.
I'll be impressed when it peaks at one point twenty one jiggawatts
Well, I'm all for megawatt class lasers - as this means the technology is about 1/1000th of the way towards using lasers for something useful:
Protecting our ground forces against TBMs carrying chemical or bio weapons is "something useful". Or is your definition of "something useful" restricted to sci-fi items of interest to middle-class caucasians and items of interest to lower-class minorities who make up our armed services don't count?
Assinating bin Laden would not be in the current Administration's best interests. If bin Laden was dead, then how would the 'eternal war' (thanks Orwell) continue when no other militant currently has the 'boogey man' status as bin Laden does?
Seriously, if the US really wanted bin Laden dead, they could do it. Enough troops and survailence would locate him, and then its simply a matter of munitions.
So what happens if a bird or sky-diver gets in the way? At worst, will it maybe delay the laser's ability to blow up the missle for only a second or so? Then I still feel safe ... as long as I'm not sky-diving.
I seriously doubt it. While I wouldn't say impossible, I would say it's highly highly unlikely. Besides, wouldn't you want this reward? I don't know about you, but I could use the 25 mil bounty! Fat chance though. I'd get waxed by his loyal followers before I even got within visual range.
Life is not for the lazy.
Fuck no.
Due to Congressional budget cuts, they had to settle for Freakin' Sea Bass with bad dispositions.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
These weapons may have been useful and valuable in the cold war era to cancel an airborne nuclear threat from our of our communist rivals. In this day and age, when nuclear weapons and other explosives are less likely to be airborne and more likely to arrive in a shipping container on one of our ports, doesn't it seem like we're going even further down the path of excessive militarization?? The military-industrial complex accounts for 30% of government spending, and it's because we keep launching projects like these airborne missile defense lasers that the upward trend continues. I agree that it's important to have technology in defense , but pouring all these resources into military technology that doesn't make a whole lot of strategic sense when we could be putting money into, say, education and health care, and actual national security concerns - doesn't it make you stop for a second and think?
On the other hand, at least the airborne defense lasers fulfill the actual premise of a "defense budget" - it is meant to defend us, and not to invade or destroy other countries, though I could see its purpose being perverted there as well.
I'm still waiting for Gundams. Or maybe Transformers.
Slashdot, the only place where intellectuals can act like idiots... and still sound intellectual.
He meant to say, F r i c k No.
Sig
We're just too cheap and too greedy to spend money on developing the technology to harness that power efficiently. We've got a massive fusion reactor 1 AU away, showering us with more energy than we need.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"The ADS would provide a nonlethal form of crowd control"
I heard the tests involved the volunteers removing their eyewear and other metallic stuff, and people who missed out certain stuff got badly burned.
So even if its nonlethal its not going to be as "rosey" as they seem to claim.
you don't need any gimballs, or fancy computing power, just take a corner mirror and put it on the satellite. They still have some from the 60's on the moon, and they work fine reflecting the laser back to earth.
You may need a really big, or really polished mirror to reflect the beam with enough intensity to vaporise the target/source, but it's definitely doable, and with 60's technology no less.
To demonstrate the fallacy of a sliding shield, give a person a square of aluminum foil large enough to cover one eye, and a second person a laser pointer. Now have the first person protect both eyes while keeping them open.
Good luck! And remember, "Don't stare into laser with remaining eye".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Your laser cannon is not match for teh almightly ZERGLING RUSH
Wonder why they're using a COIL laser vs. a more-modern AGIL laser. The benefits of AGIL over COIL are perfectly suited for aerospace applications like this, and would significantly reduce the loaded weight of the plane.
My mother works for a company that makes targeting lasers and satelites. I was going to name the company but thought better of it. We are already bouncing ground based targeting lasers off of satelites. No reason it couldn't be done for higher power beams. Posting anonymously because I don't really know if she should have been talking to me about this... But I don't think knowing we have this capability is really a threat to our national security. Just to be safe I took out some of the technical details I was going to put in. Like I said, believe it or not, your call, but I know for a fact it can be done.
Nope.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Lasers used to mark ICs etc deliver a high energy density into the surface of the chip. You can get them to write on your fingernail (as I have done) by cooking just a few cells. They wont cook your whole finger.
Getting whammed by high wattage for a very short amount of time is not going to hurt you much and nor will it knock a satellite out of orbit or kill a missile.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Should Americans have a power source device with equivalent energy density for such weapon, they wouldn't be fighting desperately for remnants of oil today. Considering latest Russian rockets have unpredictable trajectory, targeting would be quite an interesting math problem. Unpredictable as in chaotic, not as in "we don't know where they shoot". Certainly a 747 is a much better target for identical weapon of an opponent than speedy rocket is... Optical properties of atmosphere are horrible, ask some pilot; so called "beam preconditioning" sounds pseudoscience bullshit to me. Possible iodine laser wavelengths will not be dificult to find, what if the misile surface will be polished mirror for that waves? Or maybe the opposite: vaporized metallic carbide of outer coat can serve as thermal isolation or even coolant..
Anyway, high energy weapons projects for upcoming age of energy scarcity is a really challenging strategy. Water pistols in desert, anyone?
There you are, staring at me again.
this was tested during vietnam. no news here.
> The difficulty is not in getting the MegaWatts up, but keeping the
> laser trained on the same spot for long enough to penetrate the skin
> of a remote missile and cause it to malfunction catastrophically.
And hitting "the same spot" of a moving target for a microsecond is obviously easier than hitting the same spot for a second, which is the main reason the energy output per time (Watt) is extremely important. The other reason is that there will be less time to lead the energy away, so the area being heated is smaller, thus less total energy is needed.
now all they need to build is a deathstar. then we can take over the world! MuhaHAHAhaaha!!1. oh wait...
Norris Normal - Who am I?
So, it leaves no evidence of it's use huh? sounds perfect for that prison they keep having trouble with in iraq. scary.
If by "ungrateful" you mean "refusing to support a war of agression" then we are probably ungrateful. But then, we still remember the nuremberg trials, where YOUR judges convicted the former german leaders for (amongst other things) "planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crime against peace"
Actually, even some people in the US seem to remember that (hence the The Hague Invason Act) to protect all "American Servicemen" (up to and including their Commannder-in-Chief) from "unjust" or "politically motivated" persecution by, say, "ungrateful" former allies.
I've been interested in this technology, I have read quite a bit about it. Apparently, the goal is to ignite the missile propellant, which is poorly armored and already at a decent temperature. The missile's head, on the contrary, is too hard to explode with a laser due to armor (and armor-piercing-armor). Considering most missiles and intercontinental missiles use their fuel in the first minutes of flight, travelling the rest of the distance in 'ballistic mode' (dude it's falling!) this weapon is only effective if you can hit the missile when only a few (hundred) kilometers away from its launching point.
I believe that in this test they will launch a missile near the jumbo and that their objective is to put it on a satellite fleet to be able to hit anywhere in the world.
While I'll give a thumb up to this new tech, it may be worth of note that russians have already started to develop a protection from it : now on their recent missiles, it takes only 30 seconds to use all the fuel, reducing drastically the "window of effectiveness" of the evil Freedom Overwhelming Orbital Laser.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
How long will it be before someone goes on Pimp my WMD and has their ballistic missile chrome plated and polished to a nice laser reflective mirror finish?
Mind you shouldn't we have stealth missiles by now?
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
I can't accept this!!
Everyone knows that Sir Arthur is not American. Only Americans can invent clever technical space ideas.
What you meant to say is that Edison's invention of the light-bulb paved the way for the geosynchronous satelite, since they are both round.
This, among the ABM shield are weapons directed at the next possible adversary. China. This is simply an oberservation. And though Bush has had his diplomatic blunders for some reason he was able to keep his mouth almost shut over this. Imagine "We build weapons to take the Chinese apart!" or something along those lines.
However, he did fundamentally and single handedly change the US policy on the Taiwan issue. It used to be "we will defend Taiwan, but for diplomatic reasons we won't say anything, since we play along with the One-China-Policy and the This-Is-An-Internal-Affair-Stand from Beijing" and changed to "of course we will defend Taiwan and say it out loud" by statement of the US President.
(ZOMG genocide in Europe again?! Its a modern day Hitler, someone bring Churchill back from the dead!11!!)
Not funny. Grow up college kid (or at least keep your mouth shut if you visit that part of Europe or you'll find yourself in a lot of trouble). Several very nasty acts of genocide happened. For example - (from wikipedia)
The Srebrenica massacre was the July 1995 killing of an estimated 8,100 Bosniak males, ranging in age from teenagers to the elderly, in the region of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina by a Serb Army of Republika Srpska under general Ratko Mladi including Serbian state special forces "Scorpions". The Srebrenica massacre is considered one of the largest mass murders in Europe since World War II and one of the most horrific events in recent European history.
Mladi and other Serb army officers have since been indicted for various war crimes, including genocide, at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The ICTY's final ruling was that the massacre was indeed an act of genocide.
-- Keysh (Peter Erwin)
Why? Because if it only penetrates a 3rd of a mil into skin
then how long do you think it will take before someone develops
some clothing that absorbs in the same way as skin and keeps the
heat off the person? Sure , the clothing will get hot but thats
easily solved with insulation.
Seems like a waste of time to me , not to mention somewhat
dangerous (if you keep the beam on someone whats to stop their
skin turning to pork crackling?)
As Iran is going to test their new misiles, and the usa their nice lazers, they could join their test plans together...
Iran launches their brand new toys, and the Usa blast them away with their kill-O-Zap-Lazer-Beams
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Alls you'd need is a spinning mirror and a tracking system and you could vaporize a human target from space!!
Popcorn anyone?
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
U.S. weapons contractors have .. cashed in by pursuing a few simple strategies:
..
..
1) exaggerating the threats faced by the United States;
2) marketing their weapons systems as the answer to national security problems
3) exploiting well-cultivated relationships with Pentagon officials
Profits of War Feb 2004
Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northop Grumman
DoD is getting tired of arguing that land-based Stars Wars can so work.
So you put the lasers on planes where you will be closer to the missiles and they will be moving relatively slower to you as they pass by.
Now all we need are several thousand 747s running ellipses over Canada, the Pacific and the Atlantic 24/7 and we'll be safe!
Makes sense! Er, sort of. It isn't like we have a deficit or fuel shortage or anything.
[Realistically, it might be a way to save face and find some product that actually works from all that Star Wars research?]
I guess they are not science FICTION weapons anymore, huh :)
The way I see it, having huge laser cannons mounted in big jets (or even smaller tactical lasers mounted in big helicopters) will give the USA what it already has: a huge advantage in conventional warfare. The chinese might be able to make their own lasers or buy Russian laser technology from the cold war, but the USA is far head here.
But the USA is already far ahead. No other country could seriously take on the USA in a conventional (and with lasers, even a nuclear war). Given how the USA has been throwing its weight around since Bush and friends got into power, I don't think that's necessarily a good thing. Being able to threaten and use nuclear weapons on a country like Iran because there's no way the Iranians (or North Koreans) could fight back - conventionally, is only inviting some rabid fanatic to try and get one into the USA covertly after his country has been invaded or destroyed by the USA (again).
Maybe the USA has decided that holding an occupied country is not such a good idea after all and that they should rather try to terrify a country into a submission instead using their insanely expensive military. Good luck on that, because it will only work as long as it takes for the other side to invent their own lasers.
When I was very young (1980 or 81... 7 or 8 years old), I recall a "mysterious black plane" crashing in the eastern California mountains. It was reported either before or after Dallas in the 5 minute "news filler" CBS used to have back then. The next day --ZIP-- nothing in the papers, radio or TV. As a young kid that loved planes (and still does!), I read not too long ago in Air & Space or somesuch thing that it was indeed an F-117. Now, of course we had them then. But it's not like we admitted to it really until the Gulf War, some 10 years later.
Heck, I recall The Washington Post running a story in the mid-90s about the testing of non-projectile weapons at Aberdeen, MD.
Think about pagers, cell phones, LCDs, or any other technology. In general, there is a 10-15 year span between development and mass adoption. (I'm amazed nukes aren't more prevelant.) I fully believe that before I retire (2040 or so) that the US will have issued its infantry with laser and/or mass driver weapons.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Meanwhile your enemy is just about to detonate a suitcase nuke which they've walked in to your homeland on a donkey.
And the next war gets fought with sticks and stones again.
Fucking stupid humans deserve extinction. They still can't think beyond the level of a baboon.
My feeling, for the last 25 years, is that if somebody wants to nuke the USA, they won't send a missle, they will put the device on a ship, and float it into NY harbor. Or something like that.
IMO: the USA is preparing to fight the wrong kind of war. The new enemies of the USA are insidious. The new enemies won't send missles, or storm the shores.
FWIW: USAF vet, previous employee at General Dynamics with TS/clearance.
The P.S.A.'s military has the best equipped military in the world. On the conventional battlefield, the fight is over before it begins with the P.S.A.'s military in the winner's place. However, despite its armored exterior, the P.S.A. has a soft underbelly. As with the Roman Empire, the P.S.A. will be defeated from within. Many of its people and businesses are already poisoned with drugs, perversion, and lack of morals (along with the rest of the world).
While the P.S.A's government may be able to destroy the most well hidden military equipment, it would have a hard time defending against hords of people with Zippo lighters bent on setting everything in the P.S.A. on fire. Look at the panic two guys with a rifle caused in D.C. a few years ago. The weapons that will be successful against the P.S.A. will be those which are routinely bought in the Walmart's or other discount stores located in nearly every American town. The enemy spends $1 to destroy a thousand dollars worth of our wealth while we spend a thousand dollars to destroy $10 dollars of enemy wealth.
Go a few decades back (when the P.S.A. was the U.S.A.), one would find that this would be less and less the case. Back then, people had more freedom, and their purchasing power was much greater. Rather than spending most of their time adly playing video games, surfing the net, or watching one fo the four hundred channels of crap, they would be in their local communities talking with other members of the community. They would have had a much better idea of who belonged and who didn't. There was also reasonable tarrifs on imports which allowed goods entering the country to be more carefully inspected. This is no longer the case since large companies are allowing to import super cheap goods while having to pay few taxes and comply with even fewer regulations. The P.S.A. government giving special privileges to companies created by enemy countries also does not help our situation.
The only way for the P.S.A. to be secure again would be for it to return to being the U.S.A. It would have to return to basic morality as well as the principles on which it was founded. Since most people are now hostile to this idea, it can not possibily happen until major castastrophy strikes this nation. We have to heal the internal rot before we can effective fight against an enemy that remains largely invisible, and which changes shape and size. The P.S.A. is not only facing terrorists, it is also facing MS13, drug cartels, corrupt government officials (at all levels) as well as a corrupt "entertainment" cartel. Once the P.S.A. heals internally and returns to being the U.S.A., we have a chance of winning against our enemies. But unless that happens, we as a nation will be through.
This is OLD news!
The U.S. Air Force was testing airborne pulse laser weapons in the 1980's (I was in Junior High at the time.). They had them mounted in the inside of C-130's and the pulse laser shot out the back of the C-130. The battery pack in the C-130 was only good for about 3-4 shots before it was depleted. About 3 months after they announced they were testing them they said they were discontinuing testing because they said the lasers "tended to cause blindness in the enemy.". HELLO! Sounds like the typical LAME excuse they give for everything.
I wish I could give you some URL's but they didn't exist back in the 1980's. But this was happening around the same time Russia was testing their "Killer Satalites" and around the same time the "G.E" satalite "dissapeared". Anyone remember these things?
The Truth is a Virus!!!
this provides a complete answer to the original post!
Come on this is Slashdot, I'm sure he meant "Frack No!" ;-)
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
I really hope that our military realizes that laser beams are still er well, light. If we plan on shooting down warheads with this thing then it would be very difficult to do so if the warhead has micro polished mirror finish. It would simply reflect the beam or deflect/defract it in some fashion.
...but not one asking the most important question of all:
WIll the mirrors make the enemy look fat?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Of course accuracy is a problem with lasers. That's why on G.I. Joe, there would be a hailstorm of laser beams flying everywhere, but nobody would get hit. Luckily, when planes were shot down, the pilots were able to parachute to safety. I guess powerful lasers don't hurt people, just machines.
This is clearly a weapon of mass destruction. To defend ourselves, we will attack.
-- Rest of the world.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
A study for the American Physical Society concluded the ABL range against solid fuel ballistic missiles would be about 300km. This is too short to be effective in any of their tactical scenarios because the platform is so valuable it has to stand off a long distance from hostile territory. A range of 600km against liquid fuel missiles would make it useful against North Korea, but probably not Iran.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
A few of us geezers can remember when Reagan bought into the "Star Wars" defense in the mid-1980s on the basis of flimsy experiments. Twenty years lter they have yet to pan out, even in the most contrived missile tests.
I recall the stimulus was that MIT Prof Peter Hagelstein demonstrated the first XRay laser (which required a nuclear explosion source at that time). The late hawk Stanford Prof Edwin Teller (developer of the US hydrogen bomb) persuaded the Reagan administration you could build a missle defense with XRay lasers.
You put it on a Jumbo Jet so it is no longer limited to DEFENSIVE operation.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
We need a working weapon by the end of June. We got plans for your little ray gun this summer!
The Soviet Union was never going to commit suicide by launching missiles. Russia will never commit suicide by launching missiles. China only has what, a dozen warheads? China, a four thousand year old civilization, is also not particularly suicidal. They have a track record of not dying. North Korea is merely desperate, not suicidal, and doesn't really have a missle worth firing.
"Terrorists" don't actually exist, as a real entity that one can point at, but even if they did, over in Terroraland, their goals are to make points or to alter the policies of countries that they can't take in a proper war. They won't use missiles; they don't need missiles. Any country that hosted the launcher, even accidently, like say Afghanistan did with the al Quaeda bastards who ran away and let the innocent Afghans die in their stead, would be exterminated by whatever President was in office. It is in no nation's interest to give a lawn chair to people playing with rocketry or homemade cruise missiles.
The only people about to use nuclear tipped missles is the U.S., and soon. Read the news; Bush is enamored with using nuclear tipped bunker busters on Iran -- a nation that is not threatening us, but merely trying to stave us off from attacking them. A number of the high command are ready to resign if he goes ahead with this idea.
There aren't any nations who hanker to use nukes. Or missiles, for that matter. Maybe Israel, because we have their backs with 100K warheads of our own. And even they live in a pretty small fishbowl, and aren't about to contaminate themselves.
What we have is the dawn of the age of beam weapons. Yadda yadda missles, what these monsters will be used for is assassination and pinpoint destruction. No noise, no warning, just megawatt and eventually gigawatt death from afar for those who displease us.
What I dread more than airborne or truckborne beam weapons is handheld units in the hands of police or the military. The sign to look for is a breakthrough in miniaturizing power supplies -- fuel cells, high density batteries, however -- which will lead in short order to troops standing over protesters with megawatt laser rifles, or tripod mounted laser cannon. The criminals will snatch up cheap imitations shortly after that. No crack of a gunshot, no triangulation via microphones to local the killer -- just silent death, death by flashlight.
And think -- it's not like Star Wars or the other un-science-fiction flicks. They always depict lasers as operating like a chattergun in WWII -- pulses, the shooter choosing his shots. A beam weapon is different in that you can sweep a crowd -- targeting is not necessary other than running the line of the focus across the target, like a water hose. And lasers are their own targeting system -- low power to light up the target, than high beam to kill. It's a perfect hand weapon.
IT was called Real Genius
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
.... the "disturbing sizzling sound" the guy who fired it off made? I'd be pissed too - what a mess!
When you absolutely, positively have to nuke overnight! Do use use UPS, the last package that I sent to SE went there via SN. Africa has enough problems without a mis-routed nuke.
I'm waiting. :P
(See, I even remembered to tack a stupid smiley face on the end this time.)
My father has done design work on the type of laser used on this project, and possibly even this particular project (I'd never know, he's got top secret clearances and only speaks about such technologies in the abstract). However, he was telling me that when they were designing the laser optic systems "like the one's they'd use in the 747...we were having problems with focusing the beam..."
Turns out that when the beam is fired from the nose of the 747, the beam is not focused, it is a 1m (3ft) diameter beam. It is designed to focus all its energy once the beam reaches its target. If the beam were focused when leaving the nose of the plane, within milliseconds it would burn out the laser optics (mirrors) used to aim the beam at the target, that and the beam itself would simply superheat the air along the beam path and turn it into a plasma!
So, by scattering the beam at the source (747 nose cone), they can account for atmospheric distortions and have the beam's energy focus precisely on target, from a 1m diameter down to 5mm or smaller diameter at the target.
I thought that was pretty darn cool!
With all the military posturing that Iran is doing, their nuclear missle ambitions are useless as we can destroy the missle while its still ascending over their own landmass, without any physical object of ours even entering into Iranian airspace. To them, it would appear that the booster just exploded just after liftoff and they'd be left wondering why all their beloved missles are now suddenly defective.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
What is with all the pinkos lately?
IMHO it is better to have missile defense (SDI, Star Wars, whatever you choose to call it) than to not have it. If only to provide it to American allies such as Taiwan, Israel, Japan, South Korea, etc. Also, it's a great jobs program for smart Americans. Additionally, there are bound to be handy spinoffs.
Yeah it won't keep out the suitcase/shipping container nukes. So what, move out of the major cities until another strike hits, so we can then turn everything from Morocco to Pakistan into an elongated glass crater, I'll bring the marshmallows.
Does this mean that 'The Imperial March' has to be played every time Dubya enters a room or walks down a street? Or what about Emperor Palpatine's theme tune?
And will Dubya start spouting things like: 'The power to destroy a missile is insignificant next to the power of The Lord!', to his lackeys?
Cue to enter stage a village idiot, his teen-sister with a bad-hair year, a tall trash-can and a smaller bin on wheels, a smuggler with a carpet for a friend, and here be starting a rebellion...
Colonel Robert Hogan and his heroes always sabotaging the German war effort.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogan's_Heros
The way I've seen this work, is that because it's line-of-sight, there's visual confirmation of the target.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
You forgot making gigantic swiss cheese.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
> Every square inch of the Muslim world has been stolen from non-Muslims by Muslims in
> unprovoked wars of conquest. Think Constantinople-1400's, Southeast Europe,
> Spain-700's-1400's, Vienna-1600's
Think almost every damn inch of US soil, unless you happen to be an American Indian. It's called the "Trail of Tears", not the "Trail of Welcoming Our Happy White Friends".
Back in the day, cultures expanded militarily - that was just the way of the world. Trying to use that fact to cast aspersions on one culture or religion while conveniently ignoring the fact that other cultures and religions did the same thing is misleading to the point of being lying. Christianity and western culture are hardly lily-white in this regard.
"Sir, I think we just melted the Eiffel Tower."
"and so therefore it's an inherently defensive weapon and not an offensive weapon, because you can't attack large amounts of areas." Uh, yeah, right.
Frank W. Miller
Funny? Mod parent "Informative!"
Let's say that "half a world away" is 10,000 km, and that the target missile is 3 meters wide. To hit within a 3-meter ring at 10,000 km, you'd have to point your laser with an accuracy of .000017 degrees. At a high-speed moving target. From a moving, vibrating aircraft. The laser may have the power to make the shot, but I seriously doubt that they've yet managed that kind of accuracy.
I say its good money spent if it performs the mission as advertised. Then leverage its capabilities against other nations that piss us off and carry on production/R&D for improved systems to use against future yahoos who annoy.
Hello all:
Interesting... If it is possible to shoot down an enemy missile, would it not be possible to shoot down a plane?
Without going into whether an air-borne laser missile defense is feasible or not, I wonder what counters an "enemy rogue state" would do in response to this?
* Send more missiles in an attempt to overwhelm the system, a twisted version of denial of service?
* Plan software trojans in the control system to hijack it.
* Use more low-tech approach... With payload assembled and planted within the border.
* Another low-tech approach... Get the payload shipped to Mexico or Canada first, and then smuggle into our land...
The list goes on and on... What I am trying to say is, you close one hole, but there are still many others to fill. We are still not yet ready to impose our policies on others without repercussion yet.
Cheers.
B. Pascal
I worked for a company who made the optics for the ABL. Very cool stuff, it has been close to operational for awhile now. Also did stuff on the Mars Rover, Paveway Penetrators, HARM missiles and the VLA (very large array) as seen in contact.
Hell, the plane can fly only so high. If IIII were a dictator or ruler of some land and had a VALID reason to launch a missile and some country decided to exert preeminence over ME, and I had MY airspace to cover and delouse I'd think about Black Sunday... the movie in which a news blimp had it's gondola replaced with millions of fleshette needles aimed to take out the SuperBowl patrons.
In my case, had I the money, I'd set up batteries of these things. I might not be able to hit the bastard pointing the laser, but I'd sure aim it at recon planes that even hovered 15 miles outside my borders (assuming my borders coverage didn't directly harm or piss off a border-adjacent country...)
There've GOT to be better things to do with all this frickin' money instead of propping up retired officers, senators, czars and others who thrive on "preparedness for war" when they'd be better off (and we, the CITIZENS of the world not in uniform nor carrying hated or urges to "go and fucking kick some ass") improving trade, dialogue, and doing something about drug problems, hunger, disease, joblessness, and more...
Oh, I forgot, defense is just "part" of the tapestry of things going on...
(hunts for tritium and valium pills)
Hmm, the pills didn't work....
Nope, I'd make high-EMP, low-ground-effect nukes and send them in the likely direction of the spy and laser planes... they'd better have hydraulic and optical backups for those supposedly "hardened" electronics. Maybe the absolute, cold, ruthless fear of being at war should be adapted to DEfusing rather than EFFUsing war... Deranged boys and their toys? Fully? Maybe not. To an extent? Yes...
Those boys need RealDolls
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
PRICELESS...
Maybe they plan on playing La-zeh-pendence day on somebody's Capitol building? A quick fly-by and a laserlight show in RWB colors might look pretty spectacular... but the plane and its lasing gas better not get hit...
Hmm. If all that gas is hit, would the plane explode, freeze up, or turn molten then fall like solid iron?
I suppose a contingency plan for these laser planes would be to fry hijacked planes. Maybe lase off part of the wing, or an engine, or even knock out some windows port to starboard to depressurize the cabin and make it land (if they get up close...)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
> The laser pulse is so short and intense that the missile rotation does not matter.
Based on what do you say that? You're directly contradicting all available evidence about the system. For example:
---"It should be made clear at the start what the beam does not do. It does not vaporize or even melt the missile's skin. Instead it heats the skin until whatever internal forces present cause the skin to fail." (link)
---"the main laser is fired for 3 to 5 seconds from a turret located on the aircraft's nose, causing the missile to break up" (link)
---"Once the target "sweet spot" has been designated and the deformable mirror attenuated, the COIL fires, sweeping the target area for several seconds until the enemy missile's heated casing ruptures" (link)
Basically, all evidence suggests you're flat-out wrong: the ABL takes at least several seconds to destroy a target, which is enough time for a rotating target to spread the beam over a wide area. Unless the ground tests have been against rotating targets---which does not seem to be the case based on the photos in the links---rotating targets are likely to significantly affect the viability of the system.
There are two Ls in satellites, not one. Unless they're, you know, miniature satellites with fewer calories or something.
O~ Him that studies revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon
Don't tell me what I meant. I meant *FUCK* *NO*.
> That said, what do you think the people blowing up US troops want? In your worldview, once the troops
> leave, there will be peace and the people doing this will stand down
Historical evidence says yes, many of them will. From American Conservative magazine's piece on "The Logic of Suicide Terrorism":
RP: The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign--over 95 percent of all the incidents--has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.
TAC: That would seem to run contrary to a view that one heard during the American election campaign, put forth by people who favor Bush's policy. That is, we need to fight the terrorists over there, so we don't have to fight them here.
RP: Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.
Since 1990, the United States has stationed tens of thousands of ground troops on the Arabian Peninsula, and that is the main mobilization appeal of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. People who make the argument that it is a good thing to have them attacking us over there are missing that suicide terrorism is not a supply-limited phenomenon where there are just a few hundred around the world willing to do it because they are religious fanatics. It is a demand-driven phenomenon. That is, it is driven by the presence of foreign forces on the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. The operation in Iraq has stimulated suicide terrorism and has given suicide terrorism a new lease on life.
(For the curious, Pat Buchanan was one of the founders of American Conservative magazine, suggesting it really does approach things from a US conservative viewpoint.)
That's why this kind of hardware isn't cheap.
Even so, today's most powerful lasers would self-destruct if they were able to shoot continuously. But they fire pulses so it gives time for the system to cool down.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
since when does the US care about the Geneva Convention?
wikipedia, not mine.
The world does not revolve around Europe
I agree. Hence I would say the value of international fora such as the UN to get everybody round the table and offer common sense when one country gets too high on its own self belief.
I was just making fun of the fact that Europeans are overly paranoid of what goes on in their backyard but are completely ignorant to what goes on globally.
First of all I still think you're being insensitive. I'm guessing you're from a part of the world which has been lucky enough not to have terrifying acts of genocide occur in its locality. My pet theory for the US govt hawkishness is that the USA has never experienced a modern war on its own soil. Be thankful and have some sensitivity. Maybe I am being over sensitive but have some respect for folks who've lived through it. Secondly I see a lot of European aid agencies in these parts of the world and I'd dispute Europeans are "completely ignorant to what goes on globally". Probably just as much ignorance as anywhere else in the world.
(Cambodia? Rwanda? Sudan? Tibet? More recently, Darfur?)
We hear about them a lot on the news (BBC). We should do more I agree. I am sick of developed countries only seeming to help out places where there are resources (oil etc) or geopolitical advantage. I think we agree with each other here. I've been to Cambodia a couple of times, I've got a friend working there on a health project. I know what you're saying. My life is so good, I don't have to worry about landmines in my day to day life.
I'm not saying the U.S. is perfect either (the U.S. should've stopped Pol Pot when we had the troops there)
It was very complex indeed. The USA complicated matters by the nature of its engagement with the Sihanouk administration before then after all. The Arclight missions didn't help either. The Khmer Rouge indeed committed terrible attrocities. I've been to S-21, I've been to Choeung Ek. We need some sort of international agreement on stopping these kind of insane crimes.
the sheer inaction of the U.N. completely undermines its authority
Yeah sometimes more needs to be done but we definitely need an international body rather than individual nations deciding what's best for the world. Plenty of historical precedents suggest that's a bad thing...