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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.
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 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 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'"
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).
That all depends on whether or not you like cats
Actually, one could argue that technology could have, atleast temporarily, forstalled the inevitable loss of the war for Hitler. Two great examples, the Tiger Tank & the Messerschmitt Me 262 Jet. Both were better than anything else the Allies had at the time in their respective weapon classes, but both were then micromanaged by Hitler such that they lost their purpose. The tiger went from being one of the fastest tanks in the war to being the most heavily armored tank in the war with a giant gun, so much so that its ability to manuever in the Russian geography was terrible. They essentially turned into semi-mobile artillary placements. The Messerschmitt suffered the same fate; it was faster and more manueverable than anything else the Allies had but then Hitler said make it a bomber, eliminating its manueverability & range in favor of dropping more powerful munitions. In both cases, Hitler decided to micromanage these projects, ignored his own scientists and subsequently created weapons that were ineffective at what they were originally designed to do in the first place.
As far as your comment on comparing politicians to Hitler, personally, I think this really debases just about any debate since a) most people really don't fully grasp what Hitler did when he was in power, so any metaphor they make is incomplete and quite likely bears no resemblence to what happened under Hitler, and b) theres tons of more moderate and applicable examples than Hitler to be used as reference that do not carry a fuckload of emotional baggage like Hitler & the Nazis do. Its merely used since even the slowest kid in the class knows that Nazis = Bad, and as such, panders to the lowest common denominator. If you think your audience is stupid, sure use the Nazi's, since everyone knows they're bad, but otherwise, show your audience some respect and get a bit of nuanced thinking in there.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
All of this research was done a long time ago. The laser delivers its power in such a burst that no amount of mirroring or spinning will make a difference. As to the atmospheric attenuation, that's what the laser's adaptive optics are for. It's kind of like a telescope in reverse. In any case, this sort of thing was tried for short-range defense in the 70's, and even a small laser was capable of shooting down Sidewinders (mounted on a KC-135.) We're talking about serious firepower here...this thing was tested at a low-altitude range of 50km, and worked fine...up in the high atmosphere where they hope to catch boost-phase weapons, it should be much easier. It's not like the things can evade or maneuver, after all, they're called ballistic missiles for a reason.
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http://www.nae.edu/nae/bridgecom.nsf/weblinks/MKE
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.