Slashdot Mirror
Northrop to Sell Laser Shield Bubble for Airports
NeoPrime writes "CNN Money web site has a story about Northrop Grumman forecasting development of a laser shield 'bubble' for airports and other installations in the United States within 18 months. The system will be called Skyguard — a joint venture with Israel and the U.S. Army. It will have the capability to generate a shield five kilometers in radius."
I hadn't heard anything about airports being threatened by ballistic missiles...
Is this a genuine threat, or just some company thought "Hey, I bet I can get them to buy this!"
Yes it seems funny to have a real-life space invaders defence, but it's not the worst idea in the world.
We know that light is faster than any other Surface to air defence we currnetly employ, but also that it follow a (reletively) straight line.
i think that with enought testing and debugging, you should be albe to knock a missle out of the air even when it's raining/snowing - in reply to a different post.
Think about it: if you could shoot stuff down with .223, why even issue MANPADs?
For defense, you need to be able to shoot planes down reliably. For terror, even a rare hit would be sufficient.
you would have about 22 seconds to make all eight shots in the best conditions
Why would a terrorist need more than a single hit? It seems to me that there are lots of vital structures on an airplane that, when hit by a single bullet, could cause serious problems.
Why be afraid? The world is dangerous, but fear of someone shooting down a jet with a pop-gun doesn't help anybody.
Neither do illusions that an overpriced ray-gun is going to make air traffic safer.
I sympathize with your skepticism of this project's value. But I disagree with attitude of discounting the threat. For starters there have been several instinces throughout history where terrorists have used missiles to shoot down passenger aircraft. But more to the point, if insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan can use RPGs or MANPADs to bring down military aircraft, I think it's safe to say the same tools are just as a capable of bringing down a commercial. In fact, given that commercial airlines are relatively unmanueverable as well as the fact that they don't carry any countermeasures, you have to assume increased plausability.
just a question, But how close do you think one would have to be to break the skin on a aircraft? You say the effective range on the Barrett is 2km, but is that enough to break what ever metal is used on the skin of a plane or just something like human skin? This seems like something that aircraft designers would look at, not just bullets but other 'things' that could hit an aircraft. Or am i to belive movies that anything bigger than you average bird would bring down the plane in a huge-spectacular-surround-sound-slow-motion-moving -fireball?
I admit to being a typical non-RTFA slashdotter, but the sumamry quote that this is meant to be a bubble, and some knowledge of current affairs, makes it pretty unlikely that ballistic missiles are the expected intruding weapon of choice. Those are long distance inaccurate area weapons (SCUD) or nuclear war weapons, and then you have other problems. This is meant for, as the sumamry says, mortar shells, artillery, and manpads with a very short range targeted against planes as they are landing and taking off. Manpad defense is best done by confusing the seeker, but you still have the problem of a confused missile coming down who knows where. Mortar and artillery shells have thicker skins and probably would require burn thru and the concomittant high accuracy and long dwell time, and that sounds problematical to me. Since their target is planes on the ground, terminal buildings, etc, there isn't much point to confusing their aim, which is impossible for such ballistic weapons, and exploding them in the air is only better in that the shrapnel will fall down slower. Maybe they have some idea of being able to disable the exploder entirely, but I how?
I wonder if this is just a fairy tale along the lines of the Alaska ballistic missile defense system, whose purpose seem to be propping up the starving defense industry and making it look like the Current Occupant is doing something.
Infuriate left and right
Spent that way, you'd likely cause more severe injuries and cost more lives. At least the laser system is less likely to actually cause as much additional harm.
From wikipeda:
Contrary to some common belief systems, when the government decides to spend lots of money on some big project to "keep people safe" (or some other similar noble sounding purpose, like "eliminating poverty"), like your $9 Billion on guard rails, usually what they actually accomplish is to make the problem worse.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Nice troll. It might be interesting if it were true.
Truth is Northrop Grumman is trying to sell the Israeli government a (jointly to-be-developed) laser system to protect against short range missiles. Calculations are that it's a waste of money, so it looks like an R&D manager is trying to save his project with a new "killer app" (pun intended).
29 mpg. YMMV.
a few dozen planes and helicopters were shot down in Vietnam by AK 47s. The NVA even trained specialists for that purpose. I personnaly met an old man who had received a special medal for one of these feats.
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
On a more serious note, if you are shooting a laser at a device that contains explosives within it, you need much less power to detonate it (or at least seriously damage its detonation mechanism) than to shoot down an airliner. SAM missiles are not built like tanks, especially the shoulder-fired variety, so the idea, in principle, does not sound that dangerous to me.
Nevertheless, the idea another slashdotter has posted about putting countermeasures on the airplanes, sounds much cheaper and safe than the laser thing. As far as I know, the Israelis are already using this in El Al planes, and I heard stories about them actually having to use this (and being successful).
www.meneguzzi.eu/felipe
Besides which, I'm sure a .50 caliber machine gun or even a automatic rifle could do enough damage to a jet as it passes overhead, that it stands a good chance of crashing before it can turn around and land. It only has to happen once to make a mockery of any defence system.
Absolutely, seems like most expensive defense systems, they are either limited in scope, or countermeasures are comparatively cheap to implement.
For instance, if it can only actively track and destroy one target at time, then fire two missiles concurrently.
Get a bunch of birds, paint their undersides with radar reflective coating, and let them loose near the system. Might be more fun that feeding alka seltzer to seagulls.
Sadly that's only the case if you measure by number of passenger miles travelled. If you measure by any other metric - number of vehicle departures, number of passenger departures, number of passenger hours travelled - commercial airliners are already far more dangerous than cars.
Explosives, you say... you mean like jet fuel? It's not just for breakfast anymore.