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."
What do you mean, does it work? Of course it's working, you don't see any tigers do you?
Gentlemen (and ladies), unpack your Atari 2600's.
Protect those cities!
liqbase
I see "laser" and I see "bubble." Clearly, this plan involves some frickin sharks at some point.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
By which I mean actual, migrating waterfowl. They'll fall out of the sky right into the Orange Terminal's food vending area, where Duck a la Orange will still sell for $50, right next to the $50 sandwiches. This is convenient, because that's what it will take to finance the laser equipment.
Luckily, Reagan National, in DC, can just use shark-mounted lasers swimming in the Potomac River.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
...and I propose they do this via some sort of dedicated network that controls them all, say, Skynet?
Unless this "shield" protects the airport from terrorists attempting to board a plane, what use are they? When was the last time a plane crashed into an airport building? Now if this was the White House or tother big military places, sure, but your standard domestic airport? Why?
Just imagine... juicy cooked tidbits will simply drop from the sky... time to buy a convertible!
Do not look into laser with remaining eye
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I don't think that we should trust a protective shield with a metric radius in the U.S.
I hadn't heard anything about airports being threatened by ballistic missiles...
Presumably, the more likely concern would be shoulder-fired SAMs shot at approaching/departing aircraft. A system that could actually acquire and zap such a thing from anywhere around the airport grounds would have to be highly automated and very fast... I'm a little concerned about false positives. A lot, actually.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The company I work does more airport approach clearance surveys than anyone else in the United States. I'm not sure how Northrop can claim they will be able to offer 20km protection against shoulder-fired missiles. I'm not sure how they could offer 2km protection.
While most airports have a great view of everything more than 20-30 feet in the air, many are in congested areas where there is no way they would be able to see an individual with a Stinger. Since shoulder-fired missiles seem to be the most plausible form of attack, I simply can't see how this system offers much protection at all to urban/suburban commercial airports.
I dub thee... Sir Phobos, Knight of Mars, Beater of Ass.
I would like to see solid evidence that they are effective and that they eliminate a threat before the government pours billions into this technology.
"Scud Storm!" -- Jeremy of PurePwnage.com
Remember folks - it does not actually have to work when the criteria is to spend money on anti-terrorism devices to show that you care. It is just more silicon snake oil - what more can you expect in an environment where intelligence agencies are using voodoo such as polygraph tests and pretend they are a highly accurate way of telling the truth, reading minds or whatever is the fashionable delusion these days.
We need better science education to stop the people who control the public purse getting sucked in by confidence tricks.
Number of US airports (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/fiel ds/2053.html): 14,893m ): At least 72
Major US airports (http://www.fly.faa.gov/flyfaa/usmap.jsp): Approx. 40
US airports with international flights (http://aerospace.web.mtsu.edu/usinternational.ht
Minimum likely cost using low-ball $25 million per airport figure and only major airports: US$1 billion
Mid-range likely cost using higher $30 million per airport figure, and all international airports in the US: US$2.16 billion
Realistic projection, expecting a 50% cost overrun, and ~100 airports: US$4.5 billion
Potential maximum even if cost per airport is reduced to 1/10th the lowest projection, and only 1 in 4 US airports is protected: US$9.3 billion.
All this just to stop something that's never happened on US soil, and AFAIK never successfully happened elsewhere (terrorists using a missile to shoot down a commercial passenger aircraft). Who said terrorism was bad? It sure as heck is good business if you're Northrop...
You never know if the reporter got it right or if the publicist had an overactive imagination, but the big threat people are worried about is some dude hiding in the weeds and shooting one of those shoulder-launched heat-seeking missiles at an airliner trying to take off or land. There has been talk about equiping airliners with countermeasures against heat-seeking missiles.
The way the countermeasures are supposed to work is that most heat seekers are not full-fledged imaging devices but are instead rotating scan devices, and if you know the nature of the threat, you could pulse a heat source on and off to throw such a missile off target. I really think it is a stretch for a laser to stick in an airport control tower to actually shoot down a missile by zapping it with the laser. I think it would be a much safer thing, especially around a civilian airport, to spoof such a missle by pulsing it with IR to confuse the scanning seeker, or if that doesn't work, to blind an imaging sensor with a thermal pulse.
It kind of makes sense to provide a central, airport-based spoofer/blinder instead of having distributed spoofer/blinders on all of the aircraft. That avoids the old-aircraft retrofit problem, and the planes really only need this protection as they are landing and taking off -- those shoulder-launched missiles don't go very far. It would also make a lot of sense to provide protection against heat-seeking missiles because terrorists in theory could get a hold of them and they are small and portable to sneak around with. It would also make more sense that the laser system would be a spoofer/blinder kind of countermeasure rather than a Star Wars type of shoot-down ballistic missile defense.
Given what we have seen of insurgent guerilla tactics in Iraq, popping RPGs at departing flights would bring do wn a plane. Perhaps not everyone on board will get killed because of the low altitude, but terrorism is all about terrorizing a population. That laser shield isn't going to do much, is it? Moreover, the laser is pointless unless it is deployed at all airports because terrorists with a man-portable surface to air missile would certainly do enough research to figure out which airports do not have the defense system and act accordingly. Or they would just go to Japan and knock down a plane bound for the United States. This appears to be more comfort food for a worried nation's spirit.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Airports with frickin' lasers on their heads!
Why do airports need shielding from lasers?
Is it 100% ready for full, zero defect deployment? Probably not. But then neither were aircraft, at first. Nor cars. Nor microwave ovens. Nor pretty much anything you can name.
Give it time. Some of these defense mechanisms WILL work. And work quite well.
For example - the (normal) northbound departure from San Jose goes over about a jillion small industrial buildings and hard-to-inspect back alleys. A single person on one of the roofs under the departure route could badly damage departing aircraft with a rifle. A .223 or better would hole a wing (and fuel tank) with no trouble, and with good marksmanship, I doubt the Kevlar blade containment shields would stand up to a 50 cal round. No missile needed. No help from the can of laser whupass. Hell, the jihadi would probably even get away, although I understand that's supposed to be optional. How many billions are we going to spend on this? Do you feel safer? I didn't think so.
Weaponizing civilian installations such as airports is a horrible idea. Sooner or later this system will accidentally shoot down a civilian aircraft. It's like weaponizing cars. You think there won't be mishaps? Increasing the number of ways an airplane can crash does not decrease the overall airplane accident rate.
Perhaps we should concentrate our efforts on finding people who want to commit homocidal acts and imprisoning them.
Or maybe stop international policies which cause people to want to commit homocidal acts against our airports.
While I'm at it...maybe we should stop trying to identify all the people that are not homocidal maniacs in a brain-dead attempt to find the homocidal maniacs by a process of elimination...
Does fear run your life?
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
Rocks don't do that. Their failure mode is to lie there and gather moss.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I don't have an exact figure, but there are roughly 500 airports with commercial flights into and out of them in the United States. Some of them only have a couple of scheduled flights a day. At, say, $25 million a pop, it will cost $12.5 billion dollars to equip all those airports with such a system, plus operating costs (presumably you have to have at least one guy babysitting the thing).
And you pretty much have to install these things everywhere an airliner flies. Terrorists aren't stupid (well, actually the evidence is that most of them are, but that's another story. Assuming they're stupid isn't a good idea IMO). They'll realise that if these systems exist, they should pick somewhere that's unlikely to be equipped with it. So while the planes at LAX and La Guardia land and take off with laser-guarded safety, our friendly local terrorists cruise on down to Bum's Rush, Iowa, and take potshots at the one RJ that lands there every day.
But assume these things *do* get installed in every airport in the country. What do our terrorists do? They scrap plan A - missiles at airplane takeoff - and go to the equally lethal plan B, a couple of tonnes of explosives under the grandstand at the local high school football game. Or any one of plans C through ZZ. So we've blown 10 billion dollars to achieve very, very little.
This is almost a quintessential example of protecting against a movie plot threat.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Don't worry about it. If decades of Star Wars have taught us anything it is that (1) you always run tests under artificially optimal conditions, and (2) it doesn't actually have to work to get more contracts.
As to why rockets keep landing on Israel, well, consider how many people have been killed by all those unguided Kassam rockets. According to Wikipedia, thirteen people have been killed by Palestinian rocketeers after hundreds of tries. That's far less than one suicide bomber can do in a pizza joint. In the great scheme of things they're more of an annoyance than a danger - they're a psychological weapon. There's probably a hundred ways Israel can spend two billion dollars that will save more than thirteen lives over four years.
Reagan is smiling in his grave.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
How long before one of these things mistakes a passenger jet for a rocket? Who's going to man the thing? I mean, Aegis Combat System is more or less the same thing and it shot down a passenger jet and there's relatively few Aegis systems. Imagine having these things at every major airport. I dunno, I don't think I'd be very comfortable flying with these things up and running.
Actually, THEL has been rather quietly developed by the US and Israel since it's a tactical system more than a strategic one. The Wikipedia article is horribly out of date, but its success ratio was very good, in that it was able to shoot down rockets, artillery shells, and mortar shells. One of the challenges has been to get the system shrunk down to a reasonable size. At some point, there was hope of getting it to a size suitable for mounting on a Bradley APC or perhaps even a Humvee, in hopes that it would provide small units protection against certain airborne threats. Whether they've managed to do that, I'm not sure.
If this is feasible, I wouldn't be surprised to see it mounted in places where mortars, Katyusha-style rockets, and RPGs are common -- places like the areas surrounding Israel, and in the cities of Iraq. Removing the major ability of insurgents to use such mobile weapons may reduce overall casualties and introduce a frustration factor strong enough to either get them to do something easier to do but less likely to succeed (roadside or suicide bombs), or even get some to give up altogether. (Yes, it's optimistic, but still possible.)
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
You and your pathetic band will die. Behold the power of my fully operational domestic airport!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Maybe I don't want a flying car this year.
I'm concerned about false negatives as well. Face it....this thing will NOT be perfect the first time out. IIRC, the Patriot system shot down a British Tornado, mistaking it for a hostile aircraft.
A false negative will be almost as bad as a false positive.
"It didn't detect that missile, the airliner got shot down, 300 people dead, $25B wasted....SHUT THE SYSTEM DOWN!"
...to shoot down those snake infested planes.
Similarly, there are terror attacks (successful and foiled), against countries, whose foreign policies bully no one -- like Canada or India.
Huh? Canada, while not ever experiencing a terrorist attack in response to Canadian foreign policy, hasn't experienced a terrorist attack since 1985 (Air India 182), not including violence deemed terrorist in nature against Cuban, Turkish and Indian politicians on Canadian soil, which brings me to my second point. You might want to ask Pakistan, Sri Lanka, or any Sikh about that lack of bullying thing you're claiming for India.
-- Religion is not an exact science
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
So, make it hard for mortar shells and Katyushas and Qassims ... a Cessna in the landing pattern with a few hundred pounds of explosives won't be detected as dangerous until it is too close to be stopped. Ditto for cars coming to the curbside loading zones.
I have always marveled at the willingness of the military industrial complex to come up with expensive ways of guarding against rogue cruise missiles, which are expensive and unlikely compared to the simplicity of stealing a Cessna and cruising over the border like any other returning drug plane. Or pack your nuke into a stolen cargo ship, packed down in the hold under enough metal barrier cargo to keep its radiation hidden, and sail right into a harbor.
Osama bin Laden is notorious for doing things cheaply. I can't believe he has much interest in stealing cruise missiles when he could steal Cessnas or a cargo ship.
This recent North Korean volley of missiles made me wonder if anyone at the top actually was worried about it. I think rather they saw it as a wonderful opportunity to spend more money on useless weapons to make it look like they were defending liberty. Osama bin Laden and his ilk have nothing to retaliate against and nothing to lose. North Korea and Iran do. Their glorious leaders may be crazy, but they're not stupid. If they actually did land a warhead in the US, even just a few hundred pounds of dynamite, there would not be a single dissenting voice trying to talk the US out of pulverizing their countries. They know that, and we know they know that. Even their own citizens know that.
Infuriate left and right
There's a chinese expression that literally translates to "spear and shield", meaning paradox. There was a weapon merchant selling spear and shield, claiming that his spear can cut thru any shield existed, and that his shield can protect against any spear existed.
Looks like Northrop Grunman is doing the same thing here, selling on one hand space laser gun that can destroy anything from outer space, and protective shield against laser gun on the other hand.
Someone is getting screwed somewhere.
On one hand, we have a system which tracks fast moving objects, and uses lasers to torch them.
On the other hand, we have birds, flying past the detectors.
That's it... I'm bringing Jamaican Jerk spices when I fly next....
-m
The real litigious bastards...
I think it would work something like this:. jpg
http://resources.ubi.com/resources/39/39273-11-12
True, but... Since you don't have several hundred ballistic missiles being fired at each airport, every single day, which senario do you think is more likely, and more of a cause for concern?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Well it's good to see that genocide has finally lost that bad-boy image it got during the reigns of Hitler and Stalin...
Really, you can argue all you want about whom was there first and who stole what from whom, but what it comes down to at this point is that there are two groups of people who desperately want to protect the areas which have been their homelands since birth.
Neither group is going away. At this point it's coexist or cease to exist.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
A billion dollar security shield to make us feel safe while terrorists take over planes with box cutters.
Brilliant.
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
Damn it, why are there never any pictures for kickass storys like a laser shield bubble but every time Microsoft does something I have to look at Steve Ballmers sweaty face...
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.
LOL, that's simply an absurd concept. Airports don't have anything to fear from the sorts of 'tactical' battlefield rockets that this would help against, and I'm extraordinarily doubtful that it would do jack *shit* against an RPG.
Oh, and regarding it's promising utility against shoulder-launched SAMs? Yes, I've seen the test films on laser-missile defense and, in a clear sky with no clutter, no ground interference, it can take out AAMs in a second or two...of course, if Terrorist Abdullah is going to fire a SAM-9, he's not going to wait until that 747 full of people is 2 miles away on a departing vector at 5000' giving the laser a nice multi-second chase solution. He's going to nail it when it's 1000 yards away, 150' in the air, loaded to the gills with fuel, engines on HOT, and the pilot has no altitude to cope with the consequences. This laser system going to detect, track, power up, and fire early enough to kill the warhead in that case? (Not to mention to track and compensate for, I dunno, that landing JAL 747 full of 300 Mall of America shoppers that's about to cross the beam during firing????) Um, no.
And can you imagine the maintenance contract on a ultra-high powered system with that sort of a hair-trigger, that has to basically sit "charged" 24/7? Egad. Yeah, I BET Northrop is hoping to sell a few of these.
-Styopa
That's fine until they're all repainted with reflective paint.
That shouldn't be a problem. The mirror would have to be virtually flawless. The slightest scratch or bit of dust and the first few pulses burn any reflectivity right off. From the Wikipedia:
"Some believe that mirrors or other countermeasures can reduce the effectiveness of high energy lasers. This has not been demonstrated. Small defects in mirrors absorb energy, and the defects rapidly expand across the surface. Protective mirroring on the outside of a target could easily be made less effective by incidental damage and by dust and dirt on its surface."
Well, this kind of new defensive weapon is always rolled out in several phases.
First phase is characterized by an upsurge in Northrup's market cap. That's just begun. All Aboard!
Second phase is characterized by initial installations and mild cost overruns (not to exceed 250% of estimated costs). Given the current Administration in Washington, that is almost certainly going to start before Nov 2008.
The next phase will see something "unexpected" happen, that will have the nickname "laser chaff" (possibly other nicknames, depending on how the decoys are actually implemented by the nasty, clever blackhats). Somebody's gonna die.
Then Northrup's market cap will drop again.
The trick to mastering this new technology is appropriate monitoring of potential terrorists' phone calls and email so you can know when to tell your cronies that it is time to trim their portfolios of Northrup stock.
The whole thing does point out the critical need for improving and expanding Homeland Security's capabilities for monitoring email, phone conversations, and the like. When it comes to protecting stock market portfolios of the rich and famous, we can't be too careful.