DARPA Developing Defensive Plasma Shield

galactic_grub writes "According to an article at New Scientist, DARPA is developing a plasma shield that would allow troops to stun and disorientate enemies. The system will use a technology known as dynamic pulse detonation (DPD), which involves producing a ball of plasma with an intense laser pulse, and then a supersonic shockwave within the plasma using another pulse. The result is a gigantic flash and a loud bang in a the air. 'The company has also pitched a portable laser rifle, which would be lethal, to the US Army. It would weigh about fifteen kilograms, would have a range of more than a mile, and could have numerous advantages over existing rifles - better accuracy and the ability to hit a moving target at the speed of light.'"

Comments

Laser rifle

[wmwilson01]

It's amazing to imagine how much something like the laser rifle would change the military. Sniper school spends a lot of time on the details of a bullet's behavior over time with the obvious affects of gravity and the wind, especially when you're dealing with a moving target. To be able to shoot a laser without really any of those constraints, that travels at the speed of light... A sniper's job will become a whole lot easier... unless you want to get into the fact that the majority of a sniper's job is about getting in and then hopefully back out.

Re:Laser rifle

[Cadallin]

Actually, despite other errors in the GP post, you're missing something important. Scattering even by molecules of air is significant at power levels much lower than this thing operates at. Watch videos at http://www.wickedlasers.com/. Their 100mw pen sized lasers scatter enough to look like a fucking light saber swinging around, and this laser rifle is probably hundreds of times more powerful. If its in the visible range (although probably it isn't) in battlefield condition it would probably make a flash like some kind of Anime Superweapon. Even if its not in the visible range, the same effect is going to apply, it'll just need special gear to see it, something like night vision for IR lasers, and for UV it'd be easy enough to rig something up (it's not like plenty of types of sensors aren't UV sensitive). Also, unlike a ballistic sniper rifle, Anybody watching with such a system will instantly know the exact location of the sniper.

Re:I'll wait for the next model

[hedwards]

Over the course of a mile, a bullet would drop by about ~18 feet over that distance. As well as taking a couple of seconds to arrive at the target. A laser would take a small fraction of the time and not drop at all.

Why the toys???

[EmbeddedJanitor]

This seems like pretty typical Pentagon. Hey troops, don't worry about the fact you have insufficient low-tech tools. Don't worry that you have to go scrounging through dumpsters for scrap metal to make armour http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/12 /10/us_stance_on_armor_disputed/ . Don't worry that the rifles are inadequate and the US soldiers would prefer AK47s http://www.thenewblackmagazine.com/view.aspx?index =451.

Please ignore all that folks. Don't worry, in the future we'll have a bunch of new toys for you...

Suggestion to the brass: before you play with the high tech stuff, get the low tech stuff right first.

Re:Why the toys???

[geekoid]

You know the Pentagon has different people who do different things, right?

Now, if the adminstration would handle the war properly, those issues could be resolved. Until that is done, those troops are fucked. I know a lot of high ranking people have quit because they can't get what they want for the troops.

You want to help? keep writing your reps, the paper, orginize a protest to get the troops what they need.
The best way to do that is with oversight committees.
I didn't want to invade Iraq, and I think we were wrong in doing so, but I sure as hell don't want our troops unprepared.

Re:Why the toys???

[FredThompson]

Modded 5, Insightful?!?!

Insightful would have done some real research and found the "scrounged" armor was a very short term issue and there have been 8+ major uparmoring mods and more than 70,000 fully armored vehicles in Iraq/Afghanistan now.

Insightful would have known the "underarmored" vehicles were HUMMVs which were replacements for Jeeps. You know, Jeeps, those open-sided and open-topped vehicles.

Insightful would know the true status of the M-16. Same story, bud. The first ones, 40 years ago, were rushed into use and there have been a huge number of modifications. The AK-47 isn't that great. It's not good at a distance, there's less control of the bullet's destination and the vast majority of them were made very, very sloppily which means they spray bullets almost randomly. Read your own link, it says some American troops are using captured AK-47s because the ammunition is so available. Why might that be? Do a little research on calibre and interoperability of ammunition. Just because ammunition is available doesn't mean it's more useful than an M-16 nor does it mean it's preferred over the M-16. Gad, your comment shows you don't really know much about the weapons or tactics.

Good priorities

[DogDude]

It's good that our US government has their priorities straight: Building levies: no. Health care: no. Education: no. Really, really, really deadly weapons: hell yeah!

Excellent...

[FridayBob]

... just what we need to win the War on Terror. A truly worthwhile project. Really makes you feel good about paying taxes.

Disorientating

[Anonymous McCartneyf]

And using lethal force on crowds that inadvertantly gets innocent people will anger the international community.
Sometimes, it's obvious why a crowd needs controlling or a hostage-taker is taking hostages. What would you have the military do in cases where we know what the hostage-taker wants but do not want to give it to him? Hostages make great shields.
In those cases where it's not made obvious, by the time you figure out why it's being done, it's often too late to do anything. The crowd has dismantled the city; the hostage-taker is already killing hostages, and will finish with himself or the entire building he's in.

Re:Disorientating

[Anonymous McCartneyf]

When ordinary people protest, they chant slogans and carry signs. Listen to their slogans, read their signs, and you'll get a general idea of what they're trying to protest.
If it's not clear what a group is protesting, it probably isn't a protest--it's just a riot.
US journalists get targeted because that's sometimes the only way to catch the attention of other US journalists. US journalists rarely go deep into international affairs even when it involves very important or very helpless foreigners, and rarely print it where everyone can see; but when it involves one of their own, they consider it big news and treat it accordingly. We are talking about a school of journalism that routinely writes articles about how the media is handling things--when they are the media.

Re:I'll wait for the next model

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the light bends. But so does the light that you're using to sight your target. In fact, the degree of bending is *exactly the same*. So, as far as the user of such a weapon is concerned, the bending is totally irrelevant; the beam hits whatever its aimed at, regardless of the gravity field that it passes through.

support the troops!

[Anonymous Coward]

All they need is a ticket home on an airline, and have congress fire all the officers from captain level on up, then tell the remainder to get with the program and READ the constitution, until they "get it" that just following orders from some dictator in chief is job TWO, not job one, job one is defending the US and our laws, not a pack of criminal order givers. So that ticket home is the best way to get them out of harms way in the middle east. Do it yesterday, we have NO business over there and if we took a fraction of that wasted money and put it towards more renewable energy research we wouldn't even NEED any of that oil over there. And if we stop killing middle easterners for blood profits and to defend some weird little nation over there that ISN'T our friend if you look at the situation clearly, we wouldn't be developing 1.5 billion and counting people who don't like us at all, and another few billion who are getting increasingly antsy and distrustful about the whole "US" deal in general, from our failed and bully-boy redneck cowboy policies..

    Next, put the troops (Active still with time to serve, not the guard or reserves, let them GO HOME RIGHT NOW) on the southern border where they can TRULY defend the nation and stop the REAL invasion and outright REAL terrorism that has hit the US, part of the war against the productive and legal and lawabiding US middle class by the rich transnational loyal to nothing but money jerks and their failed and *outright treasonous* economic policies. Use the troops to get them to stop this invasion, using full military might if that is what it takes to get the point across,to stop the globalist's importation of thousands and thousands of heinous criminal gang members who really are a serious physical threat and prove it daily, and to get them to stop the invasion of millions of wage lowering community busting non-assimilating job-jackers on behalf of the aforementioned treasonous globalist fiends.

That's how to support the troops. You don't keep pumping air into a flat tire, dammit! You have to fix the thing first!

  Throwing good money after bad and spilling more blood,both US troops and tons of completely innocent foreigners, after failed policies based on outright lies, is quite insane. Learn from history, or fail it, those are your choices.

Re:support the troops!

[bhiestand]

The terrorists are good guys. Women should be slaves, and your head should be cut off ofr not praying to Allah 5 times a day. You're fucking brilliant. We see how well that worked for the Spanish; they were slaves for centuries. To be fair, that's exactly what the Spanish did to many other nations both before and after the Muslims did it to them... Sorry, replace the "Allah" with "Jesus" for the Spanish.

Re:"Money well spent"

[drpimp]

I don't like the war, or any war for that matter, just as much as the next guy. And while I did think your sarcasm was quite amusing, your point about spending 1/10 on the other stuff alone won't work. Hindsight is 20/20, we already wrote the checks, now our butts need to cash them, we have been writing them for thousands of years (no not the US in general humanity). Or else they are going to bounce those checks and we are going to be up shit creek without a paddle. Even if this war-on-terror never began, do you honestly think diplomacy alone will WIN in the sense of not having threats to us. NO! Why you ask I will tell you. Terrorists and your so called evil-doers have agendas. lets say for example we were friendly with all nations. That does not mean all nations will be in that same boat. So Al-Queda doesn't like Jews! Well there you go, now you have a conflict outside our make believe agenda, do we sit idle as they are our ally? Or do we take sides? Which side will you be on? While your solution is a Perfect scenario for an Imperfect world! It will never happen.

Re:"Money well spent"

[ChrisMaple]

"curing world diseases and poverty, maybe so many people wouldn't want to attack and kill us in the first place."

There's a more common phrasing of this argument: "Your money or your life."

The idea that we have to fix all the problems of people who are busy killing each other when they aren't trying to kill us, so that they won't try to kill us, is stupid, immoral, and ineffective.