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

Lasers?

[kungfujesus]

Any chance we can put them on sharks? I believe that would greatly increase the lethality of the lasers.

"disorientate"?

[kalpol]

God forbid they should be terminatated.

Re:"disorientate"?

[HaeMaker]

I imagine it would be used for crowd control or hostage situations. There are many situations where non-lethal force is needed against an enemy.

Re:"disorientate"?

[Shivetya]

plus disorienting may be more valuable when it comes to groups you cannot guarantee an instant kill on.

in other words, disorient then kill if necessary, a kill shot is not a guarantee but if you can keep them from taking any real action you open yourself more options, which includes a few important seconds to kill the baddies. think hostages, who cares if you give the hostage a headache or such, its better than the baddies getting shots off at him if you only wound one.

let alone the fact that the public seems to take a dim view lately of actually killing enemies...

Re:"disorientate"?

[Anonymous Coward]

A bird? A plane? No! It's low-flying joke!

Re:"disorientate"?

[FiloEleven]

"I read it in the papers, it must be true!"

I recall a Slashdot post from a while back in which a British citizen poked fun at our American use of the word "burglarized." A burglar burgles! There's no need for the extra syllable! (The reason I remember this was the humorous follow-up of, "You're right; we apogle.")

Seeing a word in the dictionary doesn't automatically make it a good word. Sure, it's in use, sure some group of people decided it should be put there, but that doesn't make it any less foolish. Language is a living, growing thing, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't prune out the rotten bits.

I, for one, don't want to give the Brits any more ammo for their merciless mockery.

ASMD Shock Rifle

[npaufler]

Unreal Tournament-esque Shock Rifle, anyone?

I'd better get one, too

[iminplaya]

If there is to be a balance of power of any kind.

Re:I'd better get one, too

[shaitand]

'I don't think any government would sell something like that to its citizens.'

If governments wanted the people to have power (utlimately all power is derived from force) our rebel leader forefathers wouldn't have had to put the right to bear arms in the constitution. It exists precisely because power must be distributed and a disarmed citizenry only have power at the mercy of the government.

Re:I'd better get one, too

[textstring]

if you're wearing your tin foil hat you may be able to reflect the beam back at the shooter

New products

[spleen_blender]

Fresh from the R&D of UAC, we today present you with... THE FUTURE. BEHOLD THE BFG-9000! The future of all warfare, never again will the people of your country stand a chance of usurping your power even if they are the majority! I for one welcome our superiorly armed overlords. (Two memes in one post!)

Lasers efficient at killing?

[Dan East]

I thought lasers made inefficient weapons because they cauterize the wounds they create.

Dan East

Re:Lasers efficient at killing?

[Carnildo]

Depends on what the laser is tuned for. If it's tuned for cutting, then yes, it will leave a cauterized hole. But if it's tuned for energy transfer (think: turning water to steam), it's more like being shot with an exploding bullet.

Re:Lasers efficient at killing?

[geekoid]

imagione a whol appearing anywhere in your torso. Now does it really matter if it keeps bleeding through the hole?

You are screwed.

Re:Lasers efficient at killing?

[Un pobre guey]

To say nothing of the mayhem they cause due to some of the beam reflecting off the target, or missing it partly or completely. As I recall, this was deemed a major drawback to the airborne laser discussed here about a year ago. Also, the lasers require very large amount of input energy in order to generate a militarily useful beam. This means consumables, added weight, transportation, firing prep, detectability by the enemy, etc. This sounds like Pentagon bullshit to me, disinformation designed to frighten and fake out naive Third World military.

Re:Lasers efficient at killing?

[ChrisMaple]

The high inherent accuracy of a laser means that if you can see 'em, you can kill 'em, first shot. This is a considerable advantage over current weapons in some situations. It's cheaper than a guided rocket, more accurate than a rifle. Possibly an ideal sniper/assassination weapon.

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

[brit74]

Not to mention the fact that it will be that much harder to locate the sniper. At least a gun produces a muzzle-flash and sound.

Re:Laser rifle

[einhverfr]

A laser of this size is likely to provide a flash of light and sound (not stunning as in the other technology). This is due to the laser ionizing the air it travels through (creating the same sort of plasma as the other part of the story). I would expect the path to be very visible to anyone looking in the right direction at the right moment.

33kg is not a light weapon, and not something a sniper could simply hold up for precision firing with his hands. You would probably need a tripod, etc. So in the end you are looking at a not-very-sniper-like weapon.

Re:Laser rifle

[steveha]

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.

Actually, this would be a win from that standpoint as well. Current sniper bullets are always supersonic, and thus there is a loud *CRACK* sound that helps indicate the location of the sniper. The laser beam would be silent.

(If you are interested in snipers, you ought to read the book Marine Sniper, a biography of Carlos Hathcock. Hathcock commented that a sniper usually gets one free shot, because no one is expecting the shot, and surprised people don't do a good job of figuring out where the shot came from; if the sniper fires a second shot, all the people in the area will start looking in the correct direction, because this time they are expecting something. So he figured it was better to get close enough to get a guaranteed one-shot kill; even though he would be closer, he would be much harder to find than if he had to take a second shot.)

Imagine a sniper killing someone, and the only sound is the body falling over. Kind of creepy. The sniper might be able to kill the person without other people in the area even noticing!

On the other hand, assuming a high-tech enemy, it might be possible to track the sniper by waste heat from the laser. If you are putting enough energy to kill out of a laser rifle, there will be nontrivial amounts of waste heat. So there might be a special "sniper model" battlefield laser weapon that contains the heat somehow (cartridges with compressed gases, and you use the expanding gas to cancel the waste heat?). Thus the sniper model would probably be the heaviest model.

(Or perhaps the heaviest model would be the "squad automatic" laser, which could be fired many times rapidly...)

Actually, a physics question: would there be a trail in the air, caused by the laser traveling through the air, that could be seen with some sort of vision enhancer goggles? Would the air molecules be ionized or something, and could that be used to track a sniper? If so, there would be a line drawn in the air pointing from the target straight back at the sniper. But I really have no idea if that is possible.

steveha

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:Laser rifle

[FrankieBaby1986]

Perhaps, this being an electronic gizmo, a decoy emitter(s) could be designed to be placed several hundred yards away, pointed in the same general direction to confuse people looking for such fire? Then it would "fire" at the same time as the weapon by remote. Eh, just speculating weird ideas. Beats me how to get around it.

Re:Laser rifle

[Jesus_666]

1.) As was already pointed out, a pulsed laser strong enough to kill is strong enough to ionize the air it travels through, generating a glowing line straight from the firer to the victim. Even seeing that line for a fraction of a second allows people to deduce the rough direction from which the shot came - that's what our brains are made for.
2.) I'm not entirely sure about this one, but I think that the ionized air gives off a fizzing sound, which means that yes, it becomes possible to identify a laser sniper by sound. Also, light bounces off the victim, resulting in at least a small flash as (s)he gets hit. No inexplicable deaths.

I think the advantages are more along the line of "we get long-range kills without having to calculate the effects of wind and gravity" than "our snipers become undetectable".

Re:Laser rifle

[salec]

There have been theoretical weapon designs that let a laser ionize the path to the target and then send huge amounts of electricity through that path...

Crossed my mind too, as several posters mentioned ionization of air along the beam: instead of relying on conversion of stored charge into current, then into light, to deliver destructive energy on target, just create an ionized channel and pour all the stored charge down on target. The show stopper is, of course, a possible "short circuit" discharge between channel and ground anywhere along the beam path, which, due to limited minimal angle between the beam and surface limits applicability to air-to-ground use.

Vice versa, anti-sniper measure would be to keep possible target of assassination inside an isolated Faraday cage connected to powerful high voltage source - if high-power laser was deployed, assassin sniper would have been zapped through the channel his weapon created.

However, there seems to be another, to me much more interesting possibility, completely out of military and destructive applications: the whole idea could be used to construct a laser induced conductive ionized air channel "infinite hight lightning rod", a system to harvest huge atmospheric electric energy in controlled manner, for our power needs!

Or, perhaps those ionized channels could be used for very low current, very high voltage electrical power transmission without using metallic conductors at all. Perhaps we could even connect surface-to-orbit spacecrafts with ion engines to electric power grid using that technique, one "conducting channel" on each side of spacecraft, so that very little fuel mass is lifted.

Ancient Chinese Secret, Huh?

[AbsoluteXyro]

"It uses a programmed pattern of rapid plasma events to create a sort of wall of bright lights and reports (bangs) over the coverage area," says Keith Braun of the US Army's Advanced Energy Armaments Systems Division at Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, US, where the system is being tested.

So.... they've invented fireworks, then. Finally. I mean, the Chinese military has had access to fireworks technology since the freakin' Han Dynasty! Glad to see our boys in blue are getting with the times!

Woah

[smilingman]

According to an article at New Scientist, DARPA is developing a plasma shield that would allow troops to stun and disorientate enemies

Not as much as I was disorientated by that spelling...

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.

Knowing is half the battle

[Agrippa]

Extensive documentaries of GI Joe vs Cobra battles during the early 80's show laser weapons have a complete inability to hit anything of value.

.agrippa.

Re:Knowing is half the battle

[earthforce_1]

Extensive documentary footage of old A-Team episodes show that automatic rifles ( especially M-16s ) are useless at ANY range, except for maybe giving the enemy's jeep a flat tire. It is much more effective to simply drop the rifles and bludgeon the enemy into unconsciousness with your fists.

Also, FTA...

[SixFactor]

... is a way to change the laser rifle's intensity, and thus, its lethality. Yeah, I envision settings for STUN and KILL. Shark mount optional.

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.

Re:Why the toys???

[Cyberax]

AK-47 is obsoleted by AK-74 (which can use NATO ammo, BTW).

Besides, accuracy at a great distance usually means nothing in city warfare. You almost never have ranges larger than 15-20 meters and AK-47 works great at these distances.

Re:Why the toys???

[swb]

The AK-74 and its variants fire 5.45x39. "NATO ammo" would be 5.56x45, so, no, an AK-74 wouldn't be able to chamber let alone safely fire NATO ammo. I've heard some 74s were converted by former east bloc countries to shoot 5.56 once they joined NATO.

You can also get 7.62x39 AK uppers for AR-type rifles and I guess Alexander Arms made 5.45x39 uppers as well, but still, box stock AK-74s and M16s and variants are not capable of shooting each other's ammo.

Re:Why the toys???

[Waffle Iron]

It should have, but the people in charge convinced themselves that all the new toys invented in the intervening three decades would be silver bullets that would guarantee success. Their plan could have been written by the Underpants Gnomes:

1. Cleanly knock out a few key sites with precision missiles.
2. ???
3. Stable Democracy!

Re:Why the toys???

[funwithBSD]

Well, what you are really suggesting is that limited warfare does not work.

Now the question is, when can we afford to use troops in the following situtations:

1. Limited, humane "war". Oxymoron if their ever was one. Usually a failure, re: Vietnam.
2. Geneva Convention "war". Works pretty well. Won in WWII and Korea.
3. Total war. Pre-Convention war, no quarter given, civilization at risk. This is the long history of warfare and is true war.

We are fighting an enemy using level 3 warfare while we remain at level 1.

Level one is total stupidity. If that is all that was needed, you should have used other means like special forces hit and run. Don't send in long term troops unless you are ready to fight level 2.

So go to level 2, or get out and wait for them to sack Washington.

The scary thing for me is that as they get nukes, and they will one way or another, there is no way to do MAD style containment. They are not going to launch anything at us because they don't have the technology. So they sneak it in and detonate. Meanwhile, because we are so hung up on national boundries they don't really recognize, we don't know who to nuke.

And we lost our ablity to fight as a civilization, like Rome, and just nuke the barbarians, period.

I really don't see a way out until we shake out of our lethergy and understand that they want us all dead or converted to Islam. Anything else is al-Taqiyya.

Re:Why the toys???

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I have no response to your comments on armor, but I'd like to address some of your assertions on the M16 vs. the AK-47. Yes, it's a bit off topic, but misinformation shouldn't be left to spread, and apparently nobody else is going to step up.

Onto your comments about the Kalatchnikov. There are lots of reasons to like the Kalatch over the M-16. There are a few to like the M-16 over the Kalatch.

It's "Kalashnikov". Nobody refers to this weapon as a "Kalatch". The only reference I could find for this spelling with a quick Google search (other than a place name) is the "Remember Jenin" e-mail which made the rounds some time ago. One reason not mentioned below to prefer the M16 is the loud report of the Kalashnikovs. The Kalashnikovs are easier to field strip, but they have a small pin (I forget its correct name) which is too easy to lose; and, no, the tiny pin on the extractor assembly of the M16 is not analogous - you shouldn't disassemble that in the field. Note that the later AK-74 design corrected that problem with field stripping. From the perspective of procurement, the AKs are more common and perhaps more suitable for poorly trained groups, but they're also more likely to be badly manufactured, including the ammunition. More corrections follow.

The Kalatch is a higher calibre weapon than the M-16. So the bullets reach the target with significantly more Kinetic energy.

At least you're correct about the caliber: The M16 fires 5.56mm rounds (NATO 5.56x45mm, much like a civilian .223 Remington), and the AK-47 fires 7.62mm rounds (7.62x39mm, commonly called "7.62 Russian"). For comparison, the NATO 7.62x51mm standard is similar to the civilian .308 Winchester.

However, you only get partial credit on kinetic energy: At 100m the 7.62 Russian has roughly 15% more kinetic energy than the 5.56 NATO. Beyond that, the energy of the 7.62 Russian declines much faster than the 5.56 NATO. At 300m, the 5.56 NATO has about 25% more energy, and at 600m it has about 3 times the energy of the 7.62 Russian (yes, this is well beyond the AK's effective range). Ballistics information for this should be available online. I haven't found a good study of the relative effectiveness of these arms on modern infantry armor, although anecdotal reports are fairly common.

Both the Kalatch and the M-16 have an effective battle range of 25-300 yards.

Half right again, it seems. Most sources do credit the AK-47 with an effective range of 300m. But the effective range of the M16A1 was 450m, and it's supposedly 550m or 600m for the A2 and A4 designs (depends on the source). I cannot attest to the validity of the 600m figure, as I've mostly fired the M16A1; I was discharged before the M16A2 was issued to my unit.

The Russian Kalatch's are quite well made, and some of the Hungarian ones are also.

The Russian AK-47 rifles (except for early models) have milled receivers, which are much better than the stamped receivers found in most others, such as the cheaply made Chinese knock-offs. The subsequent and more common AKM design has a stamped receiver, but it has welds and other structural improvements which make it superior to the original stamped receivers, and as good as the milled receivers while being lighter. Some of the AKs manufactured in the former Soviet Block nations are also reputed to be of good quality, but I don't know anything of those made in Hungary; based on the accuracy of the rest of your claims, I doubt you do either.

The Kalatch doesn't jam anywhere near as much as the M-16, partially because it uses so much more gunpowder/bullet.

The reliability of the AK rifles in dirty conditions is mostly due to the simpler design, the intentionally looser fit (lax tolerances) of its parts, and the chromium plating on key parts to avoid corrosion and pitting. AK rifle designs in 5.56 NATO and other calibers have similar reliability characteristics. The c

Re:Why the toys???

[Weedlekin]

"Geneva Convention "war". Works pretty well. Won in WWII and Korea."

The Korean war was a limited war because it was restricted to Korea itself despite the fact that China directly intervened by sending huge numbers of men who directly fought against UN forces, and defeated them on a number of occasions, inflicting heavy casualties in the process. In a WWII-style conflict, this would have resulted in massive retaliation against China itself, probably by dropping atomic bombs on Chinese cities, which MacArthur was seriously considering before being replaced (the fact that China had no airforce would have made this a low-risk affair in a military sense, but the possibility of direct USSR intervention meant that it was very politically risky).

Note also that we (i.e. the UN forces which were predominantly but far from exclusively US forces) did not win the Korean war, because it ended in a stalemate which culminated in a ceasefire agreement that essentially established the same North / South border that had been in place before the war. This ceasefire is still in place, so the war hasn't officially ended, hence a half century long armed stand-off between the two opposing sides. This wasn't the goal of the US / UN side, or the one the North Koreans had, although it does seem to have been what China wanted (the Chinese didn't intervene until UN forces were near to their borders with North Korea; they'd warned the UN that this would happen on several occasions, but the CIA told Truman they were bluffing, so the warnings were ignored). It would therefore be fair to say that the only true winner was China, while both the UN / US and North Korea can be regarded as net losers because neither managed to realise their military or political goals.

Re:Why the toys???

[bhiestand]

I've already done a combat tour and a second tour at a three-letter agency. Whew, you scared me. At first I thought you meant "four-letter agency", and I was scared shitless of the RIAA. Anyways, the M16A2 isn't terrible, but I do think we could do better, and I'd definitely be pissed if it was my only option. Did you see the weight of this "portable" laser rifle they're talking about, though? 15 kilos! Ever hump a 249 anywhere? They weigh about 7 bare, and you'd be hard-pressed to get one up to 10 kg with a rail, scope, heat shield, and talking power ranger doll.

Re:Why the toys???

[bhiestand]

In those circumstances both combatants will try to find a wall or column to hide behind. Then the winner is the one who has bullets left when the other has shot all of his. No matter how strong the soldier is, he will be able to carry more bullets if the ammo is lighter.

I wouldn't recommend regularly standing next to walls during urban combat. Bullets have this odd tendency of ricocheting and following the walls... The winner is the one who keeps his cool, knows what he's doing, and actually hits his target. Unless you're a marine; then you can just shoot everything that moves and hope you survive the encounter. Or Navy, then you can just kinda sit on a boat and know that they can't reach you very easily. Or if you just want a free purple heart license plate to reduce the odds of getting a speeding ticket. Outside of those reasons, I really don't see a huge value in cowering next to walls.

Re:Why the toys???

[swb]

It's a nonsense statement, then, since with modification most guns can fire pretty much any ammo.

Saying an AK-74 fires NATO standard rounds with modification is really like saying AK-74 doesn't fire NATO rounds without modification, and with modification it can fire pretty much any round.

Re:Why the toys???

[KDR_11k]

Daisycutter refers to the tube attached to the tip of a bomb that allows the bomb to detonate before the main body has touched the ground and have less of the blast absorbed by the ground. These days we have so many electronics in bombs I'd expect there's some kind of sensor that detonates the bomb at an optimal height without adding any long tubes to the thing.

Re:Why the toys???

[Runefox]

As another poster in the same grouping as yours pointed out, AK-47's are still great for close quarters/urban warfare, where ranges are typically anywhere between 15 - 20 meters or less (effective range on the AK-47 is 300 meters), and where stopping power is an absolute must. The larger rounds hit harder than the NATO rounds, and since not many of the insurgents carry protective armour, the piercing action of the NATO round is more or less rendered a non-issue. Though recoil definitely IS an issue, its lower rate of fire compensates for that to an extent, and full auto fire is usually not sustained for long. For longer range combat, an M-16/M-4 would likely be quite a step up in accuracy and versatility, but then one must account for the lack of ammunition while in the field, away from camp.

All of this is without mention of the AK's reliability, which is demonstrated quite vividly, I think, by Vietnam veteran David Hackworth:

One of the bulldozers uncovered the decomposing body of an enemy soldier, complete with AK-47. I happened to be standing right there, looking down into the hole and pulled the AK out of the bog. 'Watch this, guys,' I said, 'and I will show you how a real infantry weapon works.' I pulled the bolt back and fired 30 rounds -- the AK could have been cleaned that day rather than buried in glug for a year or so. That was the kind of weapon our soldiers needed, not the confidence-sapping M-16.

I could see an urban-based NATO soldier taking up an AK-47 for those reasons; Stopping power, reliability, ammunition availability, and good-enough accuracy for the setting, with the added effect of the larger bullet being able to penetrate certain types of walls, not to mention full-auto capability (M-16A2's don't have such a setting ; M-4's do). Plus, it leaves their more expensive NATO counterparts in conditions of less wear and tear for future battles while they're making use of the Kalashnikov's in urban combat.

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!

Wow. Just Wow.

[KnowledgeKeeper]

Are United States expecting some kind of alien foothold situation? :) Airborne lasers, laser rifles, Star Wars satellites, exoskeletons, wearable computers, hand-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles, atomic and neutron bombs, personal shields made of liquids, harmless skin burners...

I don't know about others, but this sounds pretty much like stuff we could read about in comics and watch in cartoons. Wouldn't it be funny if somewhere in a small well-guarded room there's a top-notch team of physicists that does research on new weapons by reading comics?

Rifle or field oven?

[FredThompson]

How long after laser "rifles" are deployed before troops figure out how to use them to heat food?

"Comrade, I see fireflies in the woods and smell burnt popcorn."
"Prepare for battle, the running dog Americans are here!"

Misread...

[masterzora]

My first time through, I thought it mentioned as one of the advantages that one can hit a target *moving at the speed of light*. And here I was wondering what target we could want to hit that would be moving at the speed of light when I realized the actual phrasing.

Non-lethal application

[einhverfr]

I noted that they could ionize the air with a non-lethal laser, and that they were suggesting that there might be non-lethal uses for the laser rifle. This might allow for a usage essentially essentially similar to a long-range version of a Taser.

Basically, if you can ionize the air, you should have a conductive path. You could then send a high-voltage current down that path to incapacitate the person struck.

Excellent...

[FridayBob]

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

Better buy stock in Highly polished mirrors

[Danathar]

I can see it now, terrorists running around cities with multi-faceted segmented mirrors all over their bodies...

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.

Re:"Money well spent"

[sohare]

Do you have any facts to base up your assertions? Where are the surveys done by, say, neutral countries that suggest what you are saying is true? I'm assuming you are not being sarcastic.

The US is notorious for supporting dictatorships and coup d'etas against democratically elected governments. Consider Honduras for instance, when the CIA supported a coup at the behest of the United Fruit and Standard Fruit companies. The US basically blockaded Fiji because they wouldn't allow for the testing of nuclear bombs near their shores. We've had heavy involvement in Iran for many years. Oh, and the support for Pol Pot?

Anyone who says that envy drives the hatred of America is woefully ignorant of American foreign policy.

This is gonna sound silly

[rantingkitten]

But I'm reminded of John Titor here. You know, the guy who was posting on Usenet saying he was from the future? Bollocks, I'm sure, but he did have some interesting things to say, and one of them was something to the effect (I don't have the quote in front of me): "Pay attention when the government starts talking about non-lethal weapons to use against the enemy. When they start talking about that, the enemy they're talking about YOU. You don't really think they're going into hostile territory under RPG fire and jumping out of a helicopter with these 'non lethal' toys, do you?"

And, well, I had to admit there was a point there. Maybe we should find it disturbing that so much research is being put into this kind of thing.