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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.'"
Any chance we can put them on sharks? I believe that would greatly increase the lethality of the lasers.
Unreal Tournament-esque Shock Rifle, anyone?
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.
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.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
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.
if you're wearing your tin foil hat you may be able to reflect the beam back at the shooter
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.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
"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.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
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.
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