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Truck-Mounted Laser Guns
bl8n8r writes "Boeing has announced a contract with the US Army to develop laser cannons that are to be mounted atop 20-ton trucks for the purpose of shooting down incoming artillery, rockets, mortars, or bombs. The High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator project actually shoots stuff instead of just painting a mark on a target for other armament to hit."
to be an American
Next put them in C-130s, or Jeeps, like Rat Patrol.
Yesterday: 747-mounted laser.
Today: Truck-mounted laser.
Tomorrow: Shark-mounted laser.
sudo eat my shorts
How soon will we see these being mounted on the heads of ill-tempered seabass?
This government is so incompetent!! Bush screwed up. Again...
Sharks, I wanted sharks. Is that so difficult?
Guns of destruction are bad.
But the kid in me says...
SA-WEEET!!!!!!
surrounding Seattle, but I think you're right. I would not want to fire one of these in the dust and smoke of a typical battlefield. That energy will just get dissipated locally which can't be a GoodThing.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The range to shoot down a RAM (rocket-artillery-mortar) threat is on the range of a few kilometers. Laser attenuation ovr that short a distance is pretty minimal. My master's thesis was on this concept, but swapping out the laser for a gun-launched projectile... you actually don't need that much focused energy to destroy a RAM threat mid-flight.
...but can it drive a 6 inch spike through a board with its penis?
With the current admin, we are much more likely to put them in a high quality Chery truck (made by china and to be sold shortly by Chrysler).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I wonder how much power it takes to run and if it can target multiple incoming threats at once. It would be awesome if it could take on say 5 or 8 incoming mortars at the same time. Even better would be knocking out a barrage of RPG's. I guess the final implementation would be zapping bullets out of thin air which at that point you'd have a "shield" like in sci-fi. Military tech amazes me.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Pro: Well-paid engineers and scientists are kept in the U.S. at work on neat toy, keeping valuable talent working on a difficult problem.
Con: Obscenely-paid CEOs who came up with idea to push this useless weapon get a huge payoff, keeping destructive leeches working on the simple problem of continuing corrupt government.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
If there are a few hundred feet of dense clouds and smoke between you and the target, is the laser effective?
I guess the only consolation is that the enemy will have a harder time seeing you with all the clouds and smoke.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
rail gun projects? Nooooo...I think rail guns are way cooler, especially when they malfunction.
After the war, torture, Gitmo, NSA's unwarranted wiretapping and all the other crap that has made me ashamed to be an American, I'm glad that we can even for one brief moment have something cool like this.
Yeah, sure, we'll probably sad when they end up used to blind baby seals or to violate the Geneva convention (again), but quit ruining the moment, dammit. You made me misread "cherry truck" as "Cheney truck" and I was afraid I'd get zapped in the face by it.
Seriously, WTF?
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Why don't they just work with the already tested MTHEL system?
The adult in me says ... Guns of destruction are bad.
No, that's the adolescent in you that says that. It wants to stop killing, hurting, and threatening, and goes after a tool that is capable of such things.
But once you've had enough time and thought to understand the unintended consequences of the simple "solution" - disarming the law-abiding - you'll reach the adult understanding that self-defense requires force, and that a credible threat of retaliatory force produces a net reduction in killing, hurting, and threatening.
"Mutual Assured Destruction" works at both the wholesale level (having prevented an all-out nuclear war for over half a century now) and the retail level (convincing crooks they want to leave you alone and either go after an easier victim or find a new line of work.)
Second-order effects often swamp first-order effects, producing (initially) counter-intuitive results. Part of growing up is learning which situations are like that, and what the useful counter-intuitive solutions are. (To people with less experience this is often mistaken for wisdom, cynicism, or evil.)
Unfortunately there is a significant fraction of the population that either never DOES grow up or never learns some important lessons about rare, but deadly, situations.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I want five megawatts by mid-may.
Have any trials been done on using the laser to fill a snide professor's house with popcorn? There could be a big market for this among the college crowd.
You make an excellent point. All the enemy needs to do is first fire a barrage of Jiffy Pop popcorn. when the laser hits it, the corn pops and rains down on the target. This should be sufficient in preventing the laser from knocking out the REAL rounds, which are fired second.
Hey, it works when fired from a satellite!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Here is a youtube link of a prototype system. It can track and destroy more than one target in flight before impact. I know there is a longer version of this video, but I found this one first, you'll get the idea. The longer one shows it engaging artillery shells, rockets, and mortar shells.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVxZ9IHTH2E
The Laser in the article is a development of the MTHEL project. The purpose of MTHEL is to defend positions against incoming rockets and mortars. One of the test videos actually shows the MTHEL hitting 3 different mortar rounds launched from 3 different positions all traveling through the air at the same time.
Could this be the first step towards a future of heavily-armoured and -armed cars and trucks, complete with laser cannons and oil slick emittors, like in Steve Jackson's Car Wars game?
All the enemy needs to do is first fire a barrage of Jiffy Pop popcorn. when the laser hits it, the corn pops and rains down on the target. This should be sufficient in preventing the laser from knocking out the REAL rounds, which are fired second.
So would this be called Jiffy Chaff?
The enemies of Democracy are
Yay... finally!!!
Popcorn for everyone!!!
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
So the Navy has railguns and the Army now has lasers - the Air force better get quad-damage or else they're going to get pwned.
The High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator project actually shoots stuff
Who wrote that summary, George Bush?
Boeing are a member of neither RIAA nor MPAA. What's the problem?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
False dichotomy. You can rejoice at some aspect of a war (such as fewer deaths), while still looking for "a better way".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
NEWSFLASH:
Boeing has developed a new squirrel mounted laser. Lasers have been mounted to squirrels and released on the Iranian border. Unfortunatly the squirrels were all captured by iranian police, but not after they fried their eyes out.
Cost? $50 million nuts.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
Forget freaking sharks. I want something like this scaled down on top of my car aimed at birds that dare to poop at my car. I want anti-bird defensives that will fry 'em if they dare to do a fly by near my car.
Oooooooooooooh
i need one of these for the dogs next door.
First, if you don't know about THEL, see this video. Beam weapons aren't a joke any more.
Mobile THEL was a repackaging of the original fixed THEL system into three semitrailers. It's too bulky to deploy and too vulnerable on the ground. This thing is meant to defend against short-ranged mortars, rockets, and artillery. So it has to be sited up near the sharp end. Something more rugged and more mobile is needed.
Now that everyone has seen THEL shooting down rockets, artillery projectiles, and mortar rounds, the name of the game is making it small enough to be useful. This new project is to get something onto a single large truck that will do the job.
What happens when a laser hits something really shiny? Does it bounce off and heat up something else?
Is this a case of billions of investment being defeated by a rag and a can of polish?
No sig today...
For all of you who dont know the HEMTT http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Expanded_Mobili ty_Tactical_Truck/ are 20 ton trucks useful for providing transport capabilities for re-supply of combat vehicles and weapons systems..The HEMTT trucks exist in several configurations:
M977 and M985 cargo trucks carry all types of equipment, especially ammunition. A crane is mounted at the rear of the vehicle.
M978 tanker refuels tactical vehicles and helicopters in forward locations.
M983 tractor tows the trailer-mounted MIM-104 Patriot missile systems.
M983 with 30 KW generator and a crane mounted behind the cab towed the MGM-31 Pershing Erector Laucher in CONUS (a MAN tractor was used in West Germany).
M984 recovery vehicle uses a lift-and-tow system to recover disabled vehicles in two-to-three minutes. It mounts a recovery winch, a crane and a large storage box.
These things have great manuevering capabilities and can knock down several feet thick trees (We used to do it to make shaded parking spots when out on bivouacs.(That and you can make ranger brownies in the Exhaust pipe)
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
Pack a load of 10 shells, 9 chaff, 1 HE.
First one is intercepted halfway to the laser truck, explodes, deploys chaff on detonation.
Second one is intercepted halfway between previous interception, and laser truck, because truck's radar was impaired by chaff, second one explodes, deploys chaff on detonation, closer to truck.
Lather, rinse, repeat, until the radar's range is too short to give the computer enough time to find an intercept solution.
Cost to attacker: 9, $500 chaff shells, + 1 $2000 HE shell.
Cost to defender: $50 Million laser + whatever else the attacker decides to shell with impunity next.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
If the chemicals needed to shoot down your mortars are significantly lighter than the mortars you fire, advantage goes to the guy with the laser. See, war at this scale is all about who can transport the most stuff to the front first. If you have to bring a truckload of mortars to take out one laser truck, all those things that the laser truck "protects" are going to get you.
As it is, this is a great weapon that can be used to suppress insurgencies. Insurgents have the element of surprise, but they generally have shitty transport capabilities and have to haul things up for an attack up very slowly. Like, a guy smuggles in a rocket launcher on a donkey. If you take away the likelihood of success of an occasional rocket attack, you've just defeated, militarily, a huge portion of insurgent strategy.
This makes it far, far easier to impose democracy on new nations, and increases the likelihood that future Iraqs can succeed and much more easily. If we can get something to detect IEDs, we would be golden.
This is my sig.
> If your ashamed to be an American, then America is ashamed to have shed blood for your freedom...nuff said.
Well, I personally don't think Americans fought and died so that we could torture people, or that you speak for the whole country. But that's just me.
And don't give me any flag waving to say that these kinds of gross national failures happen elsewhere or are somehow acceptable. I flew what was probably the biggest damn flag in the state for a good long time.
I don't feel like flying it any more because of all the "patriots" who think that saying "This is the best damn country in the world!" is something you use to excuse problems instead of a reason to acknowledge, fix and rise above them! Dammit, you don't fix things by stuffing your head up your ass! The only way you can NOT feel shame is if you have no damn pride in your country to begin with!
Oh. They'll run off batteries. I wonder what the power requirements will be, how many shots per charge, and recharge time?
Actually, this could be a boon for developing better batteries, the kind that can be used for electric cars. And, lest we forget, practical hydrogen fuel cells that can keep those batteries charged if not produce enough power to eliminate the need for batteries in the first place.
The possibilities for spin-off tech may be more interesting than the laser cannons or rail guns.
If you know of a 99% reflective material, patent it now and make lots of money. In the real world however, even precision mirrors top out at 80% or so. That means the other 20% of incoming energy is heating the incoming shell (assuming every shell is polished in a lab before being fired out of perfectly smooth barrels).
snig
That wasn't a satellite. It was a ship in low-earth orbit. They referenced it being launched from a B1. Though an un-manned satellite would make far more sense, I would have thought.
:)
I watched the film last night, funnily enough