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Boeing 12,000lb Chemical Laser Set to Fry Targets
coondoggie writes "Boeing this week completed work on and installed a 12,000-pound chemical laser in a C-130H aircraft. Boeing's Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) which is being developed for the Department of Defense, will destroy, damage or disable targets with little to no collateral damage, supporting missions on the battlefield and in urban operations."
I wonder what the peaceful applications of this could be? It bothers me that so much money is spent on military technology having so many other issues that could be addressed. I'm guessing that soldering might be one good use, with a scaled down model but can't think of much else at the moment. On the other hand if they are going to research more ways to destroy stuff I'd like to see a true laser hand pistol...
Oh, I almost forgot the meme: Sharks!
+Raider of the lost BBS
And by 'little collateral damage', they mean only the little 'eyeball bits' of people within a couple of hundred yards who happen to be looking at the target when it is hit (unless DoD have promised to only target unshiny bad guys).
People really do get the reference of sharks with laser beams without all the quotage AND the link.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Remember, it ain't the laser that kills you, its the sudden stop as you hit the dirt beneath what was once the building you were standing on.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Isn't being lasered to death pretty much being burnt alive?
How is this weapon even legal?
Darn, someone beat me to a Real Genius reference. One of the best geek movies, up there with Sneakers.
>There was a brief success in the first Gulf War where the fleeing Iraqis obligingly went down the same road and got bombed and shelled to pieces in a local action,
Note this well. The US's most significant "victory" in GWI was bombing the shit out of a RETREATING army.
No, but you can use it to torture whole villages full of 'insurgents', or anyone else who is stopping us getting our hands on their oil....
I didn't think our world image could get worse. I was wrong...
73 comments and NO mention of the death star?!?
The statement that there will be little or no collateral damage seems to originate from an unproven premise that they can aim the thing properly in the first place.
It flies. It flies slowly (it's not a fighter plane). It flies nearby (range is up to 20km, and let's hope the adversaries don't have any smoke grenades handy). Yet aim is 100% accurate?
"No collateral damage" - from the club with the two dog film (Barney and Blair)..
Insert
More like, it becomes possible to destroy a missile launcher even when the Hamassholes have hidden them among their own civilians.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
OK, thanks for your opinion and all. But I'd rather hear from people who actually live in Taiwan, South Korea or Israel, or Japan. I'd be very interested to hear how many share your opinion.
I don't doubt some do, but I can certainly imagine that people who don't have quite the same level of trust in America (given their rhetoric and actions over the last few years) might feel somewhat more comfortable if America could actually be held accountable for their actions, rather than just having to hope their current president (and advisers) have more than just their own best interests at heart this year.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
We spend approximately 21% of our budget on National Defense. Nearly half the budget is lost to entitlements.
Now where would *I* get all the money to spend on good projects? Earmarks buried in the various bills that pass Congress. There were over 2000 (two thousand) earmarks in the Defense budget alone. This is money being spent by Congress, not the DOD, but charged as part of the defense budget. How many monunments (read research centers, bridges, etc) do we need named for LIVING members of Congress?
We spend an amazing amount on education but efforts to improve it are thwarted by Teacher Union's, Special Interest Groups, and Politicians. If you want to improve education don't look to Washington, get involved at the local level. You will see the wall first hand.
Improved Infrastucture? Look, we already budget more than enough to fix and maintain what we have. The problem is that Congress takes the money allocated and redirects it to new projects. You then have government incompetence at the state level as well. Ever wonder why a certain bridge disaster disappeared from the news so quickly? Because it was exposing the system that is failing. You cannot just throw more money at a failing system and expect good results. If that were the case we would have best schools and roads in the world!
Lets hit your next category. Medical research. The private sector is doing amazing things in this area - why? Because by not taking Federal money for all lines of research they are left with options they would lose otherwise. Getting the Feds involved handcuffs researchers in more ways than you can count. Medical research is big money, the risks are great but the rewards are great. Keeping people living longer means more money for the companies that can provide it. The government has no interest in you living longer as you cost them more money when you do. (remember that entitlement section of the budget? Nearly half directly spent there)
New power alternatives. We already have seen where Congress is going. Ethanol. Why? The FARM industry. Earmarks out the wahzoo for a fix that may cause more problems than it solves. Less food for the world and more pollutants of a different sort. Wind farms you say? Sure, just don't put them in some Congressman's backyard! Nuclear? No member of Congress has the willpower to stand behind this industry. Simply put it does not get them votes. The money is high and tied too much to a small area. Whereas ethanol allows for tax money to be spread around garnishing lots of votes!
Yes the military spends a lot of money. Yes a lot is wasted. However that same military is the reason why we can bitch about the state of our country and the world with near impunity. We don't have to worry about tanks rolling over our demonstrations, we don't have to worry about family members being disappeared overnight because a relative spoke out in university, and we don't go to the market worried about some whacko with a bomb on his chest.
My sole criteria for the next election is, who will cut the BUDGET the most. The taking from Americans is extreme. Bush was anything but a conservative, having grown the government to sizes beyond reason. There is no reason to have so many people dependant on the government to survive. By creating such a situation we doom the future generations. Where will be the innovations and great strides in society when its people don't have to do so as someone else will foot the bill and tuck them in?
Getting the government off our backs is the first step to having a great country. Our government should be here to serve us, not indenture us.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Why are people like this? Dunno. But an AF officer isn't going to make much rank if he isn't convinced 24/7 that airpower is the best answer to whatever problem they have that day. And "collateral damage" (i.e. brown or yellow people who I don't have to care about) just isn't important.
From day one of the Iraq war/occupation/whatever I've said we should let cameram crews walk around the areas we've bombed. You support war? Fine--here are the pictures of the children you killed today. How's that moral clarity working out for you?
Even today, supporters of the war are crowing about how "improved" Iraq is. Fine. My problem is that I mentally transfer the car bombs and dozens of sectarian killings every day, along with the imprisonment without trial, govt-backed death squads, lack of clean water, lack of medicine, etc, to, say, Houston, and wonder how wonderful we'd consider it. We'd be horrified, and there's no way we'd be happy if another country imposed that on us, especially with ~150K troops and mercenaries on our part of the earth but with complete immunity from our laws and even their own damned laws (at least in the case of the mercs). People's insouciance is due simply to the fact that it isn't them.
If the AF blew up the school across from their house and they were picking up body parts from their front lawn, a pro forma apology and a speech by the foreign president that "things are looking up" wouldn't fly. 80% of us would be working for the insurgency. Once you just ask the seemingly obvious question "how would we feel in their place?" the BS you see on Fox and Fox Lite (i.e. the other TV channels) rings a bit hollow.
I'm still a little fuzzy on how building infrastructure in Iraq is okay, but building infrastructure in the USA is socialism. Are we foisting socialism on the Iraqis?
Real Genius > Austin Powers
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
Iraq only became a shithole after the UN sanctions, and then a hellhole after our invasion. The USA has historically had no problem with nations that were politically repressive, even brutal (Indonesia, anyone? Saudi Arabia? UAE?) as long as they did business with US companies, allowing us to profit from their brutality. I agree that Saddam was a dictator, but saying they have us to "thank" for "democracy" is a bit cheeky. Can they thank us for arming him, or for cutting off medical supplies? How about selling him components for chemical weapons in the 80s?
As for Iraq being a democracy, stop acting as if they have self-determination. Over 150K troops and mercenaries on your soil, enjoying complete immunity from Iraqi law, with the ability to shoot you at will, isn't what I'd call a democracy. Would you favor letting the Iraqis vote next week on whether US military members and mercenaries should be subject to Iraqi law? Would you consider the referendum binding? If not, they aren't much of a soverign nation, are they?
No, it did not. US had its own share of rioting scum — Los Angeles in 1992, Seattle in 1999...
Wherever the scum riots, they are easily suppressed by real determination (which the mayors of the cities listed evidently lacked). When the Los Angeles scum moved to trash another neighborhood, for example, they were stopped by armed citizens (thank you, Second Amendment!), and, eventually, by police and National Guard...
You don't need a flying super-laser to suppress a riot.
If true, that's a very good thing. But it has nothing to do with maintaining our military's edge against adversaries.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
NICE quote.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
Next time, use smilies to help mods who are sarcasm-impared. ;)
Sigs are for losers
Pretty much anything > Austin Powers. Seriously. I can't be the only person around here that hated those movies. Can I?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"I mean, MANY innocent civies have been killed by Saddam and his regime and there's no reason to think that was going to stop. ... a quick look at the political climate there should convince anyone that it wouldn't exactly be a peaceful transfer of power."
And which leads us to the question: so what? What you've said could apply to any of a dozen or more nation-states throughout Africa and the rest of the world. But for some reason we're not engaged in a war defending the citizenry in any of those other countries...
You've apparently drank the Bush Kool-Aid. First, we needed to invade Iraq because of presumed links to Al-Qaeda (false), then it was their nuclear ambitions and biologcal weapons programs (none), and then finally it came down to the fact that Saddam was a "bad" man and we needed to "protect" his people and bring the burning touch of democracy to them. With capitalism coming along for the ride.
Obtaining the rights to new oil blocks and clearing the way to restructing Iraq's Production Sharing Contracts to benefit US-based corporations had nothing to do with it, of course. Nor did the fact that we were in a slump and a nice little war always has a way of fueling the economy, while incidentally providing nice profits for those involved. Or the fact that Bush felt he needed to prove his manhood and the power of the US to others in the region, in the process accomplishing what his father failed to do in a previous little war.
Shock and awe, indeed.
A previous little war, one might also mention, that was also done in a noble effort to protect the nation of Kuwait from outside aggression. While also safeguarding a few oil fields, refineries, ports, and so on. Hardly worth mentioning, really.
Or to translate: It's the oil, stupid.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Good luck hitting an object moving a supersonic speeds.
"And call me an idealist, but isn't it more likely we'd get the natives cooperation a whole lot easier and cheaper if we dropped like food and medicine and maybe a well-drilling kit?"
we've tried that in several countries. Very often people are killed by local warlords, who then confiscate the material.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on