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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."
But, can you use it to make popcorn?
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).
Little or no collateral damage? Depends on the accuracy really.
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
If they relly want to destroy thing on hte ground why dont they enclose some high explosives in a steel container with a fuse set to go off when it hits an object. They could then drop this from the plane.
just an idea.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
Laslo: I figure you've increased the power output to six megawatts?
Chris: Yeah, about that.
Laslo: Well what would you use that for?
Ick: Making Swiss cheese?
Mitch: The applications are unlimited.
Laslo: No. With the fuel you've come up with the beam would last for what...15 seconds. Well what good is that?
Chris: Oh Laslo. That doesn't matter. I respect you but I graduated.
Mitch: Yeah, let the engineers figure out a use for it. That's not our concern.
Laslo: Maybe somebody already has a use for it. One for which it is specifically designed.
Jordan: You mean Dr. Hathaway had something in mind all along?
Laslo: Look at the facts! Very high powered, portable, limited firing power, unlimited range. (Chris stops smiling.) All's you'd need is a tracking system, and a large spinning mirror and you could vaporize a human target from space.
(Mitch glances at Chris.)
Chris: This is not good.
meep!
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!
...unless we can bring down their shields. All forces target the shield generators!
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
We are one step closer to having an X wing
....what does it sound like...movies always told us that laser will make cool sounds when fired. I vote it makes that 'Ptsui!' sound.
A C-130H might not have the sleek looks but it's a step in the right direction.
My next question is
"You'd think... they'd go after Wal*Marts first. Or Target Frys."
I think you have that backwards... they'd fry targets first.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
I presume a splash of of highly reflective metal (or metallic heat-resistant plastic) will work wonders for defence against these things.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
One of the most interesting things for future military historians will be how the US, and to a lesser extent the UK, have believed in the effecitveness of action at a distance warfare. "Bomber" Harris in WW2 tried to destroy Nazi Germany by air bombing of cities. Didn't work, half bankrupted the British economy, while the Army and Navy were screaming for convoy escorts and air support. Germany still had to be fought over to end the war. (Meanwhile Hitler spent a fortune on V-weapons whose total effect for the entire war was less than two large RAF night raids.) The lessons had been learnt so well that in Vietnam the US spent a fortune bombing the jungle - then in Cambodia. 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, so in GW2 Iraq was bombed back to the stone age, which brought the Iraqi war to an abrupt halt (not).
So the US Government continues its development of bigger and better spears, still fantasising that one day they will develop the big one that will stop anyone, anywhere, from upsetting them. And forgetting that, no matter what firepower you put on a mobile weapons platform, it is still vulnerable to fixed weapons, and usually to small mobile weapons that cost relatively little to make and deploy.
It's worth remembering that one of the most asymmetric military actions of WW2 was a French resistance girl who visited a German tank base on her bicycle, wandered around putting grease loaded with carborundum into track bearings, and disabled a battalion, riding off home again for lunch.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Isn't being lasered to death pretty much being burnt alive?
How is this weapon even legal?
As they say, mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets...
I don't remember Mandatory saying that.
Leave a white shirt out in the sun all day, and you know what you get? A hot white shirt. It's the same story on arrow versus armor that it has been for more than a thousand years: given equal technology, the arrow wins. (And the US Air Force is categorically not planning to "fight fair" when it comes to comparing technology bases. Hello, Mr. Third World Tinpot Dictator. Do your Revolutionary Guards have access to MIT's materials engineering department? No? Oh, what a pity... because their physics department works for us.)
When in doubt, the arrow scales more-or-less linearly (bump up the juice on the laser, problem solved), the armor ceases to scale very rapidly (try adding another 9 to the string of 99.999% reflectivity index).
I'd be much more worried, for the first few iterations of the system, of it being compromised by less-than-ideal environmental conditions (smoke, dust, smog, haze, clouds, intervening terrain in an urban situation, etc) than by enemy preparations. Besides, if the enemy has decided to put on his Armor of Laser Resistance +1, you can always just go back to Plan A and drop a really big bomb on his head.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
When he realized what he was doing, he quit his job to become a pig farmer.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
You must be new here. :)
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
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"?
But if a photon has more than a few MeV of energy it can split to an electron-positron pair which can brem, throwing off more photons which will split etc etc. Until the individual bits run out of the energy needed to form more particles. In other words, EM showering. However this requires VERY high energy photons (gamma rays). My understanding was that a laser like this achieves it's power by using lots of photons (in the IR range), so it won't have a problem with Bremsstrahlung at all. Thermal blooming on the other hand is probably a bigger issue. As the laser heats the air, it causes the water vapor to convect which acts as a lens and defocuses the beam.
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.
One of the arguments as to why Civil (biased) is better than Mechanical: The mech gets paid for once for designing the weapon, but the civil gets paid twice, firstly to design the structure, then to tell you how to blow it up.
I remember Sky News did an interview with a guy who worked for the Iraqi's to build their bunkers, and then during Gulf War I worked with the US as a consultant.
Study Civil Engineering
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Profit
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Profit
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Arm VP Cheney, and let him protect his President. Anyone who isn't a moron can use a modern shotgun safely and effectively.
Would be a pretty crappy laser if it was slower than the speed of sound.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
...Hamas (the democratically elected terriorists/government/aid agency/prisoners/scapegoats) today ordered the streets and roof tops of the west bank paved with with shards of broken mirrors.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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.
Because I smell barbecue.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
My mom works for one of the divisions of Boeing that makes lasers like this. I don't know if they make this one, because she can't really talk about it. But I do know a little about the capabilities and accuracy of some of the systems, you know, "hypothetically, if they had something like that, what could it do?" Let's just say that one of the test systems was a servo that could keep a laser spot painted on a ping pong ball while people were playing.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
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