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Israelis Sue Government For Laser Cannons
An anonymous reader writes "Residents of a southern Israeli town want a real-life laser cannon to protect them against Palestinian rocket attacks. And they're suing the national government, for failing to provide the ray gun defense.
The U.S.-Israeli Tactical High Energy Laser project was widely considered to be the most successful energy weapon ever built. But the toxic chemicals needed to generate THEL's megawatts of power made the thing a logistical nightmare. It was scrapped. Now, the residents of Sderot want it back. And they're taking Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to court to make it happen."
So New York citizens should also sue over the WTC attacks?
They have. We also invaded at least one country because of it*. Do you suggest that Israel invade and take more territory to solve this problem?
They're also not suing the Palestinians over this, instead are suing their own government for failing to provide a defense.
It's a circle of violence that is not restricted to one side, and the only way to break it is for one side to just stop. Unfortunately, the Palestinian side is probably too disorganised to commonly decide on anything. That means the only hope is for Israel to stop it, but I'm not too hopeful that will happen.
I have to agree, but I'll also point out that going by quite a bit of the propaganda on the Palestinian side says that there won't be any peace until all Israelites are 'pushed into the sea'.
History in the area generally shows that any ceasing of aggression on Israel's part is seen more of a sign of impending victory, time to push forward even more.
Maybe something like this laser system might push them to enough despair to actually give it up.
*I figure Iraq wasn't caused by 9/11, but delayed by it. But I know some disagree.
I don't read AC A human right
For about a year on the mobile version that was supposed to go on a series of containers on trucks. The cost was going into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and so the army cut the program. One reason was that insurgents in iraq weren't using mortars very often anymore, so there wasn't much use for such a system.
A few months later, hezbollah in Lebanon started firing katyushas again, oh well.
It was the most awesome project I've worked on so far. I actually got to see it take out mortars in flight on monitors while sitting in command and control 5 km away. (The system in new mexico doesn't have very good output scrubbers, so to avoid NF3 poisoning, humans have to be 5km away while it is firing.)
There's also more problems with it than just chemicals. For instance, the glass window in the front that the beam exits from costs 1 million dollars and takes a year to make (got to withstand a vacuum and a very powerful laser).
And the biggest problem is, they overwhelm it by sending lots of rockets, and then send several directly at the device itself. One rocket gets through, and there goes years of work and millions of dollars.
Anyway, thought the slashdot crowd might find some of that interesting.
The U.S. has a system that works pretty well in this kind of situation: The Phalanx CIWS, or the C-RAM system (very similar).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-RAM
I won't say anything about its specifics, but I can tell you that it DOES work. It IS loud and you WILL crap your pants every time it goes off without warning, but that's a small price to pay for a WORKING product that shoots mortars and rockets out of the sky. This would be the perfect solution to their problem and frankly I'm surprised that I haven't heard more about it. Ah, I just answered my own question from my wiki link- it looks like they are in fact looking into these. Good for them.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1196847389509&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter
I don't know what the retail is on these things, but I'm sure we could squeeze a few into the multi-billion-dollar defense support that we give to Israel every year.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
The Israelis are indeed shooting back at the Palestinians- see this article, for example, which mentions 120 Palestinians killed recently including many civilians (although the definition of 'civilian' is so lose in that area it's spin either way).
Rather, the Israelis are seeking an option that 'doesn't require them to shoot back' much like the United States was seeking an option that 'didn't require them to shoot back' in Star Wars and BMD.
They'll shoot back anyway, all right, but none of what's aimed at them will get through.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
They evacuated the country and collaborated with Egypt to exterminate their former neighbors. The Arabs who stayed in Israel rather than doing that became citizens and continue to hold full civil rights, as do their descendants.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Well, if you're in Israel you apparently can sue. In the USA the Second Amendment allows you to own your own laser cannon but the government is not required to buy one for you.
True, the few wealthy Palestinians fled (the landowners), hoping Arab armies would be able to defeat the approaching Israeli army, but most Palestinians lived in slums and only fled when the Israeli forces approached their cities or drove them out. Both sides engaged in atrocities (and even more propaganda). Of course, this had been going on for centuries but most people just talk about the bad stuff the OTHER side did.
The Palestinian collaboration with Egypt in 1948 wasn't what pissed the Israelis off - it was the wider Arab collaboration with the Nazis during WWII. When WWII concluded and the Israelis were able to secure arms from Soviet sources (not to mention a huge influx of pissed off European Jews), it was payback time. The Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem was instrumental in banning the immigration of German Jews to the Palestinian Mandate during WWII, and so was directly responsible for the murder of thousands of German Jews during the Holocaust.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
Small correction, it was the Greeks that conquered the region from the Jews and renamed it, not the Romans. You can read more about at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistines and the top of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Palestine