Air Force Looks To Laser-Proof Its Weapons

slugo writes "This wired.com article has probably the coolest laser destruction video you have ever seen. The video shows the Israeli and US Air Force working on laser defense systems. The US Air Force is starting to look for ways to laser-proof its bombs and missiles — with spray-on coatings, no less. They think everyone is going to figure this laser thing out sometime and need a defense against what they are already very good at — shooting things out of the sky with a laser."

Comments

well that was a waste of money

[Brain Damaged Bogan]

my sharks-with-freaking-laser-beams missile defense is useless now

The answer is mirv

[moteyalpha]

mirv already exists and so does flack. You can't hit what you don't know is a target. There are always limits to energy per unit time per unit area and since we are already 10 trillion dollars in debt destroying things, perhaps that money would be better spent on a plan to grow some crops to eat.

Re:The answer is mirv

[Dun Malg]

perhaps that money would be better spent on a plan to grow some crops to eat.

We already grow enough crops. Hunger is a politically created distribution problem, not a problem of lack of food.

Once it discovers it, security becomes an issue

[CrazyJim1]

Hopefully the guy making the decisions weighed espionage. You can really shoot yourself in the foot if you find a counter to your own missle defense and then someone publishes the counter. Do you really need an anti missle defense technology so bad that it is worth endangering your own missle defense?

Dragged along for the ride

[Un pobre guey]

1. Create an expensive and ostentatious weapons system on which other nations were not willing to squander billions of dollars
2. Make a cool video about it and circulate it widely. Conceal the real, practical day-to-day performance results.
3. If a global arms race fails to start, announce that you are also developing a handy-dandy, sure-fire defense against the weapons system only you possess. Caution: increased risk of scam backfiring.
4. ???
5. Profit!

Yet another defense industry scam, and all of us are dragged along for the ride.

Re:Armour them and spin them.

[budgenator]

yup the 81MM mortar is a smoothebore but it's round has fins at the base that are canted so the projo spins in flight. 81's are slow too, after you drop one down the tube you can look up and see the round about 100m down range and watch it going until after it's a little past it's max ordinate and it disappears. Howitzers have a rifled barrel so the round spins. All artillery rounds that I know of have a fuse that doesn't arm until the round has spun so many times, this prevents most barrel bursts. Shooting one 81 doesn't impress me, shooting 3 fired in a ripple that's getting interesting; shoot down 3 fired at the same time I'm impressed, but remember real world is going to be somebody see all the loud IR energy pointing at the laser source and they are likely to answer with 3 81mm;s in flight, backed up by three salvos of 3 60mm mortars all taking the high trajectory while 6 more 155mm howitzer rounds are coming in low and fast.