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US Congress Funds Laser Weapons
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post reports that the US Congress is funding laser weapons for use in the near future. Low-power lasers called 'dazzlers' are already being used in Iraq to temporarily reduce a person's vision. High-power laser weapons would allow precision attacks that minimize civilian casualties. From the Post: 'The science board said tactical laser systems could be developed for broader use because they "enable precision ground attack to minimize collateral damage in urban conflicts." The report suggested, for example, that "future gunships could provide extended precision lethality and sensing." The board also proposed using lasers to protect against rockets, artillery, mortars and unmanned airborne vehicles by blasting them out of the sky. Last month, the Army awarded Boeing $36 million to continue development of a high-energy laser mounted on a truck that could hit overhead targets. But deployment is not expected until 2016, even if all goes well.'"
Cue
2. anything that excites to action; stimulus.
8. to insert, or direct to come in, in a specific place in a musical or dramatic performance (usually fol. by in or into): to cue in a lighting effect.
Gotta love Grammar nazis though. Though "Queue" also works.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
This should hardly be a surprise to anyone; the United States government already has functioning platforms. Just this month, the Boeing Company test fired a fully working prototype of its Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL), a C-130 with a high-energy chemical laser on a rotating turret mounted on the belly of the plane. I don't know if it was a full powered shot, but the press releases indicate that it successfully hit a ground target. Then there's the larger Airborne Laser (ABL), an even bigger laser mounted on a 747 used to shoot down ballistic missiles.
Tm
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For off, calling the USA "warmongers" should be modded flamebait.
And your history and math are wrong. Ike warned of the military industrial complex, not on the use of the military, which he obviously supported, you know, having led the largest invasion in world history. But anti-military types just love to misquote Ike.
The US spends *much less* of its GDP than it did in Ike's time, much less.
The left should be pleased that defense spending as a percentage of the federal budget has steadily declined during the past decades. In the early 1960s the Department of Defense constituted 45 percent of federal spending, whereas this year it will constitute an estimated 17 percent, according to the Office of Management and Budget. Source
As the article points out, the real scandal is the ever-increasing entitlement pending that is going to bankrupt America.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
With the ATL (AC-130/chemlaser described above)... If you get hit by the beam, you're pretty much dead. Current RoE prohibit using a laser to intentionally blind or maim someone. ATL is really intended for attacks on physical targets where explosive munitions are either too noisy/obvious, or they can cause too much collateral damage.
Consider a case where insurgents or rebellious forces have taken over an anthrax factory. You don't really want to drop a JDAM on top of it. Or if they've set up near a culturally significant mosque. For political reasons, you don't want to drop a JDAM on their equipment.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
This is an oft-repeated and untrue myth. It is not illegal to shoot a human target with a
http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1573
This is your JAG speaking:
.50 cal is not contrary to the Law of War, anymore than use of 7.62/.308 or 5.56/.223.
.50 cal, do it. If you can just as well smother an objective with 7.62 and save those few & heavy .50 cal MLB for your M2's in favor of lighter 7.62 1-4, save the heavy duty ammo for when you need it.
.50 cal bulls--t before, along with comments that the following are prohibited by "Geneva Conventions":
Greenhat is absolutely correct. Use of a
If you need to shoot with a
What is contrary to the Law of War (and the Principle of War - Economy of Force) is using more than you need to, given the choice, wasting a limited supply of ammo and endangering civlians or good guys who may be miles away.
I've heard this
- handcuffing prisoners of war.
- blindfolding prisoners of war.
- photographing prisoners of war.
- males searching female prisoners of war.
- use of silenced weapons.
In fact, of course, none of the above are prohibited.
If you don't trust this source, then try asking your own JAG. Don't just ask random soldiers or superiors you work with, but go straight to a trustworthy source of information on these laws.
A mirror will reflect some percentage of light that hits it, and absorb the rest. A sufficiently high-power laser will mean that the absorbed percentage is high enough to melt or burn the mirror.
If you put a mirror in the sun on a hot day then the back of it will become warmer than the surrounding air, which acts as a demonstration of this. The density of energy from the sun is quite small in comparison, however. Most anti-laser designs involve rotating mirrors, so that the mirror only has to survive a small fraction of a second before being the laser starts hitting a different part.
If you shoot a mirror (or anything other than a perfect black body) with such a laser then there will be some reflection, which is roughly analogous to a ricochet from a bullet. How much energy is contained in this depends on the intensity of the beam, the reflectiveness of the mirror, and the shape of the object at the point where it's hit (if it's not flat then the energy will be the same, but it will be dispersed or focussed).
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This is simply wrong. The peak of civilian killing was WWII, when entire cities were targeted because that's as accurate as the bombers could get. Not only did this culminate in the complete destruction of two Japanese cities, but the US had already killed far more civilians with firebombs than it managed to kill with nukes. And the Japanese were hardly in a position to complain after their own actions in Korea and China.
Now we have weapons that are precisely targeted. So much so we can use bombs filled with concrete to destroy AA installations parked in civilian neighborhoods without killing people in the house next door. That AA position would surely have been destroyed in earlier wars as well, and it would have been done with 2000 pound bombs dropped on the entire neighborhood, or, more recently, a more precisely targeted 500 pound bomb that destroyed the AA installation because it was accurate enough to hit the house next door. Which is worse, do you think?
The laser would give us the option to be very precise, to the point where we could destroy vehicle tracks on an advancing armored column without injuring the soldiers inside. Someday that will be SOP, where countries that inflict unnecessary losses on enemy soldiers will be roundly criticized.