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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.'"
$36 million, eh? Not much when you say it quick. I suppose it's a drop in the ocean of US defence spending.
Other countries manage to generate growth without being such warmongers. What is it with the US and this obsession with devising new and more efficient ways to wage war? Dwight Eisenhower's warning seems to have been more prophetic than many would have realised. This war machine has every congressman in its pocket, it's sucking the taxpayer dry, and it's out of control.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
generating growth without spending on defense exist in peace due to the efforts of the us military. a world without us military spending would be a world of russian imperialism and utter havoc in the middle east, and those "peaceful" countries would radically ramp up their own defense spending, or cease to exist, or become war zones
the usa is the de facto peacekeeper in the world today, for better or worse. some day, it won't be, nothing is forever, and that world will not be a more peaceful one, but a more warlike one, until it transitions to a new peacekeeper
some people don't understand this, and its due to a common misperception: peace is not a state of absence of war potential. peace is a state of balance in war potentials between two or more sides. the world exists in this constant tension, always has, and always will. you would understand this ugly but undeniable truth if you truly understood essential human nature
peace is nothing more than a state of balance between two deadly potentials. remove one of those balances, and in the transition to a new state of balance, much bloodletting occurs. that's all peace is. a balance between war potentials. it is absolutely impossible in this world for peace to exist without any armed forces. such a world would be full of more bloodshed, random warlord. a world of two massive armies with loaded guns pointed at each other is meanwhile perfectly peaceful. i didn't say this is a good thing, i just recognize an unfortunate ugly truth when i see one
but there ar epletny out there, raised in a coccoon of relative peace ot the rest of human history and other parts of this world, who are blind to this reality. they live in a hermietically sealed bubble, and they begin to develop attitudes about peace and war which frankly, is absurd
if you don't agree with this assessment, or don't understand it, you don't really understand the nature of the human beings living around you, and you aren't in very good touch with your own human nature
a lot of people don't understand exactly what creates peace in this world. real peace is a balance between two deadly potentials, not the absense of any deadly potential
understand that about the nature of peace, or live in denial
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'd like anyone with a minimum of imagination to think about the kind of wounds these weapons will cause. Seems horific to me. It always strikes me how these weapons are promoted to "eliminate targets", and while one might think about destroying infrastructure, they are actually talking about killing.
But hey, I guess more weapons is just what the world needs.
(sorry for the sarcasm).
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
You, my friend, are despairing at the human condition, not any particular incarnation of military spending. Wealth and power and lack of consequences have generally walked hand-in-hand for the entirety of human history. I would suggest that you focus your efforts into finding ways that we can, at the peak of our technological development, cheat the cycle of history and change what it means to be human. Because that is what it would take to resolve the problems you're talking about.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
I'd like anyone with a minimum of imagination to think about the kind of wounds these weapons will cause. Seems horific to me.
Not to belittle your point here, but have you seen the wounds that todays weapons cause? They are already horrific. I think this is a step in the right direction because while the wounds we cause are already bad, what we need is a weapon with less collateral damage. The fact is a bullet is affected by many things, how clean your barrel is, the wind, what round you are using, etc. So when you fire it there is no guarantee you will hit what you are aiming at even IF you aim dead on. There is also the problem of a ricochet if you miss. With a laser weapon, you don't worry about wind or many other factors. Ricochet is also not a real concern.
Laser weapons powerful enough to damage any target will permanently damage the eyesight of anyone who looks at as much as a non-specular reflection of the beam. So much for collateral damage.
Blah, flushing all my moderation here but I simply had to say something about this.
We have seen every development of new more advanced weapons lead to more and more killing and less and less regard for human life. Rather than stopping the killing of civilians, it just makes it more acceptable by giving cover to those who killed the civilians.
If a soldier goes into a town and stabs an innocent child with a sword, there is do doubt he is a murderer, if he shoots him with a rifle, then some people will be willing to believe it was an accident, a stray bullet, opps, if he man flys over in a plane and drops a bomb, oh well, theres always some collateral damage, the child isn't even acknowledged as a human being, the killer is 100% blameless.
Smart bombs are not to reduce civilian casualties but the make them acceptable, oh yes, we dropped these bombs all over civilian houses, we dropped them on this hospital, of this school, but these were smart bombs, they targeted the evil doers next door, all the innocent people that were still killed by the horrible shock wave were just collateral damage.
Oh we didn't drop that horrible weapon napalm on these people, be used this harmless white phosphorus for illumination, the civillians who had their faces burned off were just collateral damage.
These weapons will be used to kill everyone in the area just as before, except now they will have a new line. Oh we used a laser to get the evil doers, all these blind children with thier faces burned off are just collateral damage, theres a lot less of them than if we had used a normal bomb.
Whats that idea? Send in troops on the ground to actually find and shoot the bad guys rather than blast the whole neighbourhood from the air? That's crazy talk! But then an American might have died, and as you know 1 American soldier = 10000 Iraqi children, people back home might not support our important war for oil and Bushes approval ratings might go down if an American dies, we can't have that!
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
Good luck with convincing the Taliban, Al Qaeda, North Korea, and that nice Putin fellow that because the USA has decided to no longer constitute a credible threat that they should do the same. I'm sure the Danish ambassador to Pakistan agrees whole heartedly with you that US congresscritters financing lasers is the root cause of evil in the world today.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
They had this mindset after world war 2, this lead to decades of famine and oppression at the hands of Stalin and his successors. It was soviet policy that the military needs come first, way ahead of any other concerns even above feeding and housing their own people. This mentality gave them an army unrivalled by any other single power but it also lead to their downfall. Slowly their technology dropped behind everyone else's, their ability to support their civilian infrastructure lagged even further, they could not compete in international trade, civilian morale was non-existent and the only mechanism keeping the civilian population in line at some points was the secret police and their best military machines could not manage to defeat a bunch of determined rebels in Afghanistan.
What bought the US into dominance in the latter half of the twentieth century was is diplomacy and trade. Given the enormous advantage the US had by being untouched by the war the US focused its energy into strengthening alliances and trading with partners which gave the US money to expand both its military services and civilian infrastructure as well as invest in greater educational and scientific facilities. Even when manufacturing moved to Asia the US still found a strong economy in high tech arenas.
Perhaps you are familiar with the old saying, "he who lives by the sword dies by the sword" and history has proven this time and time again. No militaristic power (Huns, Mongols, Third Reich) has ever succeeded for very long, and nowhere near as long as cultural (Roman Empire) or Economic powers (British Empire). The most successful empires did have large armies but did not use them as a first resort and placed much more emphasis on diplomacy and trade. Going back to my example of the Soviet Union, who faced multiple rebellions due to the harsh conditions which had to be put down by force was eventually undone by untrained and ill-equipped Afghans, the Soviet military power was never able to rebuild as they didnt have the civilian and scientific power to do so, their only diplomatic card was their army which they used at every occasion and when they withdrew from Afghanistan they lost all diplomatic power.
This will not be the case with the withdrawal from Iraq, provided it is not put off to too long. The strength of the US has always been her trade and diplomacy, despite the idiotic actions of your current leader the US is still held in relatively high esteem with her major allies (European and Pacific) and if military funding was not increased it would not reflect badly as the US's significant partners would still trade with and bolster her.
Not going to happen and is not necessary. The old Soviet Union fell after their direct first military defeat, this is because they had no other strenghts apart from their military. The new Russian Federation is different, it is depended on export to (shock horror) Western Europe to maintain its economy, primarily energy exports and their military is a shadow of its former power. Russia is no threat to Europe and Russia stands to lose more by losing favour amongst Europeans.
Even if Putin launched and invasion today, they would be hard pressed to get past the first wave of EU defenders. Germany and Britain have two of the worlds best militarys, in addition to France, Turkey, Sweeden and were not even counting European Allies such as Japan, Australia/New Zealand, Canada and the US. Add to this that Russia does not have current generation equipment equivalent to Challenger2/Lepoard2/Abrams Tanks, Eurofighter/F22/F35 aircraft, modern assault rifles, UAV's, guided missiles, so on and so forth, in addition to this most of their military equipment is mothballed and poorly maintained. But the biggest one of all is,
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.