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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.'"
All shark jokes go here!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Come on, you know the battlefields of the future are going to look like a 1980's G.I. Joe cartoon. Hilarious. Wait... Not really hilarious...
My humor is probably your flamebait
It stuck once they started deploying these into combat zones.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
Great, now mirrors will be renamed to "Improvised Reflective Devices"
It's going to take a Real Genius to get this right. I do hope they make sure their optics are clean.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Laser use remains controversial because a protocol of the Geneva Conventions bans their use in combat when they are designed to cause permanent blindness.
Conventional weapons (bombs, mines, bullets, missiles, etc.) can cause death, permanent paralysis, limb loss, and even blindness. What is the difference, really?
Also, what does it mean when fighting a group that does not abide by the Geneva Convention?
$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
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1
Oh, behave!
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
Tm
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They printed it yesterday.
"There can be little doubt that union activities lead to continuous and progressive inflation." F. A. Hayek
A printing press and/or an entry into a spreadsheet.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
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
Whatever the hell it is, just blast it out of the frikkin sky!!!
You'll get idiots like these running around with laser weapons.
And what about this kind of idiots ? Do you really want them to be able to buy lasers over the counter ?!?
Gun crazy private militia has always frightened me. As if these idiots didn't have a big enough aresenal you want to add lasers to their tool belt ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
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
The emergence of the laser is certainly going to make the long standing Democratic argument against missile defense suddenly seem pretty silly. Missile defense any more has gone from intercepting everything from ballistic missiles to shells in flight. Question to either candidate is, whose going to fund and field laser research at the current breakneck Bush pace? Will McCain have the patience for this technology or will he call it a taxpayer boondoggle and cut it? Will Obama remain starry eyed about diplomacy or will he retain a pragmatic strategic edge? Which candidate, too, will have the honesty to admit that the USA's own strategic nuclear delivery systems will need to be upgraded when its own defenses make it obsolete?
This is my sig.
The precision claim comes from the fact that lasers are coherent beams of light. We've all seen laser pointers. You point them at something, and they mark it with a very compact spot of light. That is where "precise" comes from. Therefore, the thinking goes, if you make a laser weapon, it too will be "precise," right? Yes and no. Yes, it will hit whatever you point it at, but it will do so with the precision of the pointing mechanism, not the laser. Put it on a helicopter, and the laser will weave around as much as the helicopter. Well, you say, put it on some kind of gyro-stabilized device. Fine, that does give you additional stability, until the chopper moves outside the range of the pointing device, as when the pilot detects an incoming RPG, or has to do an emergency maneuver for whatever reason. Again, the laser will rake an unintended target. My point? The "precision" argument is Pentagon bullshit. The object of the exercise is 1) for the Pentagon to retain its vast funding and influence, 2) for the defense industry to retain its vast funding and influence, and 3) for current politicians to retain their vast campaign funding, lobbying perks, and influence.
Just as the "dazzler" weapons "temporarily reduce a person's vision," the more destructive weapons will produce much more powerful light scattering that will blind people even ata a distance and produce potentially significant collateral damage in the area of the target. The astute reader will note that damage outside of the point of light on the target due to reflection and other light scatter reduces much of the precision of the weapon. Again, it is Pentagon bullshit, not science or engineering.
Wake up, people. How long will we have to give away hundreds of billions of our hard-earned tax dollars to liars, cheaters, thieves, swindlers, murderers, and war criminals of every stripe?
...are we scared yet?
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.
This is old news not new. The military (Air Force) was testing pulse lasers back in the 1980's. They mounted them inside the back of a C-130 aircraft. They could only get about 5 - 6 shots before the battery packs would be drained. As soon as they had their first sucessful tests, suddenly the Air Force said they were shutting down their development because they said the pulse lasers tended to blind the enemy. Hmmm contradictory to this story on the vision thing.... But this is fact not fiction, they had these things in the 1980's.. This is first hand knowledge....
The Truth is a Virus!!!
"All I wanted to say is that most of the money tends to go for military research."
Do you have a reference for that by chance? I read this claim all over but whenever I go looking for numbers I can't find them. My impression is military research gets more _direct_ funding, but by funding the US university system, the amount of non-military research indirectly funded is higher. But again, I can't find the numbers either way.
Also, I know you hear it a lot, but a lot of the technology that makes the modern world what it is has its roots in direct military funding. And that means it's not a priori a bad thing. You have to look at every case.
will either ramp up defense spending after what happened to georgia, or become a vassal state to moscow if the usa lowers its defense spending. if more in europe think like you than me, it will be a vassal state then
the eu has done all it has done in the realm of peace over the last 50 years due to existing in a world larger than europe: sitting between the poles of moscow and washington, guns pointed at each other. not in the middle of a volatile balancing act of many european powers that existed for hundreds of years before world war ii. that power struggle is dead, subsumed to a larger struggle. so of course integration makes sense, simply because the power struggle lies elsewhere, for the first time in centuries
as for archduke franz ferdinand, yes, of course, armies with a lot of war potential can break down into havoc. yet no armies at all is even worse, since more death and destruction occurs at the civilian level. i mean, its not like the eu doesn't have a police force, right? a police force is nothing but a standing army against the rise of street warfare that a society would succumb too without guns pointed at them, a sad fate we see in corrupt and weak places all over the world today
and finally, the eu has taken a wonderful step towards integration rather than infighting, i celebrate it. and this is a model for the future of the entire world
but it was all made possible by being under the protective umbrella of its huge neighbor across the atlantic, in which all the states had to align, in order to oppose being gobbled up by the ussr
and the russian bear awakes again
so listen to me now, or wait until death and destruction visits europe again before you pick up a gun
but why you think, after i hope at least some tiny bit of exposure to world history, that mankind is a peaceful creature, is beyond me. every generation someone is born who wishes through will of pwoer and force of arms to dominate as much as he can. he is either kept down, or he rises amid bloodshed, and becomes the new keeper of the peace
that's all there is in this world of men
is that sad? yes. is that ugly? yes. its also 100% true and undeniable
make peace with that fact, irony intended, and give up this ridiculous way you think about your world
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Even if its just for show, I hope they have a "stun" setting.
Either you're a leftist troll, or somebody with a big heart who has simply been seriously deceived by the Establishment. You might want to check out this pie chart. We spend about 2/3 of our budget on "programs of [pretended] social uplift." These programs do not, for the most part, "uplift" people. But they do ensure that Democrats keep getting elected. Which is their real purpose.
There are programs designed to ensure Republicans get re-elected too. They're just as evil, but not nearly as expensive.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
The only things they can hit are robot troopers. A good guy may occasionally get hit, but only in the arm.
Only bad guys have robot troopers; therefore the bad guys always lose.
All guns - from M16s to pistols to artillery - fire lasers.
Good guys get blue lasers, bad guys get red lasers.
See previous post for approved battle locations.
As a kid, I always wondered - light moves so fast that it's (for all intents and purposes) not really affected by gravity at all. It would seem like this means that things 50-100 miles away from a battlefield could be hit by all of the missed laser shots before the earth curved away enough that they passed into space. And as they left orbit, what sorts of guarantees do we have that they wouldn't hit planes or low-orbit satellites? Since light moves very quickly, nobody would be able to see or dodge the laser before it hit them.
I can see the application of air-to-ground laser strikes, but it seems like the potential for collateral damage with any other form of laser weapons is huge.
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
Next time someone bitches that "Fusion power is perpetually 10 year away from now", remember that instead of developing lasers for that kind of application, money has steered research in the fields of lasers toward building DeathStar lookalikes.
I don't know how much funding has gone into DeathStar lasers, but I know of at least one facility where we've spent more than $4 billion on fusion-friendly lasers. I suspect the fact that it's 5 years behind (on a project that was supposed to run less than a decade) and almost 4x over budget has soured potential funding for similar efforts.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Either you're a leftist troll, or somebody with a big heart who has simply been seriously deceived by the Establishment. You might want to check out this pie chart. We spend about 2/3 of our budget on "programs of [pretended] social uplift." These programs do not, for the most part, "uplift" people. But they do ensure that Democrats keep getting elected. Which is their real purpose.
There are programs designed to ensure Republicans get re-elected too. They're just as evil, but not nearly as expensive.
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
and, with hope and time, it will become another turkey, rather than another iran (that is, not very religious)
but this a longterm fight
part of what is necessary to get us to that goal is a change in strategy. the bush attitude works great when stupid but steel resolve is what is needed, but at other times you need a deep thinker and a willingness to be flexible to win the day. its a chess game, not just a punching match, and now we are entering a time after iraq has been won when the cowboy must yeild to the chessmaster
that's one of the hidden strengths of democracy. we are not stuck with one unyeilding strategy. every 4 years, we try out a new one, and in this way, adapt and find the best, and have a time for... change we can believe in ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Mil-Lasers will be perfectly clean weapons. You'll have a nice point'n'click aerial picture of some crowd, and only the terrorists on which you click will be instantly vaporised~
Well, that's the PR KoolAid. You know that, just like any other recent military innovation, which was supposed to diminish collateral damage, the Laser won't be a revolution. "Won't be the answer" as you say.
The rest of your post is fine, but I think this point is a little off. I don't think the development and potential overuse of lower-collateral-damage weapons in a war are directly relatable to overuse of non-lethal weapons in a civilized domestic police environment.
I know that tags are in BETA (BTW, is that Goggle's Beta or Plain Old Beta?) but I wish I could mod tags up.
I mean, pewpewpew and sharkswithfrickinlasers would certainly deserve that :)
:: There is no light at the end of a tunnel. There is a tunnel after a tunnel : Thom Y.