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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
$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.
Tm
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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
No, mirrors will not work. The weapon will use internally a wide beam that is just barely under the intensity level that will damage the weapon's internal mirrors. At the barrel, the focusing mirror will focus the wide beam down to a searing pin-point on the hapless target. The focused beam will be more than intense enough to defeat any mirror the target might be wearing. I have some notes here: http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3l.html#laserpistol
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
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 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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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.