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Airborne Boeing Laser Blasts Ground Target
coondoggie writes "The airborne military laser which promises to destroy, damage or disable targets with little to no collateral damage has for the first time actually blown something up. Boeing and the US Air Force today said that on Aug. 30, a C-130H aircraft armed with Boeing's Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) blasted a target test vehicle on the ground for the first time. Boeing has been developing the ATL since 2008 under an Air Force contract worth up to $30 million."
Someone find the house full of Popped Corn!!!
--- no sig to see here... move along.
Stop playing with yourself!!
So how is it working against mirrors?
They missed and cooked their server instead.
Table-ized A.I.
Thank god this circumvents the stipulation in the Geneva Convention against weapons that cause blindness. As the lasers purpose is stated as an anti-vehicular weapon, the side affect of inducing blindness is A-OK.
Million, with a M? Are you sure that is not a typo?
30 Million is pretty small money for the DOD and for Boeing. There must be more money in this project somewhere.
Are we talking flaming shrapnel everywhere, or some mild singing at best? TFA doesn't seem to clarify.
The test vehicle was located at 34D 10M 15.21S North, 119D 7M West.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Video or GTFO??
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google"
It's still a chemical laser. It's quite possible to make chemical lasers powerful enough to be used as weapons, but so far the equipment has been too big to be very useful. The Mobile Tactical High-Energy Laser is able to shoot down artillery shells and small rockets, but the equipment takes up three trailers and costs too much.
The solid state laser people are catching up. The current output record is around 100 KW. This is enough to be marginally useful for anti-aircraft use. Around a megawatt, things start to get militarily interesting.
Cooling is a huge problem for the solid state devices, though. With the chemical lasers, most of the heat is dumped with the spent chemicals. For the solid state devices, the gear has to be cooled, and efficiency is only around 20%.
According to as post on Wikipedia, each COIL burst produces enough energy in a five-second burst to power a typical American household for more than one hour
sharks yet?
I'm pretty sure Lil Jon put us on the map before Boeing.
In the beginning, there was null.
to the Bat laser, we're going in to BATL with BABL!
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
This is all well and good but when can we put them on sharks?
Wow, according to the article, the laser is supersonic. Good to know.
I am curious if John Carmack or his rocket brethren could build a better laser system for less.
Wasn't Sarah Jessica Parker in Real Genius? http://cheezburger.com/view.aspx?ciid=2454564
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
It's time to genetically engineer Megalodons. They'd be a perfect mount for a large laser.
... to a size I can strap onto my sharks, since I haven't yet figured out how to grow them to the size of C-130s.
My company's developer had a side job as "computer support engineer" for this group a couple month ago (translate: 45/hr to configure software and as a human "fail-safe"). They actually did the first test fire a month or two back.
It was only half successful.
It did destroy the target which he described as a "basketball sized item" while traveling at ~450mph or whatever a C-130 cruises at (not supersonic). Unfortunately one of the chemicals has a ph of 17 and is stored at 2500 psi. When the tank developed a leak everyone had to don gas masks, move the cockpit and then make an emergency landing before it ate the plane. A full hazmat crew run by the company had to be flown in from Albuquerque to run decontamination.
It makes me think that perhaps if they just shot those chemicals rather than the laser it might be just as effective and quite a bit cheaper.
From WP:
The Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) program is a US military program to mount a high energy laser damage weapon on an aircraft, initially the AC-130 gunship, for use against ground targets in urban or other areas where minimizing collateral damage is important. The laser will be a megawatt-class chemical oxygen iodine laser (COIL). It is expected to have a tactical range of approximately twenty kilometers and weigh about 5,000â"7,000 kg. This program is distinct from the Airborne Laser, which is a much larger system designed to destroy enemy missiles in the boost phase.
Ooops
wrong target - sorry Beijing, we did not mean to blast your Embassy
Ooops
this schoolbus looked like a rocket launcher - really Sir
"The extreme scientists at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency today said last month they want to develop a laser system the goes way beyond today's opto-mechanical, acousto-optical or electro-optical systems to establish photonic integrated circuit (PIC) technology that will provide video frame rate beam steering speeds, and emit multiple beams with a total output power of 10 W." Sweet. What school do I apply to in order to become an EXTREME scientist?
FTA:
"Guided" the laser beam to the target? The journalist makes it sound like a cross between phasers and A. E. Van Vogt's "psychology" of elementary particles....
He then goes on to totally mix this up with signal carrying lasers and photonic integrated circuits:
"today said last month"??? What does that mean?
"extreme scientists"? (Makes me laugh thinking about images mixing most of my scientist friends with extreme sports)...
The mix-up seems intentional, to make the uninformed reading public think that soon these laser planes will be zapping tens or hundreds of targets simultaneously...
Don't they know that if you surround your enemy with mobile phones and get the phones to ring at the same time they pop like popcorn?
Facts are: ... ... ...
- The laser has a ~20% efficiency (say: 80% needs to be cooled or blows away with hot gases)
- The laser produces "corrosive hydrogen fluoride gas"
- The whole military program costs billions (not only millions) up to now
More details at IEEE-Spectrum:
- www.spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/optoelectronics/ray-guns-get-real
I suspect they just gave up on strapping it to a shark with this one, and settled on a whale...
>damage or disable targets with little to no collateral damage
Has 'collateral damage' been redefined to allow this leap forward? Every other weapon supposed to avoid this does a very good job of hitting civs, own soldiers, allies soldiers etc. I'm guessing the weak link here is the human element but really, do we want to automate this sort of firepower? THIS is how Skynet started.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Or it didnt happen !
Seriously though any videos out there?
N...
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Diese News ist doch echt einfach mal ein LOL wert. Klasse!
except for Alderaan...
Its not my fault, someone put a wall in my way.
http://www.popsci.com/bown/2008/product/boeing-advanced-tactical-laser
August of 2008 a similar report was released.
There has also been a lot of chatter that Iraqi insurgents have already fallen victim to the ATL and fear it.
...well, don't believe him. But check out his sources. The ground based version is almost certainly being used as an anti-personnel weapon already.
http://www.infowars.com/what-is-the-secret-killing-weapon-in-iraq/
If it gains you five seconds, you win...
Seems strange that Boeing didn't bring an aircraft with them rather than use a Lockheed one? Must have been a customer requirement for a stable platform.
Does Boeing even make any turboprops anymore.
The wavelength of the laser light is about 1315 nm: far enough into the infrared that it could be this laser will kill you by cooking you before blinding you. If it kills before blinding, that's "ethical".
Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.
The article claims that the next generation weapon will have a total output power of 10 W. That won't do any damage at all! I've put my hand into a 10 W beam (with a beam waist of about 1 mm). It's enough to hurt if you don't move really fast and it will burn paper but it sure won't go through metal. Perhaps each laser in the array is 10 W. Or maybe the "extreme scientists" that the article claims want to build it use a different definition of W, I assume it means Watt but maybe I'm wrong.
and yes, we do obey international convention. The treaties say that no weapon can be designed for the purpose of taking out somebodies vision. These lasers are NOT designed for that purpose. Just like many bombs are not designed to kill, there is collateral damage. The ATL was designed to DESTROY a target similar to how a bomb would work. Likewise, the ABL is designed to collapse a sidewall of a missile. If somebody 'hardens' it causes the collateral damage, how is that America's fault?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
What exactly do they mean by "blasted" is there a smoldering pit where the vehicle was? or a melted slag heap?
A new tool for the Military Inferiority Complex...
Ready the AT-AT's for a ground assault!
How can this not be considered a blinding weapon?
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Second, America did not sign Kyoto because it was massively flawed. Even now, none of the major signatories have complied with it. Nor will they be able to without destroying their nation's economy relative to other nations. The worse part of that is that China has been the largest polluter and is hell bent on putting out more CO2 than all the rest of the world combined. In two short years (2004 to 2006), they DOUBLED their emission and at that time they were building one coal plant every couple of weeks. Now, they PHYSICALLY BUILDING 1-2 new coal plants EACH WEEK. In fact they have been doing that since 2006 when they surpassed America as the most CO2 emissions. Worse, they are fighting against their slowing it down or even capping it while expecting America to do so.
The idea that emissions are tied to the count of ppl has to be one of the worst ideas going. The more so since the count of ppl change. It should be tied to 2 things; GDP, which reflects the amount of business AND the size of their nation. I did a quick set of calculations which I need to throw into wiki, but basically, when looking at emission PER THE LAND SIZE (not the country), then America has less than normal emission. In fact, most of Europe has MUCH HIGHER emissions for their land mass.
Also, you will note that United States is in the second to last grouping. Per the land mass, America is far more efficient than is most of the world esp EU.
Tons of CO2 emission / km^2.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So if you take a cylindrical object like a missile, mirror its surface, and rotate the object in flight...why, I betcha your laser's energy requirements go right up given the diffusion of the beam over more surface area. And I wonder what the net effect would be if that missile's nose cone emitted a gas or vapor stream to further diffuse the beam...or just used an ablation shield designed to burn off and emit a diffusing/reflecting stream of particles...
Ain't weapons races fun?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
If every person in the US would shine their laser pointers at the ABL at once, would they be able to blow it up?
Ok, I guess that would be a hard target to hit, while it was flying, but I've often wondered if everyone pointing their laser pointers at the moon simultaneously would cause it to glow visibly red.
-- Marcio
Thanks for the "leak!" You will be buying me dinner and rent when I'm fired for this you insensitive clod.
First, the target has to be covered by mirrors — high quality ones — for the laser to pose danger to the innocent around it... And even then, blinding a few innocent bystanders, who happened to be looking at the target from the wrong angle at the wrong moment compares to killing and maiming everybody within similar distance about as much as, uhm, waterboarding compares to actual bone-breaking and nail-pulling...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
the market for corner reflectors seems to continue its steady growth through the third quarter of 2009.
From TFA:
Both systems employ a Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (COIL) that is made by combining a bunch of nasty chemicals - potassium, peroxide, chlorine, iodine and other stuff and then fired at supersonic speeds.
I'm pretty sure the laser fires at the speed of light which I guess is technically supersonic. Correct but a retarded way to explain technology the author clearly doesn't understand.
Then TFA follows up the next sentence with the following gem:
According to as post on Wikipedia...
So Wikipedia is a source of journalistic research now? Oh dear... This guy isn't even smart enough to hide the fact he used Wikipedia as a primary source AND he has a typo in the same sentence. Is he trying to get on the Slashdot editing staff?
Known as the SWEEPER, which is wicked short for short-range wide-field-of-view extremely-agile electronically-steered photonic emitters
"Wicked short"? Is this some teenager from Boston writing this? Not according to the picture but the author certainly writes like a high school freshman.
.... with the laser pointers: We're shooting back.
Have gnu, will travel.
It's the contract for testing that is worth up to 30 Million. The contract for development is more on the order of 30 Billion.
The article says that the the ABL uses a COIL laser which has an output wavelength of 1.315 Âm, the wavelength of transition of atomic iodine. What reflects light well at that infrared wavelength? Gold. Yup, just plate your missile with gold and it might be able to survive hits from a laser like this. They probably use gold on the mirror(s) used to aim this laser. The reflectivity of gold at 1.315 microns is about 98%.
So if this really is a 1MW laser, then only 20kWatts of energy gets through. Plus, the beam diverges, so at a long distance the beam diameter might be something like 1meter. The USAF probably can't even run this laser for very long or else it will self destruct. So, 20kWatts of energy that is pulsed for a few seconds over a 1meter area? You can design a missile to withstand that. Just plate it with gold, and put on some aerodynamic heat sinks and/or shield and/or insulation.
Wouldn't being armed with this make the plane an A-130?
I mean what is the point of investing in LASERS when we are developing PASSIVE ADAPTIVE CAMOUFLAGE with METAMATERIALS??
We already can bend microwaves making an object invisible to microwaves. Further research (in the very near future) WILL probably cover the whole electromagnetic spectrum, so it will render an object invisble to visible light, heat, sound (actually we can already manipulate sound), radar, sonar, whatever you imagine INVISIBLE.
I mean with such a research on progress, what is the point of investing on LASERS?
As my way of thanking Slashdot for disabling advertising on Slashdot pages, Slashdot is eligible to examine the content of my new Google Profile => http://www.google.com/profiles/Peacepipe4WoodRileyCloudSeeder !
Industrial Age 2 + How-to Stop Malignant Cancers.
Dr Evil's dreams have come true. He finally has his "LASER".
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
http://xkcd.com/585/
The Battle of Kosovo (The one that the Serbs are still sulking over) was in 1389; they lost to the Ottomans. The Ottomans pushed as far as Vienna in 1529, then had another go in 1683.
That's just two of many between the three empires that meet in that region. Looks like a few centuries to me, and none of those dates is anywhere near 1912.
So which are you a bigger idiot at, maths or history?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."