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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!!
A mirror surface will harden the target, but even the best mirrors do not reflect all light and a combat laser can still burn a hole in it very fast.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I meant the reflections. Are they willing to blind anyone within eyesight?
30 Million is pretty small money for the DOD and for Boeing. There must be more money in this project somewhere.
I suppose that would fall under the category of collateral damage, and they're probably expecting everyone within sight of the target to be, well, "The Enemy(tm)."
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%.
The purpose of this tool is war. So, yes.
The purpose of this tool is war. So, yes.
We already have plenty weapons with lots of collateral damage and they're being used, that was never in dispute. The question was how can this be a weapon "with little to no collateral damage" if in fact the reflections do collateral damage. If we didn't care about colleteral we could just throw a nuke at it.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over."
~William Tecumseh Sherman
More quotes...
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Wow, according to the article, the laser is supersonic. Good to know.
I was looking for a good place to crack a "Real Genius" joke. There's already a thread about popcorn... something about a "Real Genius" thought of that...
A mirror surface will harden the target, but even the best mirrors do not reflect all light and a combat laser can still burn a hole in it very fast.
Surprisingly, a mirror wouldn't work nearly as well as cheap glossy white paint.
Mirrors reflect (typically) 60-70% of the light that hits them, turning the rest into heat. Cheap, glossy, exterior-grade white paint often reflects in excess of 90% of the light back.
In other words, mirrors would turn about 4x as much of the light into heat as the white paint will. The difference is that mirrors reflect light without losing its coherency. White paint, on the other hand, just reflects the light in random directions.
Worried about teh lazers? Paint your tin foil hat white!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
No, permanent blinding weapons are illegal
Blinding weapons are banned by 1995 United Nations Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzler_(weapon)
http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/0/49de65e1b0a201a7c125641f002d57af?OpenDocument
Did you read your own links? From the second:
Causing blindness is not a combat function of this weaponry; it's a side-effect of the other side trying to subvert the weapon. They were also not specifically designed to have such an effect. Their goal is to blow shit up from the air, with a particular emphasis on fired projectiles but probably used for vehicles as well (as per this example). In most cases there won't even be anybody around to get blinded.
A bullet through the eye can cause blindness too, that doesn't make it banned. Intent matters.
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.
A great example is silver. In the very close UV, like 310 nm, it's completely transparent. Light goes thru it perfectly. by the time you get to Green light, it's over 90% effective at reflections. Good, somewhat expensive, white paint used as a reflectance standard is good between 250-2500 nm. The type of laser they have is about 1000 or so nm. Using frequency doublers you can make that high UV in 3 jumps and below the bottom of where the paint can reflect well. I've used such high powered lasers in Academia. Doublers are common.
I'd say more, but my guild is raiding.
What international convention is the US a party to, that it doesn't follow? Specifically?
It could have been worse, it could have been something like "produces 300,000 volts of power, which in watts per second is larger than an aircraft carrier and enough to burn down the entire Library of Congress..."
I've not heard a valid example of the US violating it.
Do you consider general Taguba, who conducted investigation of Abu Ghraib valid source? According to him prisoner were raped among other things. Is it good enough example of violation for you? I also remember (not link this time, but should not be hard to find) of hooded prisoner attached to multiple wires. The whole scene looked like something from Frankenstein.
Remember, the Geneva conventions are primarily concerned with the treatment of uniformed members of national military forces (and includes definitions of such).
Whole 4th convention is about civilians. Most relevant here is article 5, talking about spies and saboteurs (or in American newspeak "illegal enemy combatants").
Direct quote: "In each case, such persons shall nevertheless be treated with humanity and, in case of trial, shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed by the present Convention. They shall also be granted the full rights and privileges of a protected person under the present Convention at the earliest date consistent with the security of the State or Occupying Power, as the case may be." Seems pretty clear, doesn't it?
It also is only in force when engaged in war with another state that is also bound by the convention.
Like Iraq which ratified it in 1956? Ah, I forgot: you just need to slap 'liberation' sticker on your invasion and it is ok.
Legally, at least; morally/politically is a different game, of course.
What is the problem? You just need to redefine 'morality', like 'torture' and 'war' got redefined.
Close you missed the some key aspects of the article 5.
"Where in occupied territory an individual protected person is detained as a spy or saboteur, or as a person under definite suspicion of activity hostile to the security of the Occupying Power, such person shall, in those cases where absolute military security so requires, be regarded as having forfeited rights of communication under the present Convention.
In each case, such persons shall nevertheless be treated with humanity and, in case of trial, shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed by the present Convention. They shall also be granted the full rights and privileges of a protected person under the present Convention at the earliest date consistent with the security of the State or Occupying Power, as the case may be."
A protected person detained as a spy or saboteur. Non uniformed terrorists do not fall under the "protected person" definition. So they are not protected by the GC.
Mirrors reflect (typically) 60-70% of the light that hits them, turning the rest into heat. Cheap, glossy, exterior-grade white paint often reflects in excess of 90% of the light back.
Finally, an explanation for the Stormtrooper armor design!
What's wrong with that? Unless you're complaining about the use of Wikipedia, everything in that sentence is perfectly within norms.
A typical American household uses about 11,000 kWh per year.
A very simple use of Google's calculator function will tell you that this equals 1,255 Wh per hour.
This in turn is 4.52 megajoule. Expended over 5 seconds, this is 904 kW. Pretty close to a megawatt laser.
with remaining eye?
Boo, Fuckity, Hoo. War is SUPPOSED to be inhumane, SUPPOSED to be degrading, SUPPOSED to be horrible.
It is well that war is so terrible - otherwise we would grow too fond of it.
Robert E. Lee, Statement at the Battle of Fredericksburg (13th December 1862)
US-Confederate general (1807 - 1870)
All the people crying OMG WE HAVE INTERNATIONAL LAWS AGAINST DOING THIS AND THIS AND THIS are the kind of people who don't understand this fact. The more horrible war is, the less likely it will happen. The population of the west today just doesn't get that war is ugly, they've pacified themselves culturally to believe that war is NOT the ugly horrible thing it always was, and always will be, and seem to think that OMG A CIVILIAN DIED THIS IS AN OUTRAGEEEEEEEEEEEE is how you should respond to finding out 20 enemy fighters died...but 1 civilian did as well cause the enemy was hiding in a family's house. I don't really care that I'll get modded as flamebait/troll because this is the fact of life in western society. They've been pussified since WW2 and can't handle a real war. God forbid the chinese or russians ever decide to have a real war with another country, the citizenry of the west will collectively shit their pants and break down into tears at the 'atrocities' they'll hear about that happen in what a real war should/does look like.
Weapons like this actually make an ICBM strike *more* likely against the US. If conventional war were to break out between the US and a country like China, with neither party really wanting a nuclear escalation but reserving their nukes as a deterrent, they'd be afraid that if they lost the ability to effectively shoot down aircraft over their territory they'd also lose the ability to launch ICBM's in case of escalation. So, at the first sign of the US gaining air superiority, they'd go ahead and launch ICBM's.
Not really. First, this is the ATL. It is a different craft with a different mission. It is designed to take out targets on the ground.
Second, for us to take out China's missile, we would have to have multiples of these craft located deep inside of this countries AND all over the world. The reason is that China has a number of boomers and is building 1-2 new nuclear boomers EACH YEAR. In fact, they will surpass America's count in the next 2 years. As it is, China now has boomers patroling both the American Atlantic and Pacific seaboards as well as the Mexican gulf (Venezuela has begun quietly allowing them to have port calls). We also know that China has at least 10 boomers, and will surpass it within 4 years (more likely 2). In addition, to be able to take out all of China's sites with this would require us to be in every country that surrounds China, with multiple aircraft (and russia would require at least 4 to 8 of these). Think we can swing that? Neither does China. TO be honest, we will probable need a lot more. China appears to be building new nuclear warheads. They restarted their factory last decade. They started their build-up before we decided anything about the ABLs.
Finally, the ABL shooting horizontally will have a range of around 500-700. It it probable that it would have a range far shorter over china due to their pollution. In addition, this craft will become more ineffective on 2'nd and third round since dust would have been kicked into the air.
Neither the ATL nor the ABL will be a threat to China's missiles.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Do yourself the favour of looking up which sections of the Geneva Conventions the USA is a signatory to. Then read those sections. Then come up with examples of us violating those sections.
Be aware, by the by, that we never signed on to the sections giving near-blanket immunity to guerrilla forces
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"