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US Navy Close To On-Ship Laser Cannons
An anonymous reader writes "The Office of Naval Research and industry partner Northrop Grumman said they successfully tested for the first time an on-board laser defense system known as the Maritime Laser Demonstrator (MLD), using it to destroy a small target vessel. The test actually accomplished several other benchmarks, including integrating MLD with a ship's radar and navigation system, and firing an electric laser weapon from a moving platform at-sea in a humid environment."
They don't have to go all the way there, if they just target the environment, global warming will take care of the pirates.
Eh, it's the bloody navy. Who exactly are they going to vaporize?
You can complain about cool technology "killing people" in the context of, say, dropping bombs on cities. In that case you've got a clear argument that the weapon in question can and will be used in a way that will leave innocent civilians dead, since it's not like shrapnel knows the difference between the barracks and the orphanage. However, a weapon useful only against military targets, for instance a laser to slag warships, missiles and aircraft, isn't very useful for carrying out war crimes, and isn't likely to mistake a bus-full of nuns for an enemy aircraft carrier.
Bottom line, if the people being killed are hostile armed forces in a time of war, not killing them gives them the opportunity to kill you instead.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
I'm glad we didn't cut a penny from the 2011 military budget. Then we wouldn't have these extra boat lasers around that we don't need, along with all the thousands of other defense contractor welfare projects we've run up $TRILLIONS in debt to pay for.
Instead we cut 1% of the Federal budget, from women, children and the poor. Why protect them with social programmes when we can defend them with extra weapons that kill other people, or sit unused, instead?
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make install -not war
Pointless. A simple 40mm bofors (cheap as hell) or a properly set up AA Gatling will do the job far, FAR better against boat swarms. At the same time they are far cheaper, integrate into system with self-auto corrective targeting based on radar signature of gun's own shells, do not require a heavy supply of energy and have significantly fewer points of failure.
This is essentially a theoretical "possible future weapon" exercise - it has nothing to do with actual, realistic modern combat. AT ALL. In the current material technology levels, a laser that would be at least on par with a modern (actually never mind, let's talk on par with a WW2-aged so we don't get too depressed) kinetic gun is at least as far away as commercial fusion.
In other words, it's a huge waste of taxpayers money, that is validated because people that know nothing of actual weapon technology and how it needs to work go "woo, laser cannons, I saw that in the movies!".
Sad really.
It set the the outboard motors on fire. You can see a video here... http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/
i think the internet has officially acheived its original purpose.
to create a discussion thread that goes from laser weapons, to enemas, to dvorak keyboard arguments, without any intervening replies.
absolutely unbelievable. bravo to you, sirs. bravo.
The enemy just said that their defense system is mostly smoke and mirrors!
No... wait...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Rumbling with the Jets. Where else?
Have gnu, will travel.
Modern warships are basically floating generators powering the communications equipment.
They also have missiles, helicopters, and torpedoes. Usually for target engagement, you fire a missile off in the wrong direction, have it fly away for a bit, turn, and then correct course towards the target. The target is not aware of your correct location.
Now if you can see your target that's usually an intelligence failure or you're investigating without engaging. For example, if a Spanish fishing trawler is illegally catching fish off the Grand Banks and you decide to fire a warning shot when they don't pull over.
So where do lasers come in?
1. For defence, or incoming ballistics neutralization. The Phalanx (R2D2 / Dalek) can destroy most incoming ballistics BUT it goes through ammo like Charlie Sheen goes through hookers and Coke! (It fires 50 cal at 3000 RPM) so it's expensive to fire. Replace that with a laser and suddenly it's costing a gallon of fuel instead of $40k with of bullets. The target acquisition time with modern equipment is enough to destroy almost anything, and even better you can now destroy incoming shells with the lasers. You normally wouldn't be able to acquire / waste ammo on the smaller shells. Now you can.
2. For close-in target neutralization. If you can see the target, you can CUT OFF HER MASTS and then the ship is dark. There's no radar, no radio, and no way of acquiring targets without going outside and opening up a sextant and graph paper. And that's a warship. A civilian ship would be dead in the water.
3. Interdiction of small vessels. When the Cole was hit, even if they'd known that there was a threat there was a good chance they couldn't have repelled it. Warships are designed to hit warships, not two guys in a rowboat. They best they could have done was go down to the small arms locker and try to pick them off with machine gun fire. It wasn't until a few years later that they tried, and with remarkable success, using the Phalanx to hit small incoming craft. Again, that's a waste of money and ammo. With a laser, you can just cut them in half and throw the survivors a Kisby ring, OR switch carrier to a MASER and knock them out with the pain.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.