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Military Working On Laser Powered Drones
disco_tracy writes "Modern militaries depend on fuel. Nearly 80 percent of the supplies delivered to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan consist of fuel, and it's no surprise that those military convoys are frequently the targets of insurgents. In the last decade, 1000 soldiers have died delivering gasoline to military operations. A new approach using lasers could provide power to drones in flight or to machines on the ground and remove the need for gas deliveries to army bases."
Inflammable stuff on the ground, birdbrain with Laser in the sky shooting down, what could possibly go wrong.
"remove the need for gas deliveries to army bases", so where does the laser power sent to the drones come from ?
Or are we going to aim big orbital lasers at the army bases? That sounds like a good idea.
Also a dispersive light beam as described is not going to be efficient. R^2 losses on defocusing and all that. So more power needed at the base to send up to the drones.
Hrm. I wonder if this has anything to do with the NOTAMs regarding military installations experimenting with lasers.
Sounds like vaporware, which works out well for the government. They will spent zillions of dollars to find out, crap, it doesn't work. Lasers can't bend very well, so you need line of sight. Then, I have to ask, what powers the laser? Hell, I have a great idea on making a perpetual motion device. Okay, not really, but I might, and I'll gladly accept zillion of dollars to prove to you that it doesn't work.
In the last decade, 1000 soldiers have died delivering gasoline to military operations.
Not sure who these soldiers could be, since NATO uses diesel, not gasoline.
In the last decade, 1000 soldiers have died delivering gasoline to military operations.
And how many of those thousands were during combat operations? Less than 100. Distort things much? You're still going to need to get fuel to the laser so it can power the drone ... unless you think its just going to run on sunshine and rainbows?
Most fuel accidents happen no where near combat zones due to people being slack. Tensions in combat zones and natural selection tend to keep things actually safer in that respect.
As with most things related to the military, some idiot gets a number, then goes completely doom and gloom, and suddenly OMFG WE GOTTA STOP THAT!
Let me tell you what the lazier based solution does ... gives them something to see in order to know A) Where the object needing fuel is located at as its being fueld and ... B) The location of the refueling system. Invisible laser you say? Doesn't exist. You may not see it with the naked eye, but it'll have enough interference in the atmosphere to leave a detectable effect regardless of wavelength if it has enough energy to provide power to a drone over any sort of distance. Put on the right goggles and it'll shine for you, then you shot down the drown and mortor the refueling point. As they say in Counter Strike ... Terrorist win.
Note: I as expected, did not read the actual article, just the summary. Its more fun that way.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Let's hope they don't have a private control the orientation of the laser.... you don't want them to hit and ignite the oil drums that powers the rest of the stuff :-P.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
Christ on a crumpet that shark/laser joke was old as soon as the ink was dry on the original script.
(and the captcha is "overuse"; how appropriate)
Now thousands of troops will simply die while trying to hold mirrors providing line of sight back to the original light source.
No comment.
Interesting method of power distribution. I recommend the book below.
http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Signet-W-T-Quick/dp/0451163427
Fuel for drones represents a fairly insignificant amount of the fuel being used. The army's trucks and other vehicles use much more.
One major use for fuel in Afghanistan and Iraq is air conditioning. According to "a former pentagon official" $20 Billion is the annual cost of air conditioning. Most of this cost being accounted for by the high cost of getting the fuel from Pakistan into Afghanistan by armed convoys. As long as there are troops there this fuel will be required
.
This meme will never get old. Never. 20 year from now, we'll still be associating sharks with lasers. They (the people 20 year from now) won't know *why* the two are related, but at that point it won't matter, it'll become vestigial. And all of this because ACs like you. Thank you.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
The Army should be mindful of respecting Gaia, and go green, using solar power for this.
And, we don't want those nasty insurgents blowing up the solar arrays to disable the drones, so let's put them -- in space!
I mean, really, doesn't it make more sense to bankrupt ourselves investing in useful infrastructure rather than just squandering our wealth in blowing up some rocks and brown people. At least this way, we can accomplish both at the same time.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
A few lines that were mildly amusing from some old flick, and everybody gets the idea that it's a friggin scream so you'd better think it's a friggin scream too. You'd also better turn it into a meme and repeat it endlessly, just to reassure yourself that you're one of us. A shark logo. Sheesh! The only thing more annoying than this is the Monty Python repetition, and the fact that it's even got a damn programming language named after it.
'1000 soldiers have died delivering gasoline to military operations.'
if you think thats bad, check out the death toll related to soldiers trying to deliver gasoline to the united states.
I cant see lasers helping us anytime soon.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The Military's chief means of recon can now be brought down by an errant Frisbee. Splendid idea.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
So what happens if it's foggy/cloudy or it's raining? Doesn't that further disperse the beam or even block it?
FTA: "Do you know how many people have died delivering gasoline?" said Tom Nugent, president and co-founder of LaserMotive, a Kent, Wash.-based company looking to replace fossil fuels with laser power. The answer to Nugent's question? Nearly 1,000 soldiers in the last decade. And that's why Nugent wants to drastically reduce the need for delivering fossil fuels. His company's approach could save lives."
Total snake-oil bait-and-switch bullshit. There is absolutely nothing in the article to suggest how this would cut fuel deliveries or save transporter's lives in any way. Fuel still needs to be delivered to the ground-based emitter units. Probably more, even (to whatever degree it's less efficient than a connected gasoline engine.)
FTA: "The beam emitter is located at a ground-based unit and operated by a person, who could control it from the same location or remotely from an entirely different place altogether."
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
One day, when we're able to sustain powerful enough coherent beams, we'll launch stuff into orbit using lasers. A reaction mass (hydrogen, water, etc.) heated by photons from ground facilities will propel vehicles to orbit. Removing the oxidizer from the propellent mass fraction will vastly improve launch economics. That is how the large scale migration off Earth will begin.
I don't even have to read the article - in fact, I'm not going to bother - to know this is ridiculous as a way of saving fuel although it could help a drone flying high above the laser in a circle to stay aloft longer (of course, about all that drone could report back is, "I have no idea where the enemy is, but yup, the laser is still there").
This is just another excuse for some contractor to get millions from the government to create yet another program that will never result in any useful tech worth the money invested. It never intends to be. It's just another boondoogle to fleece the taxpayer.
Meanwhile, the military brass who got the project approved under their command will themselves make a hefty bribe out of this in either money under the table or in a "job" in the private sector after they retire (a job where they mainly stay home playing golf).
Someone already said it, and I'll say it again: WHERE DOES THE LASER ENERGY COME FROM?
I am *so* sick of this sort of lazy, pathetic science reporting.
How to be a popular science reporter in three easy steps:
Step 1: start by describing a serious real-world issue.
Step 2: write a bridge that makes a mockery of the laws of physics to:
Step 3: describe minor scientific result which has nothing to do with Step 1.
You can try this at home!
"Millions of people in the world are malnourished. But perhaps that can all change, with the help of astronomers who have discovered amino acids -- the building blocks of delicious protein -- in the asteroid belt!"
"Automobile crashes kill thousands of people in the U.S. every year. In this year's IEEE annual meeting, engineers describe new progress in using carbon nanotubes as part of semiconductor circuits. These could eventually lead to faster, more reliable electronic circuitry in many fields, including crash sensors in cars."
"The promise of nuclear energy is clear, but the problem of long-term waste disposal has not yet been solved. The long-half-lives of radioactive waste means it remains lethal for centuries. In this week's Journal of Cosmology, theoretical physicists describe how, by rapidly orbiting a black hole, the flow of time can be made to apparently stretch or contract. So perhaps those centuries won't be so long after all!
Yes, I realize that in this case, it's the business owner who's drawing the ridiculous parallel, and he's doing it to attract military funding to his no-name little project. But the story's reporter just takes him at his word, and doesn't ask even the most basic critical questions. ARGH!
An aircraft that runs on fuel has to carry said fuel, therefore requiring more fuel to carry the fuel itself. Even if the laser is powered by an base generator running on fuel, it will save fuel by removing the power cost of carrying the fuel on board the aircraft. Also the laser allows powering the aircraft with out having to land. That will eliminate many takeoffs which are the most fuel expensive part of the average flight. And the on base generator could run on far lower grades of fuel than JP5 saving more money. A on base generator, as opposed to an aircraft engine, also will optimized for efficiency instead of weight. Finally, imagine running this off a nuclear powered aircraft carrier. That would have massive fuel savings. Food for thought.
Sit at home, wait until it gets cloudy, then attack.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The US military does not use gasoline, so I doubt "1000 soldiers have died delivering gasoline to military operations".
The US military standardized on JP-8 in 1990 as a replacement for diesel and gasoline, while the US Navy uses JP-5 for fuel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JP-8
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JP-5
...if you remove the soldiers, there's no need to ship in fuel.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It is interesting to hear that the military has a plentiful and easily transportable source of power for the lasers, because otherwise it would be insane to convert the energy to laser power and then back to something else (presumably electricity) and take the efficiency loss hit at each step. Now if they would just let the American public have access to that free energy rather than keep it to themselves and Area 51 then we could power the country without the need for foreign oil and get our noses out of the mid-east. Of course, if we did that then Haliburton stock would go down in price, so it will never happen. So we just keep sending American lives over there to be wasted.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Troll? Seemed sincere to me. ;)
Why develop laser-powered cars when you can power military machines?
Why build a better world when you can go around and destroy it?
Honestly, who here is surprised by this sense of priority when it comes to the US?
USA: we all hate you, but we aren't all out to get you. Now stop the paranoia, grow up, and develop useful technology instead of stuff that can destroy other things. Maybe if you built stuff people could use you'd get out of the recession. Unless maybe you don't care about being hit by the recession as long as everybody else is hit harder, which is why you'd sooner destroy them than build things for yourselves. I actually wouldn't put it past you. You'd have no problem living in a pile of shit as long as people in other countries live in piles of worse quality shit.
But if you really want to bankrupt yourselves developing destruction machines, go ahead. I'll be laughing when you can't afford to pay anyone to operate the expensive drones.
why do people lie about war so much?
if fuel is a problem to supply a war, don't wage war there. Bin Laden is dead, send your troops home! You may want to ask a german soldier if he'd invade Russia again with their scorched earth defense, if you can find one who is still alive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_earth
many times 1000 ordinary people were killed by soldiers who had business being there in the first place.
"Modern militaries depend on fuel. Nearly 80 percent of the supplies delivered to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan consist of fuel, and it's no surprise that those military convoys are frequently the targets of insurgents. In the last decade, 1000 soldiers have died delivering gasoline to military operations.
Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday August 10, @05:25PM
Previous story:
Wall Street: Software More Valuable Than Oil
Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday August 10, @04:58PM
And then, samzenpus disappeared in a puff of logic.
This thing just smells of trolling for a research grant.
And, by the way, even with the proper definition of order of magnitude (fifth root of 100, not 10 - Wikipedia is wrong here because the term was invented for astronomy) coal and sunshine are not orders of magnitude cheaper than avgas, unless you factor in those transport and protection costs. Which I suspect will prove to be identical.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."