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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.
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!
Now thousands of troops will simply die while trying to hold mirrors providing line of sight back to the original light source.
No comment.
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
'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
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
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 do people lie about war so much?
Launching stuff into orbit is great, but why would humans want to migrate off of earth? Migrate to where? Orbital communities? The moon? Mars? Certainly you can't be suggesting migration to other stars, as the closest ones with potentially habitable planets are anywhere from 20 - 40 million light years away.
If you aren't part of the solution, then there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
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."