Slashdot Mirror
Congress Wants To Resurrect Laser-Wielding 747
Harperdog writes "Noah Schactman has a great piece on the Airborne Laser, the ray gun-equipped 747 that became a symbol of wasteful Pentagon weaponeering. Despite sixteen years and billions of dollars in development, the jet could never reliably blast a missile in trials. Now the House Armed Services Committee's Strategic Forces wants the Airborne Laser to be used to defend us against the threat of North Korea's failed missiles."
...to shoot down a failed missile than a failed missile-defense program?
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
The 747 can then also fingerprint conflict minerals.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
If I remember correctly, one of the biggest problems with airborne lasers was that of fuel source. It took up a large amount of space, and the chemicals in chemical lasers were very volatile. Not to mention weaponized lasers still aren't very practicable. It makes much more sense to stick with the Navy development of lasers, as they can tap onboard nuclear reactors for power. Maybe once we actually working, reliable, and accurate systems in development we can look at adding them to an airborne platform. But right now this smells more like the chance for some defense-related pork than anything else.
What has me more concerned from the article (I know, we aren't supposed to read the articles here, but Noah's been doing good work ever since his defensetech days) is that the same committee pushing this is pushing for an East Coast missile defense system. Which, living on the East Coast, makes no sense. The only states with operational SSBNs are the US, UK, France, Russia, and China. No land-based ballistic missiles will come over the East Coast, and China's not going to risk a voyage to the East Coast to attack, the West Coast would make much more sense. I don;t think we have to worry about the UK or France, and Russia still has to deal with what's left of SOSUS as well as the French, Scandinavian, and UK navies, and the Atlantic is still pretty much our backyard. I honestly cannot see any remotely legitimate threat or need for an East Coast defense line.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I remember that the American Physical Society (the professional organization of physicists) studied various boost-phase missile defense schemes years ago. They found that the various options, including air-borne lasers, weren't likely to be very useful in realistic scenarios (even under otherwise optimistic assumptions).
The press release says:
You can also read the full report. I don't know how the relative states of the technologies stand today.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
Yes, let's just ignore the fact that there are 7 Democrats as well on the subcommittee that is pushing for this. I'm sure they had nothing to do with this.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The United States is incredibly dependent on its space assets in support of national objectives. Directed energy weapons can not only provide offensive ASAT capabilities, but can serve as a significant defense against missile- or even space-based kinetic ASAT weapons. The advantage of a directed energy weapon is that it has the ability to travel at the speed of light and target missiles during their vulnerable boost phase within seconds. During the 1990s and 2000s, the United States pursued directed energy weapons based on megawatt-class chemical lasers. Two of systems, the Airborne Laser (ABL) and Space-Based Laser (SBL), were complementary, but never made it beyond the early testing phase.
The concept of the Airborne Laser came to fruition on a modified Boeing 747 known as the YAL-1A Airborne Laser Testbed (ABLT). In early 2010, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) announced that ABLT successfully destroyed two test missiles, saying at the time that "The revolutionary use of directed energy is very attractive for missile defense, with the potential to attack multiple targets at the speed of light, at a range of hundreds of kilometers, and at a low cost per intercept attempt compared to current technologies." Unfortunately, ABLT was $4 billion over budget and eight years behind schedule. Political and economic realities meant that the US could "no longer continue to do everything and explore every potential technology". On February 14, 2012, MDA announced that the ABLT program was terminated, transitioning into long-term storage at the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group at Davis Monthan AFB — "the Boneyard".
The Space-Based Laser (SBL) concept is the notion of locating a high-powered laser in space, with a similar ability to target missiles in their boost phase. A constellation of 20 SBLs would be able to provide continuous global coverage, and target nearly any launch -- including ASAT weapons. A test firing of a Space-Based Laser Integrated Flight Experiment (SBL-IFX) was originally schedule for 2012 to demonstrate SBL's capabilities. This project became so complex and expensive that MDA suspended research and development in 2002 — another victim of economic priorities, and a desire to focus resources on existing, proven kinetic systems.
If such systems are thought to have so much potential and capability, why are they no longer pursued? The answer is primarily one of cost. Further, if the US possessed such a comprehensive anti-missile and anti-ASAT capability, it is unlikely that an adversary would use a kinetic ASAT weapon. As adversaries such as China, Russia, and Iran turn to cyber, it becomes more likely that cyber, conventional jamming, and EW capabilities would be used to target US space systems. It is reasonable that the US response should be in kind. One example: China is currently fielding the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM). Instead of using complicated missile defense systems or directed energy weapons to target it, and the current US strategy is indeed one of jam, spoof — and then shoot, if necessary, with the idea being to "break as many links as possible" in the chain, including via cyber and EW. Cyber can act as a significant force multiplier against even conventional weapons systems — which can work both for and against us. China has already demonstrated the potential effectiveness of cyber capabilities against US space systems. Resources devoted to enhancing our offensive and defensive cyber capabilities in the context of space systems and missile defense is money well spent.
Hewlett-Packard has been building LaserJets since the 1980s...
I have to agree this particular thing would be a waste. But there's wasting money and then there's wasting money. The military budget is about 5% of government spending. This pales in comparison to the debt that Obama has racked up in such a short time.
You may want to look at this and this and this.
Or you could just get all your "facts" from FOX.
Republicans love to proclaim that they're deficit hawks, unlike the tax-and-spend Democrats. But if you look at what they *do* instead of what they say, it becomes obvious that they're tax-(less)-and-spend-(more) hawks.
They only object to spending money when it won't help someone who doesn't need it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Seven Democrats, and nine Republicans. Who do you think is in charge?
Now, time for your civics lesson. Go to the department webpage, scroll down to the Strategic Forces subcommittee markup, watch the little five minute video, and read the attached file (search for the word "laser").
What you'll find is that the truth is a lot more banal than what gets printed in the papers. They're requesting an extra $30 million to keep to project in stasis while they look into whether or not it should really be shut down. The whole thing is a couple paragraphs out of over 200 pages. The Democrats had some concerns with the proposal, but those don't get announced yet -- instead, they're submitted in writing sometime in the next week.
This is small potatoes. Really small potatoes. If we reach the point where they're seriously considering funding this, then complain and point fingers. For now, its a handful of people asking a slightly larger group to ask an even larger group to spend 0.004% of the military's budget on looking into whether or not this project is worth preserving.
Boeing YAL-1:the ABL achieves its design goals, it could destroy liquid-fueled ICBMs up to 600 km away. Tougher solid-fueled ICBM destruction range would likely be limited to 300 km, too short to be useful in many scenarios, according to a 2003 report by the American Physical Society on National Missile Defense.
Looking at a couple maps of North Korea, there are no regions 300 km away from water or foreign territory. 600 km would allow intercept for most of the country from South Korea. Looking at the launch site northwest of Pyongyang, it looks to be about 300km from Seoul.
Plus, any launch vectors that would have a hope of hitting the USA(or other countries not within range of SRBM) will rapidly leave NK territory and be within range of an appropriately positioned plane.
I don't read AC A human right