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Congress Wants To Resurrect Laser-Wielding 747

Posted by Unknown on from the it-works-on-tee-vee dept.

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."

7 of 302 comments (clear)

  1. what better... by Sebastopol · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...to shoot down a failed missile than a failed missile-defense program?

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    1. Re:what better... by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's not Al Qaeda, it's the next Suddam, Iran, or NoKo to come along. The tech only gets easier and cheaper over time, and will be in reach for smaller state actors before much longer IMO.

      Really - who?

      Even basic ballistic missile tech is hard. Saddam could barely launch SCUDs which they bought from Russia. India is just getting off boosters that qualify as ICBMs (barely). And that's a huge, technologically advanced country. Iran has some theatre capable missiles and again, the barest ICBM level capability. Another fairly advanced nation. Then there is the problem of the warhead. Tossing rocks across continents may look impressive, but strategically it's nonsensical.

      So our fascination with the idjits in Pyongyang notwithstanding, there isn't much of a strategic need for ICBM level defense at this time. Unless you think we can create enough of functional shield to significantly degrade a Chinese or Russian strike.

      Given the limited amount of defense funding available, it's better to work on some more realistic weapons and perhaps some basic research into alternative resources like oil (which is the basic reason for much of the dick waving these days).

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  2. But there is more! by oldhack · · Score: 5, Funny

    The 747 can then also fingerprint conflict minerals.

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  3. Need to stick with ships for now by Nidi62 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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  4. Re:Republicans LOVE Wasteful Spending by Nidi62 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  5. Laser Jets? Pfffffft..! by vyruss000 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hewlett-Packard has been building LaserJets since the 1980s...

  6. Re:Airborne laser range by M1FCJ · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hah! I went and checked the Wikipedia source. You missed the start of the sentence, "If the ABL achieves its design goals"... If they achieve its design goals, ever. Highly unlikely. The whole thing is a massive pork-barrel exercise by the US Congress. I'm glad to be living in UK. At least we waste our money on aircraft carriers which will be built and immediately sold / mothballed. For the price of this plane, we should get a couple of carriers (I can't believe US spent $5b on this stupidity).