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Navy To Deploy Lasers On Ship In 2014
Velcroman1 writes "The Pentagon has plans to deploy its first ever ship-mounted laser next year, a disruptive, cutting-edge weapon capable of obliterating small boats and unmanned aerial vehicles with a blast of infrared energy. Navy officials announced Monday that in early 2014, a solid-state laser prototype will be mounted to the fantail of the USS Ponce and sent to the 5th fleet region in the Middle East for real-world experience. 'It operates much like a blowtorch ... with an unlimited magazine,' one official said."
Next up, sharks.
A fleet of these and all the missiles North Korea wants to waggle at the US will mean nothing.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The suggested way to deploy a laser is this .
"Hello, IT... Have you tried turning it off and on again? Yeah... No problem."
Somali pirates begin to feel the heat. Original recipe or extra crispy.
I wonder why they went with Infra-red frequency light.
Seems to me that some higher-energy, shorter wavelength frequency would be more efficient. Something like a blue or violet laser, as they use in certain industrial apps. Better yet would be a laser in the UV frequencies.
Maybe the it's an inaccuracy in the article?
Defense contractor - "Which laser should we install?"
Navy "What do they do?"
Defense contractor - "The first one will light your enemies on fire and incinerate them. The second one one will give your enemies a nasty sunburn"
Navy - "The first one"
Actually, I'd be curious to know why they use IR.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
TFA says:
Video released by the Navy shows the laser lock onto a slow-moving target, in this case an unmanned drone, which bursts aflame in mid-flight. The drone soon catches fire and crashes into the sea below.
But how well does it work against a fast moving target that's actively trying to evade a laser lock or even spinning to prevent a continued lock on any particular part of the target? Would a polished/mirrored skin work as a countermesure? How long does it need to be locked on the surface of the target to cause damage?
Lasers ... cutting edge ... I see what you did there.
A bigger why, as far as I'm concerned, is why this is mounted in the fantail - the aft end of the boat - rather than in the front? Is a captain supposed to order the crew to "Turn tail and fire!"
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Higher frequencies get absorbed by the atmosphere more easily. By using IR they can reach a little further at the same power. If military lasers have followed consumer laser development IR is also a little more mature technology wise.
It's more complex than that. You want a laser in a frequency you can generate easily, focus well with optics, and that will not be absorbed by water vapor, gas, or dust. Higher frequencies don't necessarily net you any kind of energy efficiency yield (while per-photon energy is higher in higher frequency, you can just produce more photons for the same energy cost, so there is not efficiency gains from the physics). This [PDF warning] report gives quite a lot more technical details (including, yes, they do use IR), but not all of them.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
It's probably due to scaling problems. Every type of Laser scales differently with regard to the power of the beam. Then there's the cooling and power supply.
Not to mention that the frequency doesn't really matter when you're pumping Kilowatts of energy towards the target - you want to melt the target, after all. And IR can do that just as well as UV.
CO2 Laser technology @t 10 microns is well-known and already massively used for cutting machines in the range of 6-12KW, or even more, for the industry.
disable" or "damage" would be more accurate descriptions based on the article and photos.
Government spending is bad, unless of course you are mounting infrared lasers on Navy ships to shoot down Zeroes. Banzai!
Austerity my tired buttocks. They just don't like that, what was it, 48%. Spending is good when you fund jobs programs that make layzers.
Next up: lasers on planes, which will make targeted assassinations done so much more quietly.
I always thought blowtorches has tanks of fuel, not magazines of fuel. Damn public school education!
Be seeing you...
So we can deploy Particle Impactors ASAP.
The reasons are simple - it is easy to build solid state IR lasers and hard to build solid state lasers at other wavelengths. The bandgaps of most of the convenient materials, which are easy to work with fall into the infrared region. This is also one of the reasons why do we use IR for fiber optic systems (850 nm, 1300 nm and 1550 nm).
Yup. Too risky, let's go back to bullets and artillery shells.
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
Oh Yeah? We not aflaid of laser. We have bigger better laser. Two of them. Will cut earth in half.
Nex year all pirate ships will look like floating disco balls.
I've read a few articles about the future directions the US Navy wants to take for ship technology. Basically, they want the ship to have a huge amount of electrical generation capacity onboard, then multiple redundant busses to route the power all over. Propulsion will be giant electric motors driving propellers or waterjets. Power can also fire railguns and now lasers.
If they have multiple generators as well as multiple redundant busses the ships might not have any single spot where damage could put the ship out of commission.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_electric_propulsion
Railguns and lasers also have the nice property that they don't explode when hit. A magazine full of gunpowder, or a rack of missiles with liquid fuel, could explode when hit; but railgun projectiles just sit there, and the laser doesn't even have any consumables other than the electricity.
Let's just hope they don't use Windows 8 for the power management computers.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
War is about murdering the other people and breaking their equipment before they use their equipment to murder you. If you're using a laser, or a bullet, or a missile, or any of a myriad of weapons against a boat or an airplane, then it had damn well better pose enough of a threat to you that you are perfectly okay with everyone on it dying, and perhaps maybe even want to kill them. This isn't a "less-lethal" weapon (and I agree with your assessment of tasers and microwave pain rays); it's a "you, over there, die" weapon.
I'm quite critical of the US military contracting industry and of US military policy, but saying "this weapon is bad because it might kill people" is a little disingenuous. It's a weapon; it's for murdering people. If you don't think something's important enough to kill anyone who gets in the way of it, it's not worth going to war over, since that's what war is.
Definition of ponce
noun
1: derogatory an effeminate man.
2: a man who lives off a prostitute’s earnings.
Maybe being invisible is a good thing, especially when you could try to reflect/douse the area in water if you saw where it was hitting.
You'd think all of this would be illegal under The United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.
I imagine everyone on board will be blinded. I also imagine blinding a whole crowd of spectators would only take one piece of shiny metal.
I'd assume that the wavelength chosen represented a compromise between what team engineering could get to operate without catching fire and the wavelength that theory would expect to be transmitted most efficiently in the atmosphere(and, in a naval context, that probably means generous doses of water vapor and possibly aerosol droplets in addition to the usual oxygen/nitrogen).
Anybody more familiar than I with variations in transmission efficiency by frequency have a guess as to whether IR was chosen for good behavior, or because that is what they could get a solid state laser to do at sufficiently high power?
USS Ponce ? Really...?
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography
Solid state Nd:YAG and similar lasing media have a huge industrial backing and use. IR lasers are a rather mature technology, compared to some of the shorter wavelength lasers.
"The very existence of flamethrowers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, 'You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.'" --George Carlin
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Watching the clip next to the story immediately reminded me of this opening scene from Real Genius... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTx_qTwQqjU
It's a military laser, and it's being reported as a weapon. Given that the Spyder III was widely reported as a 'lightsaber', I wouldn't worry too much about the power of this thing being grossly underestimated. Gross overestimation is far more likely.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Too risky, let's go back to bullets and artillery shells.
It might be more humane than leaving them alive with all the skin on their face burned off.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
The convention you linked to specifically deals with laser weapons designed to blind - they're prohibited - and specifically omits other laser weapons which are not specifically designed to blind the target.
Yes, if your face happens to be in the path of this beam, you will probably be blinded - but that's really of minimal concern, because your head will probably also be incinerated in the process - this beam's purpose is to burn a hole in your aircraft/ship, and cause you to lose control and sink/crash.
Certain frequency bands of IR radiation penetrate the air well and we can easily build lasers in those frequencies. Far-ish and Far UV radiation also has good atmospheric penetration but our ability to make those lasers isn't there yet. AFAIK.
Another laser was experimented with for about a decade in the role as a replacement for the even older Phalanx CIWS and "testing" was discontinued several years ago. Israel seemed rather upset that we discontinued the "testing". I suspect this one is a bit more powerful.
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Assuming a small boat ... Depending on the material of the target it may cause some initial light scattering that could damage the cornea and lens of the eyes since they wouldn't know to close their eyes, most of the IR would get absorbed at that interface but wouldn't reach the retina. They would likely feel thermal IR hit them if the beam is hitting something like an on-board motor and they're close enough. Once the metal changes phases to liquid it stops being reflective at all and tends to soak up all the incident infrared light creating a metal vapour gas to form, that will cause a secondary fire/plasma as it's ejected from the surface. Once the metal is cut that gas plume stops however. Any gasoline present would obviously ignite. It's not a dumb point-and-shoot weapon by any means: it has a whole targeting system to achieve the optimal focal length and maintain the beam position in case the target is moving. I guess the injuries would be horrific if it was aimed directly at a person who doesn't feel pain or right in their face.
Honestly, it's likely a lot safer than just about any other weapon that could be used on a ship. The typical solution is to just shoot the 50 cal close enough until the pirates toss their rifles overboard and put their arms in the air.
Tazers I know are not perfect in terms of non-lethality, but to their credit they did repair the defect that caused out-of-spec currents to be delivered when used. Sure seems far less lethal than a 9 mm round to the chest or some jacketed hollow point .38 police typically use. However I have yet to see a video of the Active Denial System microwave 'pain' beam be used besides a basic demonstration so I have no idea where you got the skin burn/blindness thing from. If you have a link that shows the skin burns/blindness or the ADS being used on an actual crowd that would be appreciated. Last I heard they weren't deploying ADS due to a long list of problems ...
Protocol IV, Article 3:
"Blinding as an incidental or collateral effect of the legitimate military employment of laser systems, including laser systems used against optical equipment, is not covered by the prohibition of this Protocol."
Looks like a loophole large enough to fire a multi-kilowatt IR laser through...
War is about murdering the other people and breaking their equipment before they use their equipment to murder you.
No it isn't, you nitwit. War is about achieving specific objectives by force. The force doesn't have to be lethal, and very often it isn't. As even Sun Tzu wrote, "Preserving the enemies army is best, destroying it second best." Your myopic, sociopathic way of looking at war is disturbing in the extreme. Thankfully, the modern military has no use for poorly-adjusted rambos like yourself.
If you're using a laser, or a bullet, or a missile, or any of a myriad of weapons against a boat or an airplane, then it had damn well better pose enough of a threat to you that you are perfectly okay with everyone on it dying, and perhaps maybe even want to kill them.
Terrorists have just taken control of an oil tanker in San Francisco's bay. They have over a hundred hostages and have threatened to blow holes in the hull and scuttle the ship, causing a massive environmental disaster, unless a dozen of their copatriots from Guantanamo Bay are released. You have twenty four hours to comply. Do you:
a) Blow up the tanker with your orbital ion cannon because war is about murdering other people, and thus causing a massive ecological disaster and billions of dollars in economic damages, or;
b) Sneak a small team of Navy SEALS on board, neutralize the terrorists, and retake the ship with minimal casualties.
As anyone who doesn't have a serious screw loose in their brain can see, there are military options that don't involve going all murder-happy... because, you know, the military, unlike you, doesn't have some deep-seated anger management issues.
If you don't think something's important enough to kill anyone who gets in the way of it, it's not worth going to war over, since that's what war is.
What disturbs me about your logic here is that murdering people is 'Plan A' in your world, and 'Plan B' isn't. The military isn't some gun-ho institution where people get to freely kill others. There are rules of engagement and a whole host of other things designed specifically to limit the loss of life whenever possible. And despite us having nuclear weapons, for example, we still rely on less damaging weapons all the way down to rubber bullets and tear gas. The military wouldn't need any of these options if it didn't make saving lives a priority. That's ultimately what our soldiers do: They don't take lives, they save them. Ours, to be precise. War is often about protecting what we value most, not just kicking sand in other people's faces.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Probably both. The cross section for Rayleigh scattering (scattering from things smaller than light's wavelength, like atoms in the atmosphere) goes as 1/lambda^4, so longer wavelengths scatter much less strongly. This scattering is what makes distant landscapes look hazy, and the sky away from the sun look blue (scattering bluer light back towards the earth instead of letting it pass straight through); as you move to the red and near IR, you can get much clearer views of distant objects (thus also more effectively laser-zorch them).
The people on those small boats will probably either burn to death or drown, or maybe burn to death while drowning. Much the same as if you fired a few rounds from a conventional weapon into their engine room to disable or sink them, setting their boat on fire and sinking it.
The people in manned aerial vehicles will probably either burn to death, or die from the impact when their aircraft crashes, or burn to death while crashing - again, much the same as if you fired a few rounds from a conventional weapon into their aircraft to disable it.
I'd guess that both scenarios are probably *more* survivable than their conventional counterparts: losing control of your aircraft because a laser has burned through part of your wing and destroyed important hydraulic controls gives you time to eject. Getting hit with a Sidewinder, probably not so much time to eject. Having a hole burned in the hull of your boat might give you time to jump overboard in a lifeboat. Having the same hole put there by a ship to ship missile? Probably not so much time to jump in a lifeboat.
As far as unintended consequences go, I think the whole "killed while burning up, crashing, or sinking" is a "functions as designed" scenario. Worrying about whether enemy soldiers are killed by the weapon seems to run a little counter to its intended use as a weapon during wartime.
> of the USS Ponce
USS Ponce: "Come on. Make fun of my name now, jackasses. What's that? 'Nothing.'? God damn right nothing."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
> USS Ponce
"If the tests are successful, the Navy intends to begin rolling out production systems in 2016, starting with the USS Little Lord Fauntleroy."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
With an on-board nuclear reactor and being surrounded by a massive heatsink floating in water I'm not sure how big of a problem electricity and cooling will be.
I think they were playing Battlefield 3 and said, "hey this would be awesome with a laser!"
Funny thing is the USS Ponce is a landing ship and the whole back of the ship opens where the fantail would be.
But it is a landing ship and lightly armed as navy ships go, so running away seems a viable tactic.
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It's not like the FORTY-FIVE year old Ponce has a nuclear reactor on it.
The laser will only last as long as they can provide power to it, which I am sure is substantial.
Terrorists have just taken control of an oil tanker in San Francisco's bay. They have over a hundred hostages and have threatened to blow holes in the hull and scuttle the ship, causing a massive environmental disaster, unless a dozen of their copatriots from Guantanamo Bay are released. You have twenty four hours to comply. Do you:
a) Blow up the tanker with your orbital ion cannon because war is about murdering other people, and thus causing a massive ecological disaster and billions of dollars in economic damages, or;
b) Sneak a small team of Navy SEALS on board, neutralize the terrorists, and retake the ship with minimal casualties.
Okay, I can agree with the overall statement of your post, but wow. That's an absolutely massive strawman you've set up there.
PS: "gung-ho", not "gun-ho"
I suspect to protect it from heavy seas.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
>> And what will it do to people on those small boats, or if fired at a manned aerial vehicle?
I suspect that the US Navy is hoping that it will kill said people.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
You have to admit, sometimes we have a use for nasty weapons. And who's to say it won't be "set on stun" most of the time? If its good enough for the peace loving utopia of Star Trek, its good enough for us.
...capable of obliterating small boats and unmanned aerial vehicles...
Could it not also obliterate *manned* aerial vehicles?
Also, if it can take out a small boat, what about aiming it at the bridge of a large boat? That seems like it could have a potent effect.
That's an absolutely massive strawman you've set up there.
Actually this is a reductio ad absurdum, not a straw man. But you were very close. I'm trying to demonstrate the absurdity of saying that every military engagement (war) necessarily leads to loss of life. I'm mocking the original poster's assertion that "war = murder". And it is a legitimate argumentation strategy, though it requires a certain degree of finesse that I often lack, since I prefer to go for a snarky shock and awe campaign when I post here over the coldly academic approach.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
And what will it do to people on those small boats, or if fired at a manned aerial vehicle? What kind of horrific injuries will occur that I won't be seeing on CNN, ...
For starters: Permanent blindness.
Unfortunately, the Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons only bans weapons specifically designed and deployed to permanently blind people, not weapons that blind as a side-effect.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Behold the phaser.
... future directions .. for [US Navy] ship technology. ... they want the ship to have a huge amount of electrical generation capacity onboard, then multiple redundant busses to route the power all over.
Note that it's the Navy that's funding the polywell fusion generator research. If that works out, you're talking a nuclear fusion power plant that would fit in even very small ships, taking far less room than existing engine systems, producing hundreds of megawatts output per unit, with efficiencies of 60% or greater nuclear-reaction-energy-to-electricity, from minute amounts of hydrogen and boron fuel, with negligible, easily-shielded, radiation from low-level side-chain reactions.
This would be ideal for such a ship.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
These probably are not meant to kill anything but suicide attack boats.
CIWS and even 5-in guns with optimized shells are not good at killing agile craft at ranges beyond point-blank. When a small target with judiciously applied armor jinks, it is almost unkillable until the time of flight comes under 3 seconds (about 1-2 km), as any "motivated" use of the rudder causes a wild displacement in deflection that makes perfect aim mean a perfect miss on every shot. The "best" fire control in such a condition is a pattern of fire about the projected aim point, and this actuarial risk is moderate to a determined enemy who has numbers on his side: the guy you fire at goes defensive and becomes all but invulnerable while his friend bore in with rudders centered and throttles opened wide.
These weapons, if they can keep their power up with enough regularity, will bleed a swarm attack at the intermediate range, leaving the ballistic weapons for the few that might have bobbed past.
tone
Many of the weapons on naval ships can't fire forward. Usually a ship needs to keep a threat to either side for all the weapons to come to bear. For things like anti-missile defenses you want to have the missile approach perpendicular to your course anyway. A few reasons for this:
1. You're going to be firing flares and chaff, and you want the missile to go after those, and travelling at a right angle to the missile means that the bearing angle between you and the decoys is maximized (that is, after it passes the decoys without setting off the fuse you won't be still in the path of its sensors when it comes out on the other side).
2. Many missiles use radar for guidance, and if you're travelling perpendicular to the line of travel then your relative motion is zero compared to the water around you, which means that returned signals don't have a doppler shift, which means you don't stand out nearly as much. Granted, this makes a bigger difference for aircraft.
3. If for whatever reason another wave of missiles is coming in, you want to get away from the point where you were when you were spotted. As with #1 a right angle course means you're further from the center of the target bearing. With missiles bearing matters more than distance, since the missiles just travel in a line until they spot something and then they blow it up.
Yeah but you kind of invented that he's a sociopath w/ an anger problem. He's probably a normal dude that just posted something dumb on the internet.
Terrorists have just taken control of an oil tanker in San Francisco's bay. They have over a hundred hostages and have threatened to blow holes in the hull and scuttle the ship, causing a massive environmental disaster, unless a dozen of their copatriots from Guantanamo Bay are released. You have twenty four hours to comply.
Do you understand that this isn't an example of war? Unless you agree with Bush's definition of the "War on Terror."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It this particular weapon hits someone in the face they probably aren't going to be alive to worry about their appearance.
There is a war going on for your mind.
A bigger why, as far as I'm concerned, is why this is mounted in the fantail - the aft end of the boat - rather than in the front? Is a captain supposed to order the crew to "Turn tail and fire!"
It's where there was room for it. Things don't have to be complicated. If you look at the Austin-class LPD, which is what the USS Ponce is, there's a whole lot of open real estate back aft. LPD's have a welldeck at the stern used to lauch LCAC's and other amphibious landing vehicles. I assume they'll utilize that space for some support gear for the laser. I wouldn't be surprised if they actually installed a generator to power the laser in the welldeck. Ship's service power may not be sufficient, or be "clean" enough in terms of stable voltage and frequency (especially given the limited amount of power and the multitude of uses a ship has for that power during general quarters, and the fact this is a new and relatively untested system). Pure speculation on my part, however.
That is really a rather small isn't it? ;)
I can see point 1. You want to be as "thin" as possible so that the missile travels past you while distracted by the chaff. However, the other two points don't make as much sense. When you are presenting your broadside to a missile, you are a much bigger radar signature than if you had your bow or stern facing it, doppler shift or no. If it were a dumb projectile, it wouldn't matter which way you went, you'd be velocity*time out of the way no matter which way you were travelling. If it is a guided missile, you won't be able to travel fast enough to out manoever it, so again, it doesn't matter which way you're facing - provided it has a lock on you. Preventing a lock means presenting minimal aspect (bow or stern facing).
So basically, it all boils down to how many defensive weapons can be brought to bear, and as you say, a broadside aspect is best for that. In which case, it doesn't matter whether if the laser is mounted fore or aft, as long as it has a good angular range on either side.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Yeah but you kind of invented that he's a sociopath w/ an anger problem. He's probably a normal dude that just posted something dumb on the internet.
Okay, a normal dude posting something dumb on the internet. Let's start there. We don't know if he's normal. I'm not even sure normal exists, except in some abstract statistical way. But regardless, his normalness can't be argued one way or another because even if we had an iron-clad definition of normal, we have no way of grabbing Sir Normal Maybe and subjecting him to humiliating tests to verify the claim. So we have to fall back on an evaluation based on what he said, which we can both agree was (a) on the internet and (b) really dumb. Now you're absolutely correct that I have no way of knowing if Sir Normal Maybe is a sociopath with anger management issues, but if a sociopath with anger management issues did post something dumb on the internet, it would look very much like what we just read, now wouldn't it? So if it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, thinks like a duck... what is it? A cheeseburger of course! This is the internet afterall.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I'm actually very opposed to warfare, and am pointing out that if you're not prepared to have at least some loss of life you shouldn't be going to war in the first place.
I didn't make my argument fully because I was at work and my simulation finished running, but my intent was to criticize the attitude that there can be clinical less-lethal wars: war, almost universally, has been about trying to do something and "neutralizing" the folks who want to stop you. That's almost exclusively done by making them dead (or afraid of being dead).
Yes, if you've got an absolutely overwhelming technological advantage you can get away with being less lethal, but that sort of thing isn't a war -- it's more of a police action. (Look at the weapons we've used in Iraq, where the US has an overwhelming technological and material advantage -- still, most of what we're doing there is "find the bad guys and kill them", the war bit, combined with "try to rebuild some semblance of a working society and make people like us".)
And this is why there is a role for less-lethal weapons (the Russians' fentanyl aerosol, tasers, pain rays, LRAD's, whatever) in police actions. But these things have never really shown up on a battlefield as weapons of war: it's generally easier to make someone dead than to make them alive but unable to make you dead.
Do you understand that this isn't an example of war? Unless you agree with Bush's definition of the "War on Terror."
Do you understand that this is a specific example, hypothetical in nature, and may or may not be part of a broader military initiative that could be called a war? There are plenty of examples for any definition of war you care to crack out and throw up on the internet where proportional response and non-lethal tactics would be preferred over straight up destruction. You're splitting hairs.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
My boat has no lasers. In fact, I dont even have a boat. I have a Geo Tracker; also no lasers.
Blinding weapons are, but it has to be their primary intent; blinding as a side effect is not covered.
But if you can't think of an example that matches your point, why post?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Interestingly enough, cloaked ships would be impervious to IR Lasers.
Expect the science of Meta Materials to be furthered in leaps and bounds shortly.
They need to put in place a 8-16 Mjoules railgun on the destroyers. It does not need to go far. This would only do about 5-10 miles or so.
HOWEVER, it can be used against approaching boats, planes, etc. And with Iran's developments, they are working towards a multiple strategy on attacks. In particular, small fast boats will allow them to get in close, if the ship is busy with planes, missiles, rockets, etc. And with a small railgun, they can test high-speed production on it. Heck, if they get a small one with say 4-8 MJoules, then it would be possible for the Army to mount it on a M1A1 and replace the main gun.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Uhm. No. This is not designed to blind them. Get hit in the head by it and blinding is not a problem. And both Russia and China currently run lasers on various equipment and the ground.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
War is about achieving specific objectives by force.
That's a very Bush Jr. definition of war. You do not need to look any further than Iraq, and you will see that your "definition" falls apart, as they did not "achieve" anything by being invaded (aka "at war"). Next time you need to define something try opening a websters' dictionary or something.
Terrorists have just taken control of an oil tanker in San Francisco's bay....
Yes, I we all know that the Terrorists is the only credible "military" threat that you can come up with. No, scary Terrorists is not what we have military for, and hopefully military is never called into a SF bay, but rather some specially trained police unit. When a neighbour kid steals your candy you don't deploy your "orbital ion cannon" either. Military exists to resolve _extrernal_ conflicts, and hopefully will only ever be used for those, because the only exceptions from that rule are either police state or civil war, and both are very ugly.
Blinding is hardly a side effect here. Yes you are blind if you are dead. However calling that a side effect would include blinding as a side effect to a bullet through the brain.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
But if you can't think of an example that matches your point, why post?
Your nitpicking is tedious.
Every time the military engages in combad rather than nuking an ememy from afar it's because it has an objective other than murdering as many people as possible.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Wow such aggression. Chill out before you pop a blood vessel. Hug a puppy. It's soothing. Have you been in a war? Have you been in a firefight where the other guy wants you dead and will not listen to reason? You have volleys of RPGs flying towards you. Are you going to try and taze the other guys or are you going to try and stop them with high explosives? War is not ALWAYS about murder but some times it is the only solution left to you. Like Entropius said "If you're using a laser, or a bullet, or a missile, or any of a myriad of weapons against a boat or an airplane, then it had damn well better pose enough of a threat to you that you are perfectly okay with everyone on it dying". If you are going to use something that is going to kill them, it better be worth it, not just for shits and giggles. You said it your self. We save lives... by any means possible. Some times to save lives you need to take lives.
More likely, they realize that this isn't ready for prime-time, so they don't want it on a frontline combatant, just in case it really doesn't work. They'll use the Ponce as a technology demonstrator when it's in an anti-piracy group with other major combatants that can back it up, should the laser system fail. Course, they'd prefer to lose a 50 year old, ready to be decommissioned amphib ship, rather than a new-ish Burke or Tico.
but couldnt this be easily defeated with a few large passively or actively cooled mirrors? or heck its just energy, so couldnt it be absorbed by a solar cell on the receiving end?
Good people go to bed earlier.
Well put response to a half-wit comment by someone that get's their idea of the military from watching Rambo and taking it as a documentary.
#1 isn't about being thin, but about being nowhere near the chaff from the missile's perspective.
Imagine the missile is coming from due north. You can run North, South, or E/W. If you run North then the missile seeker will likely pick you instead of the chaff since it will encounter you first - not good. If you run South then the missile will definitely encounter the chaff first, but since the chaff won't detonate it the missile will pass through and go back into search mode, and now you're still in front of it.
Instead you pick E/W (if the missile isn't headed directly for you already you'd escape in whichever option takes you away from its path). The missile is travelling in a line, and the fastest way to get away from that line is to travel away in a tangential course (well, technically the angle is slightly off the tangent away from the missile, but your relative velocities are so different that it is basically a round-off).
I do agree that aspect will increase your radar signature. I'm honestly not sure where the trade-off falls in the case of a ship. In the case of an aircraft you're definitely best off keeping the missile's course tangential to your own, because compared to the ground the doppler shift of an aircraft is VERY large. Plus, a tangential course forces the missile to continuously accelerate which drains its speed (it does not generate power continuously like a jet), but that is unlikely to matter for a ship.
Doppler shift is quite important when detecting aircraft. People talk about stealth aircraft having the radar cross-section of an insect, but that isn't nearly as impressive as it sounds, since the radar can just filter out returns from all the insects that aren't flying at 200 knots, assuming the aircraft is travelling towards/away-from the radar. When the aircraft is travelling tangentially to the radar there is no doppler shift and now the radar has to deal with noise from whatever is behind the aircraft (like the ground in the case of a missile looking down). An anti-ship missile would have the same problem, though obviously they've solved it one way or another (the size and low speed of a ship likely helps with that).
The post I replied to in the first place was being tedious and splitting hairs. Please try to pay attention.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
... War is about achieving specific objectives by force. The force doesn't have to be lethal, and very often it isn't. As even Sun Tzu wrote, "Preserving the enemies army is best, destroying it second best."...
I would agree with this statement. I'm minded of what Heinlein wrote in Starship Troopers - kept this in mind during my military days:
“If we can use an H-bomb--and as you said it's no checker game; it's real, it's war and nobody is fooling around--isn't it sort of ridiculous to go crawling around in the weeds, throwing knives and maybe getting yourself killed . . . and even losing the war . . . when you've got a real weapon you can use to win? What's the point in a whole lot of men risking their lives with obsolete weapons when one professor type can do so much more just by pushing a button?'
Zim didn't answer at once, which wasn't like him at all. Then he said softly, 'Are you happy in the Infantry, Hendrick? You can resign, you know.'
Hendrick muttered something; Zim said, 'Speak up!'
I'm not itching to resign, sir. I'm going to sweat out my term.'
I see. Well, the question you asked is one that a sergeant isn't really qualified to answer . . . and one that you shouldn't ask me. You're supposed to know the answer before you join up. Or you should. Did your school have a course in History and Moral Philosophy?'
What? Sure--yes, sir.'
Then you've heard the answer. But I'll give you my own--unofficial--views on it. If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cuts its head off?'
Why . . . no, sir!'
Of course not. You'd paddle it. There can be circumstances when it's just as foolish to hit an enemy with an H-Bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an ax. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him . . . but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing . . . but controlled and purposeful violence. But it's not your business or mine to decide the purpose of the control. It's never a soldier's business to decide when or where or how--or why--he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much; the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence; other people--"older and wiser heads," as they say--supply the control. Which is as it should be. That's the best answer I can give you. If it doesn't satisfy you, I'll get you a chit to go talk to the regimental commander. If he can't convince you--then go home and be a civilian! Because in that case you will certainly never make a soldier.”
Just FYI: Multiple generators and redundant busses were used at least as far back as the 1930s ;)
"By force" means either by killing people and breaking stuff, or making the enemy think you have the ability and will to do so. Ideally, you convince the enemy that they're doomed and take their surrender, but this requires at least the appearance of being able to kill people and break stuff much more effectively than the enemy.
Case (a) requires the ability to kill people and break stuff en masse. Case (b) requires the ability to kill people and break stuff precisely. You may notice a common element in these abilities.
Seriously, you're talking about sending people who are extremely well-trained and well-equipped to kill people and break stuff on board, to kill certain people and break stuff as needed. The goal in this case is to have the only people killed be terrorists, and the only stuff broken not stuff holding the oil in. The SEALs are presumably able to accept surrenders, but they don't need to, and are likely to kill anybody they see armed (and, in some situations, anybody they see standing) without allowing surrender.
The laws of war are about trying to limit dead people and broken stuff to the people and stuff that's militarily significant. Rules of engagement are to avoid killing the wrong people and breaking the wrong stuff. While any individual operation in war may not involve killing people and breaking stuff, it will be to increase our ability or perceived ability to kill the right people and break the right stuff. We try to get people to surrender through threats, explicit or implicit, primarily to avoid our people being killed and our stuff broken. We protect our people and stuff by reducing our enemy's ability or willingness to kill our people and break our stuff. Military means of doing that means some sort of threat to kill people and break stuff; other means (like dealing with their desire to attack us) are generally called "diplomacy".
Clausewitz nailed it back in the Nineteenth Century: battles are what war is fundamentally about (bear in mind that war in his time was marching with relatively infrequent big battles), and maneuvers were important only as they affected the predicted outcome of battles.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
So, the way to take out the US Navy is just like Vin Diesel took on those bats in Pitch Black!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Interestingly enough, cloaked ships would be impervious to IR Lasers.
Expect the science of Meta Materials to be furthered in leaps and bounds shortly.
Course manouvers. Optical cloaking doesn't mean invisible to detection, nor does it mean it won't absorb more photons than it can dissipate. Aim where you think it is, it'll burn.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Indeed, I follow you. The rattling of a nuclear sabre by some tinpot dictator with a large, goose-stepping army may include a declaration of war.
If that war can be won by someone else flying a few B2's overhead in a "training exercise" (expending zero munitions) and the very public cancellation of a Minuteman ICBM test ("Didn't want to scare anyone there") then that war can be won if said TD puts his head under his wing as a result. It's a war carried out, and won, by superior firepower that hasn't fired a single shot or killed a single person.
Provided, of course, that the antagonist's opponent actually does have value as a deterrent, and said TD isn't utterly, barking-at-the-moon, as a hatter, toys-in-the-attic, doormouse-in-the-teapot, completely and totally insane.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
It's a laser. Focal length is irrelevant, isn't it? Aim certainly is, and the military know how to make aiming systems that change the point of target really, really fast. If the terrorists were playing ping-pong, they could track and burn the ping-pong ball in flight, and miss everything else.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Lasers are not perfectly collimated, the beams do diverge. This all depends on the laser cavity used, diodes generally diverge more due to the small exit aperture, a fiber laser would be about the same. Focusing a beam to a smaller spot also increases the power density meaning the target will start to melt faster albeit the hole will be smaller. For cutting/boring holes into metals there's an ideal spot size and power density depending on the type of metal. So the target distance for ideal focusing is important.
I realize that. I just find it interesting that if you changed a few sentences in the instruction manual, there would be, literally, no difference between the two.
Yes, if you changed a few sentences in any document, you can, literally, completely change the meaning of that document.
We could change just a few sentences in an assault weapon ban, and ban all firearms completely.
We could change a few sentences in other articles of the Geneva Convention, and make it okay to literally torture people.
I don't see how this is relevant.
Then why did you say, above, "You'd think all of this would be illegal under" the UN convention you linked to? There's a difference between "I think this should be illegal, and the UN should add it to this convention..." and "You'd think this would be illegal under a convention which explicitly does not cover weapons like this." It'd be like pointing to an assault weapon ban and saying, "you'd think that pepper spray would be illegal under this ban."