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US Navy Authorizes Use of Laser In Combat
mi writes The U.S. Navy has declared an experimental laser weapon on its Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB) in the Persian Gulf an operational asset and U.S. Central Command has given permission for the commander of the ship to defend itself with the weapon. The 30 kilowatt Laser Weapon System (LaWS) was installed aboard USS Ponce this summer as part of a $40 million research and development effort from ONR and Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) to test the viability of directed energy weapons in an operational environment. No word yet on a smaller, shark-mounted version.
From the link on the name in the summary:
Ponce is the only ship of the United States Navy that is named for Ponce in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, which in turn was named after the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León, the first governor of Puerto Rico and European discoverer of Florida.
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One tiny spec of dust on the lens would be disastrous.
No. That's a myth. A tiny speck absorbs a tiny amount of energy before ionizing. These lasers are made of a large mass of tough material and they don't explode or whatnot when a tiny piece of matter ionizes on a ruby or YAG crystal surface.
Powerful cutting and welding lasers are used all day long in manufacturing environments around the world. They don't go haywire when a tiny speck of foreign material vaporizes in the beam. The laser degrades over time as damage accumulates.
Cracked lenses or lenses with significant contaminants on the surface can be damaged or even explode when the laser is activated. A speck of dust won't get you there.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
According to stuff I've read before, dust particles are mostly a problem inside the system, on mirrors and on targets. This is because dust hit by a laser tends to accelerate away from the beam source, as the side of the particle that is illuminated by the laser vaporizes first. So dust on the near side of a lens, on a mirror or on a target would get blown into the object's surface, causing pitting. But dust on the far surface of a lens would get blown off of the lens. Inside the system, this would be a problem because that dust would get blown into the next element in line. But on that last lens/window where the beam exists, I think mostly the external surface dust merely gets accelerated off of the surface. I'm sure they make an effort to keep that surface clean, but I'm not sure it's as crucial an issue as your post makes it out to be.
Protocol IV of the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons is unlikely to be a problem.
Per Article 1, weapons specifically designed as their sole combat function, or one of their functions, to cause permanent blindness are Not OK.
However, Per 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." Just aim for a legitimate target and stock up on braille sympathy cards.
Problem solved.
As for making war with fire, light isn't fire, and conventional explosives(never mind thermobarics and incendiaries) are markedly more strongly associated with fire. Lasers have that novelty thing going against them; but anybody who actually cares about the letter of the law probably has hangups about tracers, attacks on fuel dumps, and other routine stuff. As soon as the novelty wears off lasers will recede into the background.
The last I heard, weapons that blind are banned by the current "laws of war" as recognized by the western powers - and that's been the major impeidment so far to deploying laser (and other directed energy) weapons. Has something changed? Or did the current administration just decide to play with the new toy despite past promises to the other kids?
The US does not honor International Law on banned weapons, nor does any other country in reality. Weapons that are "banned" are normally relabeled to make them look good, but does not change what they are. As long as you are on the winning side who is going to prosecute you? As a prime example, cluster bombs are against the law yet the main artillery round of the MLRS fires a warhead packed with 1001 "grenadelets". See that? By renaming "cluster bomb" to be "grenadelets" you have not broken the law. Firing a weapon at a "person" with a round of .50 caliber or higher is illegal by international law. The main sniper rifle used by all troops in the Middle East has become a.50 caliber, and look at the video of the Reuters reporter killed by the 30MM chain gun on an Apache.
Countries today use what they think they can get away with, and in the case of Western countries that is quite a lot. Look at all the depleted uranium dumped in the middle east causing serious health problems for over a decade.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Not perfectly, and the energy absorbed from a 30kw laser will quickly darken the surface accelerating the rate of energy absorption. Here's a video of a 500W laser cutting into a mirrored surface.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.