Slashdot Mirror
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.
Really? Does "ponce" mean something different in US English or is there some story behind it?
I thought poncy names for ships was the preserve of the Royal Navy.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
No mirror exposed to the open ocean will be clean enough to not explode fairly quickly when a 30kw laser beam hits it.
Honestly, I'm surprised the laser itself doesn't have issues with its own optics in that sort of environment. One tiny spec of dust on the lens would be disastrous.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Why make the laser smaller when you can make the shark bigger?
Navy faces fine for pointing laser at aircraft.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
That "Law" only applies to weapons whose primary purpose is to create blindness. Incidental blindness in pursuit of an "acceptable" primary purpose is specifically permitted.
Though, really, rules concerning the appropriate way to make war are just another example of a cartel colluding to protect their monopoly on the use of deadly force by raising the bar of entry.
The purpose of war is to shatter a social system that is harming our species and make space for something better. If your war is moral, the cruelty of your weapons is immaterial.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
What remains to be seen is whether jets and missiles can shrug off (either through brute-force thickening or more sophisticated ablative armor or actively deployed particulates that effectively scatter incoming light) the relatively tepid amounts of energy that lasers (especially anything that dodges the rather nasty requirements of chemical lasers) are good for, particularly at range, under optically sub-optimal conditions (never have those at sea!).
.50 BMG. Now, if you can't put a bullet on target, that's irrelevant; but in terms of expected stopping power the finest in combat laser technology is...distinctly middling... compared to guns that date back to the period between the world wars. Obviously the fire control system has evolved out of sight; but given how long it'll have to stay on target, you'd hope so.)
Even under the ideal and closely controlled conditions of industrial laser cutters, lasers are abundantly unsafe for ocular exposure; but by no means the speediest remover of bulk material. In an atmosphere, range is going to be constrained by thermal distortion if nothing else, so the ease of keeping photons on target won't be quite as dramatic as it would be in space, and against close-in non-aircraft, there'll be a lot of cheap 'n nasty (but probably embarrassingly effective) countermeasures involving coating things with mud, spraying them with seawater, and generally making a 3rd world nuisance of yourself.
(By way of comparison, assuming that this 30Kw laser delivers 100% of energy to target, it'll take 2/3 of a second of continuous exposure to deliver the same number of joules to the target as a
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 purpose of war is to shatter a social system that is harming our species and make space for something better. If your war is moral, the cruelty of your weapons is immaterial.
Oh please.
"War is diplomacy by other means." - Carl von Clausewitz
There's nothing moral or immoral about waging war. It is one of many methods in which a country pursues it's strategic objectives in opposition to another country or organized group. The conduct by which war is fought is moral or immoral however, which includes the cruelty of your weapons. Weapons such as chemical weapons were banned specifically because they were indiscriminate and horrific in their effects. The exact opposite of what you just said is true.
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.
This is about the silliest thing I've read all year... And it has a lot of competition.
The purpose of war is to gain land, money or power. Ultimately it comes down to power as money and land are just methods to get it. Even the enforcement of an ideology is to get more power for those who control or benefit from that ideology being enforced. No religious war has ever been waged to benefit god, men have always been the primary and intended beneficiaries.
OK, now this is the silliest thing I've read all year. At least your consistent.
When men decide that all means are necessary to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.
You're essentially saying that any method can be defended by the outcome. The wholesale slaughter of civilians with chemical and biological weapons is just and moral?
Sorry, but the people who were exposed to such things long ago decided that in order for a conflict to remain moral, such weapons and tactics should not be permitted. What makes a side in a conflict moral is not just why the conflict is fought, but how it is fought. You cannot keep moral intentions if your actions are immoral.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
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.