Saddam never had a nuclear weapon. What he did have was French support to build a nuclear plant not controlled by the IAEA in the early/mid 70s, as well as 72kg of 93% uranium. But, the Israelis bombed that plant in 1981 before it was completed. From the Germans, Saddam got several chemical weapons facilities built as well as over 1,000 tons of precursor chemicals for mustard gas, sarin, tabun, and tear gas. He also got German equipment to manufacture botulin toxin and mycotoxin. Over half of his chemical weapons program was of German origin. From the Americans, he got samples of anthrax, West Nile, and botulism up through 1989. He selected one of our strains of anthrax for his biological weapons research program (many years later, Colin Powell would display a vial of anthrax in the UN as a justification for war with Iraq). From the British, Saddam got parts for his "supergun" weapons program, including nuclear triggers. The British government also financed a chlorine factory used to produce mustard gas. He never had a nuclear weapon, but his chemical attacks from 1983 to 1991 using mustard gas, tabun, nerve agents, and CS showed that his Western-provided chemical and biological weapon programs were coming along fine. That Israeli strike against the Osiraq reactor put his nuclear plans on hold though. I'm not sure how many parallels there are between Iraq and North Korea, unless Russia and China are playing the role that Western nations played in Iraq, in which case fine, let them go in and deal with the problem they created, like we did.
Muammar Gaddafi shutdown his nuke program in 2003
While you didn't claim that Gaddafi "gave up his nukes" like you did with Saddam, again Libya never had nuclear weapons. They did have a covert nuclear program, which they claimed was to counter the Israeli nuclear program. While after 2003 Libya was in the process of eliminating the remnants of their nuclear and chemical programs, it wasn't the US that brought Gaddafi down, it was his own people. He was an authoritarian dictator, and his people saw an opportunity to rise up and get rid of him. The only thing the US did was that we didn't stop them from doing that. If you want to draw a comparison with North Korea, Libya is a much better example than Iraq. Maybe Kim can look at Libya as a cautionary case-study and figure out that treating his people better instead of dumping money into nuclear weapons may end up with a better result for him. Nuclear weapons aren't going to save him if the North Korean people and military decide that they're better off without him. There are plenty of parallels between Kim and Gaddafi though, from being authoritarian dictators, to human rights abuses of their own people, to the personality cult, clandestine support for terrorist actions overseas, etc. But the lesson that Kim should take away from Gaddafi's tale should not be that nuclear weapons could have saved Gaddafi from his own people. There's no reason to think that.
Ukraine gave up their nukes after being given an American guarantee of their borders and sovereignty.
First off, Ukraine had a bunch of ICBMs with a range of 5,000 to 10,000 km. What were they going to do, threaten to nuke Vladivostok or Kamchatka if Moscow invaded? Those weapons were a threat to the US, not Russia. Not to mention the fact that Russia still maintained operational control of those weapons, similar to the American "nuclear codes". And even if they did use them to attack Russia, then they get met with Russia's 7,000 other nuclear weapons. Also, what's this "American guarantee of their borders and sovereignty" that you're talking about? Are you referring to the Budapest Memorandum? Go ahead and read the list of items there, find the one that says that America guarantees Ukranian borders. We accused Russi
You don't distribute videos of your performances from a tour bus
You don't? If you want to upload some stuff to YouTube, are you supposed to tell the driver to pull over so you can get out? What if some of the videos are from the actual bus?
They're not engaging the fans, they're consuming other people's content.
It's only one or the other, huh? The tour buses that I've been on over the past year have included plenty of people who are actively working while on the road. The tour manager, for instance, he's lining up the details on the next few shows while they're going down the road, he's checking in with his other clients, etc. After the show the people in the band typically just want to relax and hang out, but once they get on the road they're either sleeping, posting whatever they want to post, or entertaining themselves. It's not like everyone does one thing and one thing only.
Right, fuck trying to engage with your fans and post pictures and videos from the road. No, the drummer needs to practice! Never mind that all of the equipment is stored in the trailer, if they've made it to international tour status they need to practice, practice, practice.
And, listening to you, a person would think that the Navy has spend decades and probably hundreds of millions of dollars working on a weapon that can be defeated by spray paint. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. This is why it irritates me that every time Slashdot has a story about laser weapons, there's always some idiot to rush in and say "But mirrors!" as if the military never thought of that. It's just stupid. A coat of spray paint is not going to protect you from a 50kw laser, chief. Not even a little bit. There are going to be so many imperfections in that surface that will absorb the energy from the laser and burn up, causing distortions around them which will do the same, it will be a runaway effect and your so-called "protective coating" is going to be a cloud of fine particles floating around the target as it gets destroyed. A protective coating will also possibly be fatally flawed if the surface has any dust, grease, oil, bug guts, water, etc on it. It's absolutely idiotic to think otherwise, but that doesn't stop you guys from running in any time there's a story about laser weapons to suggest "hey, maybe if we hang a disco ball from it." This whole argument is Monty Python-esque in its ridiculousness. "Well, if we build a giant wooden badger..."
Plus, if you make a weapon too annoying to use, you have just neutralized one weapon that the military spent millions of dollars developing.
Says the guy who is proposing that adversaries go around spending however much money spray-painting all of their formerly-stealthy aircraft. Like I've pointed out many times in this story, if the only benefit of fielding a laser weapon is that you force your adversary to spend their time and money on stupid anti-laser projects, or end up with smaller warheads on missiles because they're encased in ceramic tiles or whatever, then that alone is a great benefit of fielding a laser weapon. Otherwise, any and every existing military vehicle is badly vulnerable to being shot with something moving the speed of light that is going to burn, warp, and destroy various control surfaces or engines that really need to be stable in order for the vehicle to work.
That sounds like a great way for our adversaries to use their military budgets, a surface that absorbs energy and converts it into usable power. Maybe it will be so efficient that it can absorb the explosion from the cheap missile that just struck it.
Great idea, unless the disco ball IS the body of the drone.
Great idea. Let's make an aircraft specifically designed to reflect as much radiation as possible. Let's completely fool the complete range of existing radar-based weaponry into thinking that our little drone is actually an aircraft carrier. And, yeah, round aircraft totally have a long, storied history of being completely airworthy.
You see Ivan, if you put the engines and wings inside the ball, the laser can't disable them!
Standard quadcopters could be made very reflective to blind any viewers.
You know what they aren't going to blind? A single.50 cal bullet. They aren't going to be able to dodge it, either. But, hey, at least it wasn't a laser that shot it down, right? Mission accomplished?
You have to start thinking like an attacker. Is there any way to turn the enemy's weapon against them?
OK, you have to start thinking like a defender. If the attacker sends something at you which is a problem for one of your many weapons, are you going to choose that weapon to try and bring it down? You want to make a perfectly reflective vehicle? Great, spend all of your time and money doing that, because our conventional weapons need targets too. Meanwhile, your entire existing inventory of vehicles will make great targets for our laser not attacking your MirrorDrone(tm).
I was more referring to "Berk" than Ponce with that.
I don't understand Cockney slang at all.
I want to call that guy a cunt, but I don't want to just say "cunt", for some reason, so I'm going to come up with a word that doesn't mean or sound like cunt at all, so I can call him that and he'll have no idea that he's being insulted, he'll think I'm just stupid.
Just call the man a cunt and be done with it, that's what I say.
Uhh, sir, we've got a small fleet approaching us. They're identifying themselves as HMS Gay Archer, HMS Gay Bruiser, HMS Gay Bombardier, and HMS Gay Viking. They claim they're searching for HMS Gay Cavalier, HMS Gay Centurion, HMS Gay Charioteer, and HMS Gay Forester. They want to enter our well deck.
"I'm ordering everyone on deck. You people have to see what these idiots are sending our way. Bring your cameras."
This mirror that is blocking the laser, it's not also obstructing your drone's targeting or flight control systems, is it? Because that would be fucking stupid if it was.
I know! Just attach another, bigger, arm to the drone, with a camera on it, so you can see around the mirror. And then put another mirror in front of the camera. Yeah, this is totally workable. Let's spend a bunch of R&D on this and forget that literally our entire existing inventory of military vehicles is completely vulnerable.
Wait! We just need a mirror as big as a Mil Mi-24 helicopter. Stick with me here. You see, if we just put a mirror in front of our MiGs, and somehow engineer a mirror capable of withstanding supersonic speeds while not shattering and destroying the aircraft, then we're golden. We just need to completely forget that we've turned our air force into a fleet of flying disco balls that any Sea Sparrow missile from the 70s can lock onto while laughing the entire way out.
"Sir, I think our missile just put on sunglasses."
Why the fuck would the operator decide to target the disco ball instead of the wing? God, I really hope our adversaries have military planners who think like you do.
This is a weapon capable of destroying a boat's motor and leaving the rest of the boat intact, or melting the wing of a drone, or destroying a mortar round in flight, and you think they can just string up a disco ball, and voila, the laser attacks itself?
Oh, and let's make no mention of the fact that a freely dangling disco ball might have any effect on the aerodynamic performance or control ability of an aircraft.
Please, please let our adversaries employ graduates of the Harrkev School Of Military Doctrine.
I think we can settle this like men though. Get out to the Persian Gulf and get yourself one of those small boats, and rush the USS Ponce while holding up a mirror. I'll be here to study the effects. Never the mind the fact that the ship has an extensive array of ballistic or guided munitions hooked up to radars which think that mirror of yours looks pretty fabulous. Hey, don't worry though. Reflecting 50kw lasers? Yeah, totally easy.
Nuclear power isn't necessary. I don't think the Ponce is nuclear powered, and regardless the laser weapon includes its own generator. A ship like the Zumwalt would probably be able to field a variety of energy weapons simultaneously, but a single weapon like this doesn't need a nuke reactor.
I'm not suggesting anything about the practicality of using a precision weapon against a crowd of people though.
I'm just going to throw this out there, but if the goal is the maximum number of casualties, civilian or otherwise, a weapon that needs to target people individually is probably less preferable to a big bomb. How many heads do you think you're going to explode before people decide to go inside at a fairly brisk pace?
Fuck man, where were you years ago when the military was developing this? You could have saved the country so much money! They clearly never considered the impact of rain or fog, if only you were there to clue them in. I mean, shit, in the Persian Gulf where this system is deployed an analysis showed that Bushehr, where Iran has its nuclear plant, gets a mean of 6.8 days *EVERY YEAR* with precipitation of more than 10mm! That's each and every year, man! That means that on *any given day* there's like a 1.8% chance that a system like this isn't going to work at full capacity for the entire 24 hours! Why even bother with a failure rate that high! I mean, except for June, July, August, September, and October, obviously, when there are exactly 0 mean days over 10mm, but this is a serious problem that no one ever thought of, at all, during the entire lifetime of R&D for this project! You could have saved so much time and money if you just told someone. Obviously you're posting as AC to conceal your high-level government position, but come on!
Right, I wasn't talking about the effect on organics, I was talking about the destructive power against a target. I believe that any reflective surface would have to be nearly perfectly reflective in order to eliminate the runaway heating that is going to end up destroying the reflective coating before destroying the target. Even a smudge of grease or dirt on the coating would probably be fatal, it's going to get so hot that the coating warps or otherwise gets damaged, and the reduced efficiency is going to cause more heating and it's a runaway effect that destroys the protective coating. Even microscopic imperfections might absorb enough laser energy to cause them to overheat, warp their surroundings, and it's over. And I think it would be cost-prohibitive to produce such a perfect coating rugged enough to survive deployment in a battlefield and remain effective, and even if that was accomplished you've just lit up your vehicle like a lighthouse for any radar guiding a missile.
In short, I think that laser weapons like this are actually the game-changer that they appear to be and aren't going to be so easily defeated as a lot of armchair generals try to suggest. Let alone the fact that any existing military vehicle is already vulnerable, it's not like every possible adversary is going to be able to retro-fit their entire forces with laser protection and still remain militarily effective. Look at a country like North Korea, for example, we will be able to surround their entire country with ships fielding lasers long before they can retrofit even a tenth of their forces to counter those weapons.
Apparently "1 barrel" of crude is about 158987 grams (you know, give or take), so at ~$50 per barrel that seems like a pretty good price. I suppose factor in some additional costs to get it up to $1 per shot.
Let's assume for a moment that we're not going to replace all of our weapons with lasers. Your mirrored rotating fog-encased vehicle looks like a pretty attractive radar cross-section to the missiles and tracking systems we still have, and which are still going to be developed.
Let's also assume that laser development does not stop at the first version. You've got the systems necessary to defeat our 50kw red laser? Congratulations, let's try it out against this 150kw green laser. Don't spend too much time working on the armor for that one before you see our dial-a-wavelength version that hits the target with 7 different wavelengths at varying power levels if the target can last that long. We call that one Roy G. Biv, and Roy loves looking at things. Oh, you have reflective armor that can handle any wavelength? How about this rail gun projectile that can track your reflective armor and make course corrections in flight?
That's what irritates me any time we're discussing the next weapons systems under development. There's always someone to step up and shit all over it like the defense is so easy and no one ever thought of that.
Oh, you have a missile that can shoot down an ICBM? Well, that's completely stupid. All they have to do is encase the thing in 30 meters of pillows, and your missile is useless. We already have the technology to land a craft inside a giant air bag on Mars, literally all they have to do is put that on an ICBM (they're completely interchangeable, you know, I've seen videos) and all you've done is waste tax dollars.
C'mon, man. Between the Navy's rail guns and laser weapons we're finally getting into Freespace 2 territory. I know that any nerd like myself who played Freespace found themselves chasing a stupid little Shivan Dragon or Manticore or something that's dodging all over the place with your shots going everywhere except where the enemy is, and you're thinking that all you need is a laser and a computer to aim it. And then Freespace 2 comes out and you start yelling "THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!" We're finally entering the age of general-purpose destructive directed energy weapons and there's no shortage of people who are going to step up and talk about how it's useless based on research that was conducted decades ago when the weapons themselves were impractical. It's 2017, the Navy is fielding these weapons (and no doubt developing their own counter-measures), and you're trying to use a program that was cancelled in 1993 as a reason why it's not going to work. Let's assume that the people working on the weapons are aware of SDI, and while we're at it let's also assume that SDI is about a hundred years down the road for people whose major capability is trying to field a swarm of small vehicles.
Basically what I'm saying is that this is badass, and I'm looking forward (in a technical sense, not a humanitarian sense) to the battlefield videos that show a laser system defeating any number of vehicles, with support from our existing arsenal of more conventional weapons and vehicles. Like I said, with most warfighting my interest in this is purely technical, I do not envy anyone who has to fire this or come up against it in a battle situation. Game-changing weapons like these tend to suppress war, when you have a division of tanks that each have a laser on them capable of destroying incoming anti-tank rounds, so that your tanks can't even get shot, then the game changes. Years ago we saw videos of laser systems detecting, tracking, and destroying incoming mortar rounds. This is great technology, this is the kind of weapon that saves lives.
Congratulations, your super-advanced million dollar rotating reflecting laser-defeating aircraft just got shot down by a $165k Sea Sparrow missile from the 70s because your aircraft has the most fabulous radar cross-section the ship has ever seen.
A reflective coating could provide a lot of protection.
You emphasized the wrong word, that sentence should look like this:
A reflective coating COULD provide a lot of protection.
I'm still waiting for a single demonstration of any kind of reflective or retro-reflective protective coating. Just a single video showing a higher-powered destructive laser being defeated by any kind of reflective coating at all. I realize the US military isn't going to release a demonstration of them defeating their own weapon, but I know they've done that research and I'm sure that there is plenty of room for amateurs to also produce similar demonstrations with destructive lasers that are less powerful than what the military is fielding. But, like anything else, until we actually see some practical demonstration all of this guessing about reflective coatings is just academic. It could be the case that the laser is working at such a high power that if the coating reflects any less than 99.9% of the laser energy, it's still enough to cause damage to the coating and a runaway effect that sees the laser eat through the entire protection in under a second. Like I said, without testing these things all we're doing is guessing. Yeah, a reflective coating *could* provide a lot of protection, but it could also end up being a very expensive way to manufacture and reliably deploy something that gives you another second of lifetime in the field.
That sounds like a pretty hilarious idea. A mirror large enough to obscure the entire wing span of the drone constantly moving around a gimbled arm or something while the drone is in flight? What if the ship is the target, is the mirror going to obscure any targeting systems on the drone? And how about the effect of a flying object with a constantly shifting center of mass and changing aerodynamic qualities, how do you even fly that? Again, if these are the kinds of ideas we force other people to spend their time and money on, then that alone is a pretty good effect of fielding a laser weapon. You have a drone with a ridiculous looking rotating arm with a simple lightweight mirror on it, congratulations your drone can stay in the air for another second before the laser destroys the mirror and arm. Hope the R&D was worth it.
The reflective surface does not need to reflect the entire spectrum just the wavelength(s) of the laser.
I understand that, but it needs to reflect the vast majority of the incoming energy or else the imperfections in the surface are going to be fatal flaws. I'm not an astrophysicist, but from what I understand engineering a surface that is both highly reflective with no imperfections, and also sturdy enough to withstand use in wartime, tends to be difficult and/or expensive. It's not like the knee-jerk jokes we get every time there's a laser story where someone suggests that someone just needs to hold up a mirror they bought at a drug store and, voila, the laser destroys itself.
You can also add an ablative coating to the missile similar to a reentry TPS.
How much weight is that going to add to the missile? Then, how much fuel do you need to add to compensate for the additional weight of the coating? Then how much fuel do you need to add to compensate for the weight of the additional fuel? It sounds like you're redesigning a missile. If we force enemy forces to redesign their weapons every time we come up with something new, good. At least we're at the front of the arms race instead of trying to catch up.
I'm sure that you could surround a missile or warhead with ceramic tiles and get some pretty great insulation from a laser, but we're talking about several hundred pounds of additional payload here. At a minimum that means your warheads are smaller, which by itself is a pretty great effect of fielding a laser weapon.
Good point. All we need to do is target a truck driver, and sit back and watch while every other member of the army drags the bodies out of the way to keep that truck moving.
Slashdot Mirror
Saddam Hussein gave up his nukes in 1991
Saddam never had a nuclear weapon. What he did have was French support to build a nuclear plant not controlled by the IAEA in the early/mid 70s, as well as 72kg of 93% uranium. But, the Israelis bombed that plant in 1981 before it was completed. From the Germans, Saddam got several chemical weapons facilities built as well as over 1,000 tons of precursor chemicals for mustard gas, sarin, tabun, and tear gas. He also got German equipment to manufacture botulin toxin and mycotoxin. Over half of his chemical weapons program was of German origin. From the Americans, he got samples of anthrax, West Nile, and botulism up through 1989. He selected one of our strains of anthrax for his biological weapons research program (many years later, Colin Powell would display a vial of anthrax in the UN as a justification for war with Iraq). From the British, Saddam got parts for his "supergun" weapons program, including nuclear triggers. The British government also financed a chlorine factory used to produce mustard gas. He never had a nuclear weapon, but his chemical attacks from 1983 to 1991 using mustard gas, tabun, nerve agents, and CS showed that his Western-provided chemical and biological weapon programs were coming along fine. That Israeli strike against the Osiraq reactor put his nuclear plans on hold though. I'm not sure how many parallels there are between Iraq and North Korea, unless Russia and China are playing the role that Western nations played in Iraq, in which case fine, let them go in and deal with the problem they created, like we did.
Muammar Gaddafi shutdown his nuke program in 2003
While you didn't claim that Gaddafi "gave up his nukes" like you did with Saddam, again Libya never had nuclear weapons. They did have a covert nuclear program, which they claimed was to counter the Israeli nuclear program. While after 2003 Libya was in the process of eliminating the remnants of their nuclear and chemical programs, it wasn't the US that brought Gaddafi down, it was his own people. He was an authoritarian dictator, and his people saw an opportunity to rise up and get rid of him. The only thing the US did was that we didn't stop them from doing that. If you want to draw a comparison with North Korea, Libya is a much better example than Iraq. Maybe Kim can look at Libya as a cautionary case-study and figure out that treating his people better instead of dumping money into nuclear weapons may end up with a better result for him. Nuclear weapons aren't going to save him if the North Korean people and military decide that they're better off without him. There are plenty of parallels between Kim and Gaddafi though, from being authoritarian dictators, to human rights abuses of their own people, to the personality cult, clandestine support for terrorist actions overseas, etc. But the lesson that Kim should take away from Gaddafi's tale should not be that nuclear weapons could have saved Gaddafi from his own people. There's no reason to think that.
Ukraine gave up their nukes after being given an American guarantee of their borders and sovereignty.
First off, Ukraine had a bunch of ICBMs with a range of 5,000 to 10,000 km. What were they going to do, threaten to nuke Vladivostok or Kamchatka if Moscow invaded? Those weapons were a threat to the US, not Russia. Not to mention the fact that Russia still maintained operational control of those weapons, similar to the American "nuclear codes". And even if they did use them to attack Russia, then they get met with Russia's 7,000 other nuclear weapons. Also, what's this "American guarantee of their borders and sovereignty" that you're talking about? Are you referring to the Budapest Memorandum? Go ahead and read the list of items there, find the one that says that America guarantees Ukranian borders. We accused Russi
You don't distribute videos of your performances from a tour bus
You don't? If you want to upload some stuff to YouTube, are you supposed to tell the driver to pull over so you can get out? What if some of the videos are from the actual bus?
They're not engaging the fans, they're consuming other people's content.
It's only one or the other, huh? The tour buses that I've been on over the past year have included plenty of people who are actively working while on the road. The tour manager, for instance, he's lining up the details on the next few shows while they're going down the road, he's checking in with his other clients, etc. After the show the people in the band typically just want to relax and hang out, but once they get on the road they're either sleeping, posting whatever they want to post, or entertaining themselves. It's not like everyone does one thing and one thing only.
Right, fuck trying to engage with your fans and post pictures and videos from the road. No, the drummer needs to practice! Never mind that all of the equipment is stored in the trailer, if they've made it to international tour status they need to practice, practice, practice.
And, listening to you, a person would think that the Navy has spend decades and probably hundreds of millions of dollars working on a weapon that can be defeated by spray paint. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. This is why it irritates me that every time Slashdot has a story about laser weapons, there's always some idiot to rush in and say "But mirrors!" as if the military never thought of that. It's just stupid. A coat of spray paint is not going to protect you from a 50kw laser, chief. Not even a little bit. There are going to be so many imperfections in that surface that will absorb the energy from the laser and burn up, causing distortions around them which will do the same, it will be a runaway effect and your so-called "protective coating" is going to be a cloud of fine particles floating around the target as it gets destroyed. A protective coating will also possibly be fatally flawed if the surface has any dust, grease, oil, bug guts, water, etc on it. It's absolutely idiotic to think otherwise, but that doesn't stop you guys from running in any time there's a story about laser weapons to suggest "hey, maybe if we hang a disco ball from it." This whole argument is Monty Python-esque in its ridiculousness. "Well, if we build a giant wooden badger..."
Plus, if you make a weapon too annoying to use, you have just neutralized one weapon that the military spent millions of dollars developing.
Says the guy who is proposing that adversaries go around spending however much money spray-painting all of their formerly-stealthy aircraft. Like I've pointed out many times in this story, if the only benefit of fielding a laser weapon is that you force your adversary to spend their time and money on stupid anti-laser projects, or end up with smaller warheads on missiles because they're encased in ceramic tiles or whatever, then that alone is a great benefit of fielding a laser weapon. Otherwise, any and every existing military vehicle is badly vulnerable to being shot with something moving the speed of light that is going to burn, warp, and destroy various control surfaces or engines that really need to be stable in order for the vehicle to work.
That sounds like a great way for our adversaries to use their military budgets, a surface that absorbs energy and converts it into usable power. Maybe it will be so efficient that it can absorb the explosion from the cheap missile that just struck it.
Oh, well then, I guess all they need to do is train birds to fly their drones.
Great idea, unless the disco ball IS the body of the drone.
Great idea. Let's make an aircraft specifically designed to reflect as much radiation as possible. Let's completely fool the complete range of existing radar-based weaponry into thinking that our little drone is actually an aircraft carrier. And, yeah, round aircraft totally have a long, storied history of being completely airworthy.
You see Ivan, if you put the engines and wings inside the ball, the laser can't disable them!
Standard quadcopters could be made very reflective to blind any viewers.
You know what they aren't going to blind? A single .50 cal bullet. They aren't going to be able to dodge it, either. But, hey, at least it wasn't a laser that shot it down, right? Mission accomplished?
You have to start thinking like an attacker. Is there any way to turn the enemy's weapon against them?
OK, you have to start thinking like a defender. If the attacker sends something at you which is a problem for one of your many weapons, are you going to choose that weapon to try and bring it down? You want to make a perfectly reflective vehicle? Great, spend all of your time and money doing that, because our conventional weapons need targets too. Meanwhile, your entire existing inventory of vehicles will make great targets for our laser not attacking your MirrorDrone(tm).
I was more referring to "Berk" than Ponce with that.
I don't understand Cockney slang at all.
I want to call that guy a cunt, but I don't want to just say "cunt", for some reason, so I'm going to come up with a word that doesn't mean or sound like cunt at all, so I can call him that and he'll have no idea that he's being insulted, he'll think I'm just stupid.
Just call the man a cunt and be done with it, that's what I say.
Although, I admit, this is pretty amusing.
Uhh, sir, we've got a small fleet approaching us. They're identifying themselves as HMS Gay Archer, HMS Gay Bruiser, HMS Gay Bombardier, and HMS Gay Viking. They claim they're searching for HMS Gay Cavalier, HMS Gay Centurion, HMS Gay Charioteer, and HMS Gay Forester. They want to enter our well deck.
I would even suggest that if you target a person with a 50kw laser and only blind them, something is wrong and your laser might be broken.
Are you kidding?
"I'm ordering everyone on deck. You people have to see what these idiots are sending our way. Bring your cameras."
This mirror that is blocking the laser, it's not also obstructing your drone's targeting or flight control systems, is it? Because that would be fucking stupid if it was.
I know! Just attach another, bigger, arm to the drone, with a camera on it, so you can see around the mirror. And then put another mirror in front of the camera. Yeah, this is totally workable. Let's spend a bunch of R&D on this and forget that literally our entire existing inventory of military vehicles is completely vulnerable.
Wait! We just need a mirror as big as a Mil Mi-24 helicopter. Stick with me here. You see, if we just put a mirror in front of our MiGs, and somehow engineer a mirror capable of withstanding supersonic speeds while not shattering and destroying the aircraft, then we're golden. We just need to completely forget that we've turned our air force into a fleet of flying disco balls that any Sea Sparrow missile from the 70s can lock onto while laughing the entire way out.
"Sir, I think our missile just put on sunglasses."
Why the fuck would the operator decide to target the disco ball instead of the wing? God, I really hope our adversaries have military planners who think like you do.
This is a weapon capable of destroying a boat's motor and leaving the rest of the boat intact, or melting the wing of a drone, or destroying a mortar round in flight, and you think they can just string up a disco ball, and voila, the laser attacks itself?
Oh, and let's make no mention of the fact that a freely dangling disco ball might have any effect on the aerodynamic performance or control ability of an aircraft.
Please, please let our adversaries employ graduates of the Harrkev School Of Military Doctrine.
I think we can settle this like men though. Get out to the Persian Gulf and get yourself one of those small boats, and rush the USS Ponce while holding up a mirror. I'll be here to study the effects. Never the mind the fact that the ship has an extensive array of ballistic or guided munitions hooked up to radars which think that mirror of yours looks pretty fabulous. Hey, don't worry though. Reflecting 50kw lasers? Yeah, totally easy.
Nuclear power isn't necessary. I don't think the Ponce is nuclear powered, and regardless the laser weapon includes its own generator. A ship like the Zumwalt would probably be able to field a variety of energy weapons simultaneously, but a single weapon like this doesn't need a nuke reactor.
I'm not suggesting anything about the practicality of using a precision weapon against a crowd of people though.
I'm just going to throw this out there, but if the goal is the maximum number of casualties, civilian or otherwise, a weapon that needs to target people individually is probably less preferable to a big bomb. How many heads do you think you're going to explode before people decide to go inside at a fairly brisk pace?
Fuck man, where were you years ago when the military was developing this? You could have saved the country so much money! They clearly never considered the impact of rain or fog, if only you were there to clue them in. I mean, shit, in the Persian Gulf where this system is deployed an analysis showed that Bushehr, where Iran has its nuclear plant, gets a mean of 6.8 days *EVERY YEAR* with precipitation of more than 10mm! That's each and every year, man! That means that on *any given day* there's like a 1.8% chance that a system like this isn't going to work at full capacity for the entire 24 hours! Why even bother with a failure rate that high! I mean, except for June, July, August, September, and October, obviously, when there are exactly 0 mean days over 10mm, but this is a serious problem that no one ever thought of, at all, during the entire lifetime of R&D for this project! You could have saved so much time and money if you just told someone. Obviously you're posting as AC to conceal your high-level government position, but come on!
Right, I wasn't talking about the effect on organics, I was talking about the destructive power against a target. I believe that any reflective surface would have to be nearly perfectly reflective in order to eliminate the runaway heating that is going to end up destroying the reflective coating before destroying the target. Even a smudge of grease or dirt on the coating would probably be fatal, it's going to get so hot that the coating warps or otherwise gets damaged, and the reduced efficiency is going to cause more heating and it's a runaway effect that destroys the protective coating. Even microscopic imperfections might absorb enough laser energy to cause them to overheat, warp their surroundings, and it's over. And I think it would be cost-prohibitive to produce such a perfect coating rugged enough to survive deployment in a battlefield and remain effective, and even if that was accomplished you've just lit up your vehicle like a lighthouse for any radar guiding a missile.
In short, I think that laser weapons like this are actually the game-changer that they appear to be and aren't going to be so easily defeated as a lot of armchair generals try to suggest. Let alone the fact that any existing military vehicle is already vulnerable, it's not like every possible adversary is going to be able to retro-fit their entire forces with laser protection and still remain militarily effective. Look at a country like North Korea, for example, we will be able to surround their entire country with ships fielding lasers long before they can retrofit even a tenth of their forces to counter those weapons.
Apparently "1 barrel" of crude is about 158987 grams (you know, give or take), so at ~$50 per barrel that seems like a pretty good price. I suppose factor in some additional costs to get it up to $1 per shot.
Let's assume for a moment that we're not going to replace all of our weapons with lasers. Your mirrored rotating fog-encased vehicle looks like a pretty attractive radar cross-section to the missiles and tracking systems we still have, and which are still going to be developed.
Let's also assume that laser development does not stop at the first version. You've got the systems necessary to defeat our 50kw red laser? Congratulations, let's try it out against this 150kw green laser. Don't spend too much time working on the armor for that one before you see our dial-a-wavelength version that hits the target with 7 different wavelengths at varying power levels if the target can last that long. We call that one Roy G. Biv, and Roy loves looking at things. Oh, you have reflective armor that can handle any wavelength? How about this rail gun projectile that can track your reflective armor and make course corrections in flight?
That's what irritates me any time we're discussing the next weapons systems under development. There's always someone to step up and shit all over it like the defense is so easy and no one ever thought of that.
Oh, you have a missile that can shoot down an ICBM? Well, that's completely stupid. All they have to do is encase the thing in 30 meters of pillows, and your missile is useless. We already have the technology to land a craft inside a giant air bag on Mars, literally all they have to do is put that on an ICBM (they're completely interchangeable, you know, I've seen videos) and all you've done is waste tax dollars.
C'mon, man. Between the Navy's rail guns and laser weapons we're finally getting into Freespace 2 territory. I know that any nerd like myself who played Freespace found themselves chasing a stupid little Shivan Dragon or Manticore or something that's dodging all over the place with your shots going everywhere except where the enemy is, and you're thinking that all you need is a laser and a computer to aim it. And then Freespace 2 comes out and you start yelling "THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!" We're finally entering the age of general-purpose destructive directed energy weapons and there's no shortage of people who are going to step up and talk about how it's useless based on research that was conducted decades ago when the weapons themselves were impractical. It's 2017, the Navy is fielding these weapons (and no doubt developing their own counter-measures), and you're trying to use a program that was cancelled in 1993 as a reason why it's not going to work. Let's assume that the people working on the weapons are aware of SDI, and while we're at it let's also assume that SDI is about a hundred years down the road for people whose major capability is trying to field a swarm of small vehicles.
Basically what I'm saying is that this is badass, and I'm looking forward (in a technical sense, not a humanitarian sense) to the battlefield videos that show a laser system defeating any number of vehicles, with support from our existing arsenal of more conventional weapons and vehicles. Like I said, with most warfighting my interest in this is purely technical, I do not envy anyone who has to fire this or come up against it in a battle situation. Game-changing weapons like these tend to suppress war, when you have a division of tanks that each have a laser on them capable of destroying incoming anti-tank rounds, so that your tanks can't even get shot, then the game changes. Years ago we saw videos of laser systems detecting, tracking, and destroying incoming mortar rounds. This is great technology, this is the kind of weapon that saves lives.
Congratulations, your super-advanced million dollar rotating reflecting laser-defeating aircraft just got shot down by a $165k Sea Sparrow missile from the 70s because your aircraft has the most fabulous radar cross-section the ship has ever seen.
A reflective coating could provide a lot of protection.
You emphasized the wrong word, that sentence should look like this:
A reflective coating COULD provide a lot of protection.
I'm still waiting for a single demonstration of any kind of reflective or retro-reflective protective coating. Just a single video showing a higher-powered destructive laser being defeated by any kind of reflective coating at all. I realize the US military isn't going to release a demonstration of them defeating their own weapon, but I know they've done that research and I'm sure that there is plenty of room for amateurs to also produce similar demonstrations with destructive lasers that are less powerful than what the military is fielding. But, like anything else, until we actually see some practical demonstration all of this guessing about reflective coatings is just academic. It could be the case that the laser is working at such a high power that if the coating reflects any less than 99.9% of the laser energy, it's still enough to cause damage to the coating and a runaway effect that sees the laser eat through the entire protection in under a second. Like I said, without testing these things all we're doing is guessing. Yeah, a reflective coating *could* provide a lot of protection, but it could also end up being a very expensive way to manufacture and reliably deploy something that gives you another second of lifetime in the field.
That sounds like a pretty hilarious idea. A mirror large enough to obscure the entire wing span of the drone constantly moving around a gimbled arm or something while the drone is in flight? What if the ship is the target, is the mirror going to obscure any targeting systems on the drone? And how about the effect of a flying object with a constantly shifting center of mass and changing aerodynamic qualities, how do you even fly that? Again, if these are the kinds of ideas we force other people to spend their time and money on, then that alone is a pretty good effect of fielding a laser weapon. You have a drone with a ridiculous looking rotating arm with a simple lightweight mirror on it, congratulations your drone can stay in the air for another second before the laser destroys the mirror and arm. Hope the R&D was worth it.
Well, apparently there were 530,133 "units of Ether" sitting out there for the taking, but they've all been stolen. Better luck next time.
It's almost like I was trying to make that point.
The reflective surface does not need to reflect the entire spectrum just the wavelength(s) of the laser.
I understand that, but it needs to reflect the vast majority of the incoming energy or else the imperfections in the surface are going to be fatal flaws. I'm not an astrophysicist, but from what I understand engineering a surface that is both highly reflective with no imperfections, and also sturdy enough to withstand use in wartime, tends to be difficult and/or expensive. It's not like the knee-jerk jokes we get every time there's a laser story where someone suggests that someone just needs to hold up a mirror they bought at a drug store and, voila, the laser destroys itself.
You can also add an ablative coating to the missile similar to a reentry TPS.
How much weight is that going to add to the missile? Then, how much fuel do you need to add to compensate for the additional weight of the coating? Then how much fuel do you need to add to compensate for the weight of the additional fuel? It sounds like you're redesigning a missile. If we force enemy forces to redesign their weapons every time we come up with something new, good. At least we're at the front of the arms race instead of trying to catch up.
I'm sure that you could surround a missile or warhead with ceramic tiles and get some pretty great insulation from a laser, but we're talking about several hundred pounds of additional payload here. At a minimum that means your warheads are smaller, which by itself is a pretty great effect of fielding a laser weapon.
Good point. All we need to do is target a truck driver, and sit back and watch while every other member of the army drags the bodies out of the way to keep that truck moving.