Sci-Fi Weapons to Join US Arsenal? 601
marct22 writes to tell us CNet is reporting that the next weapons coming out of the US arsenal could be stepping right off the pages of science fiction to be there. From the article: "By the end of this year, the Air Force plans to conduct a first, fully loaded test flight of its Airborne Laser, a jumbo jet packed with gear designed to shoot down enemy missiles half a world away, at the speed of light. The ABL also packs a megawatt-class punch--it's not exactly your garden-variety laser pointer."
Sci Fi (Score:0, Insightful)
Nothing to see here move along.
Say what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming your world is not larger than 600 kilometers across, that is. Or do they mean that the plane's going to be in the Middle East? In that case, an M-16 is able to kill enemy soldiers half a world away, too.
It wil fail. (Score:3, Insightful)
ABL Systems are old (Score:5, Insightful)
Cut the funding, dump the project and reassign the personel to more useful projects like laser based fusion power, or robotics, or composite smart armor development.
fantastic new weapons (Score:2, Insightful)
But we must not compare any contemporary politician to Hitler- that wouldn't be "responsible".
Great, but that was last centuries' war (Score:4, Insightful)
And how does something like that help us fight an enemy that puts up a roadside bomb?
Troops need body armor and armored trucks. Not, useless debt building toys that are made to fight a cold war enemy, long gone.
Want more info http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/25 30001.html [popularmechanics.com]
Question: (Score:2, Insightful)
Am I the only one here who looks at Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq and thinks our money would be better spent on a few crates of AK-47's, body armor, and more benefits for the troops?
Re:Mega Watts are easy, and misleading. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Question: (Score:2, Insightful)
Nope.
As one who grew up in the shaddow of "Reagan's thumb" I will wish my governement had resulted in a more intelligent population. Once those missles go up, it's all a hope and a prayer, friend.
Back in the 80's, evern aithiests understood this.
Re:Question: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Half a world away? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great, but that was last centuries' war (Score:3, Insightful)
<cynicism>
Debt-building toys aren't useless to those who are making this program happen. They are helping this LANL research push a research and personal branding effort (what better way to promote his book about giant lasers?) They are also bringing $ and "jobs" to any number of contractors actually building this system, which brings votes to their respective congressmen.
So, while they may be useless to fight current enemies, and debt-building, I doubt they're useless to those who are actually pushing the program.
</cynicism>
Re:Mega Watts are easy, and misleading. (Score:3, Insightful)
When I think about it more it gets closer to 'paper, rock, scissors' rather then 100% accurate missle defense system.
Regarding Hitler (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, providing them an inexpensive car. I mean - those Volkswagen Beetles were great!!
Re:Sci Fi (Score:5, Insightful)
At this moment in time, PRACTICAL quantum computing is, yes.
> Is the space elevator sci-fi?
Again, at this moment in time, yes. Tests of a few thousand feet are a hell of a long way from geosyncronous orbit.
> Is nuclear fusion sci-fi?
No, it's a big bright ball in the sky. Now, if you're talking about humans initiating and controlling that reaction to extract more energy than they put into the reaction, then yes, it is in fact science fiction right now in 2006.
> Is a laser cannon sci-fi ? No.
Depends on your definition of cannon. If you mean something that can be effectively used as an offensive weapon against a hostile force, then this may be the first non-scifi example of such. If you mean a laser pointer, or something to cut out grills for your computer's fan in the shape of a nekkid chick, then no.
Re:Question: (Score:4, Insightful)
Real Genius? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:1/1000th of the way towards a useful big laser (Score:4, Insightful)
Vastly superior to $x00/KG, and good enough to put the cost of reaching orbit within reach of the affluent (75Kg adult + 500Kg of vehicle -> $10000), but until power is too cheap to meter, the cost will never be pennies/KG.
We Now Take for Granted, What Was Science Fiction (Score:3, Insightful)
Namely, the geostationary communications satellites that are the backbone of our military communications system (and not to mention the later GPS system). If you told a commander in the field in the early 1970s (in, say, Vietnam) that he'd be able to have maps with his location pinpointed by meters, or that he'd be able to guide a cruise missile air strike just by pointing a pencil-sized cylinder at a target, or that he could have a live, secure telephone call with anybody in the world from anywhere with open sky, he'd cream his pants.
They're such a part of our everyday world now that many people forget (or never learn) that the notion of communications satellites were invented by Science Fiction author Arthur C Clarke.
Yesterday's science fiction is taken for granted by tomorrow.
Re:wait a second here.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Americans have such a poor sense of Geography.
One of these ABL's will have to fly within spitting distance of NK to have a hope of shooting down something coming from that country. With the other 3 ABL's we will have lots of opportunities to burst party balloons all over Nevada and California.
Well, you'll be surprised, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
The laser pulse is so short and intense that the missile rotation does not matter. Same for mirroring. For all practical purposes, the rising edge of the pulse will destroy the surface layer of any mirror very quickly, and then the rest of the photons will be nicely absorbed.
Re:fantastic new weapons (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:1/1000th of the way towards a useful big laser (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not too sure about that. Any spacecraft can defend against a laser weapon by making the hull a very good reflector- the maximum power that could hit the craft without damage would just be limited by how perfect the reflectivity could be. In fact, if your spacecraft had a smart deformable concave mirror on the front of it, you could actually reflect the beam back to the attacker. That's assuming, of course, that the beam is either turned on long enough for the mirror to adjust to the right concavity or that the target spacecraft had some advance warning about the placement of the laser's output coupler.
But more fundamentally, laser weapons can't penetrate very deeply into its target. The reason is that the beam vaporises the surface of the target, creating a reflective plasma that effectively shields the target from further damage.
Re:fantastic new weapons (Score:4, Insightful)
Hitler lost because the West outproduced him. He also lost because he didn't adapt new technology - in 1944 he was still fighting largely with 1938 era equipment, while the West was fielding 1944 era equipment. (For various political and economic reasons the Nazi hierarchy a) wouldn't disturb existing production for new production and b) couldn't agree on what to produce in the first place.)
Hitler's much vaunted belief in 'wonderweapons' is an artifact of the last phases of the war, when the situation was starting to crumble.
Re:Overcoming countermeasures? (Score:3, Insightful)
The laser deliver it's energy in a few milliseconds - it's simply impossible to spin the missile body fast enough to make a difference.
Reinforcing the casing means increasing the weight (and the cost) of the missile. This means the bad guys can build fewer of them, thus the number of weapons they have to toss is reduced - which is precisely the purpose of the ABL. (Not to mention that coatings that can stand up to megawatts of power and the (relatively) rough handling of a field missile are essentially non-existent.)
I simply don't believe in 747 shark laser. (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, high energy weapons projects for upcoming age of energy scarcity is a really challenging strategy. Water pistols in desert, anyone?
Re:Mega Watts are easy, and misleading. (Score:2, Insightful)
All it takes is cooking away enough material to fsck a missile's aerodynamics beyond it's ability to compensate.
Admittedly, large pieces of the nearest country would still be screwed if these missiles had nuclear warheads, but maybe they wouldn't end up in/over the major population center that was being aimed at.
Re:Great, but that was last centuries' war (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, think about it. Have you ever asked yourself *why* people do things like that? Maybe it's just me, but it might have to do with the fact that we're constantly interfering with them - messing with their internal affairs, assassinating their politicians, selling chemical weapons to dictators, invading them, killing hundreds of thousands of innocents, abducting people, torturing them, stealing their oil (not to mention their archaeological treasures etc.), and so on.
What would you do when another country did that to the USA? Well, maybe most of us wouldn't put up roadside bombs if it happened to us, but would you think of those who fight the invaders as terrorists? You might not like what they do, but you'd probably cheer the attempt to get your country back, at least.
Responsible politics would take this into account and act accordingly. Treat people with respect, and they will treat you with respect as well - or at least, they won't blow you up (some still might, of course, but there's always going to be nutcases, and we certainly have our own share, too - just take the Unabomber, for example). It might take a while until they really trust you that you have changed, but ultimately, isn't it worth it? Defend yourself if you're attacked, but don't attack others, and don't mess with their internal affairs. As soon as you do that, things like roadside bombs will stop being a real problem.
Or, in other words... we've made our bed, so now we have to lie in it. We have nobody to blame for our problems but ourselves.
Re:ABL Systems are old (Score:1, Insightful)
So long as you forget cruise missiles, SLBMs, etc.
"In theory the US just became the only country capable of using nuclear missiles."
Assuming you have hundreds of them and they work. One of the many failings of America is that it lies to itself and then believes its own propaganda. The Patriot system is a good example.
Of course, if they do work, I would give it five years before all your major enemies have one as well. It was four for the nuclear bomb.
Incidentally (and if anything gets me modded insightful, this should), I suspect the US is shooting itself in the foot by developing this technology. Its major military advantage over third-world nations at the moment is its air power. In that respect it is like Britain during the Empire, where any uprisings would be quelled by the Royal Navy bombarding the recalcitrant nation from a position of relative safety. Britain put a lot of resource into maintaining its navy, and became hugely vulnerable when the submarine (a cheap way of sinking a battleship) was developed.
If laser technology works as described, it will be a particularly cheap and effective anti-aircraft weapon. I suggest that this is not what the US wants at the moment.
The US has a touching faith in the ability of high tech weapons to solve political problems, an inability strategically to see further than the end of its nose, and a tendency to vote for paranoid idiots who wave a flag. These are vulnerabilities which more intelligent and sophisticated politicians/terrorists can exploit to place America in positions where it cannot win. All America's military expeditions for the last 50 years bear that out.
Re:fantastic new weapons (Score:2, Insightful)
Whatever the reason, I am truly gratefull Hitler and his Nazis lost the war!
As far as your comment on comparing politicians to Hitler, personally, I think this really debases just about any debate since a) most people really don't fully grasp what Hitler did when he was in power, so any metaphor they make is incomplete and quite likely bears no resemblence to what happened under Hitler, and b) theres tons of more moderate and applicable examples than Hitler to be used as reference that do not carry a fuckload of emotional baggage like Hitler & the Nazis do.
Very true! Be it Hussein or Bush or Milosevic, alway the comparison with Hitler and Nazi Germany creeps up from somewhere. However bad the dictators of the present are, not one comes close to the horror and madness the was Germany 33-45!
Re:Great, but that was last centuries' war (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:1/1000th of the way towards a useful big laser (Score:3, Insightful)
With that said, the problem with trying to make a reflective surface that'll stop a laser of this power is that we simply don't know of anything that is 100% reflective at UV wavelengths and at those wavelengths absorbed photons have sufficient energy to instantly break molecular bonds. This isn't melting, where you have to heat atoms up enough that their kinetic energy enables them to break their bonds -- this is ablation, where the photons actually affect the bonding electrons and the bonds just go away. If you pulse the laser at a high repetition rate the debris from each ablation blast clear out pretty well, increasing your material removal efficiency at the cost of time.
It is possible that incoming UFO's or whatever might have external armor screens and return fire if those screens get hit, while they soak up (briefly) the laser power, analogous reactive armor on modern tanks. But just polishing them up so they're good and shiny, probably isn't going to work.
Re:Great, but that was last centuries' war (Score:3, Insightful)
Last I checked, Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th.
Secondly, we were responsible for Taliban being in power.
Do you remember the Afghan conflict? The one we sent Stinger missiles and butt loads of money and CIA advisors to Afghanistan? Did we help them rebuild after the Soviets left? No we left them to rot and didn't lift a finger leaving a power vacuum that lets the Taliban take over.
Thirdly, we are responsible for Iran as well... We toppled the legitimate elected government and put the Shah in power and then after his brutal regime had its way with the Iranians they had enough... Unfortunately that revolution of leftist students got usurped by the Mullahs and look what we have now.
A fanatical dictatorship that may eventually build nuclear weapons?
And you know what doesn't work in the 21st century? Pissing around with other countries with Nukes doesn't work.
We had to appease the Soviets and they had to appease us.
Why? Because the instant we decided to go the Churchill route instead of the Neville we'd have something called Mutual Assured Destruction [wikipedia.org].
Face it, we will have to learn to compromise... And get out of other people's yards.
Do these people attack us because we aren't Muslim? No it is because we have military bases, constant interference via the CIA, and complete disregard for the Palestinians conflict by openly supporting Israel over them although the Palestine is just as guilty of terrorism, so we should wash our hands of the situation and stop supporting both sides... Israel has one of the best militaries in the world and doesn't need our support anymore and they can handle themselves.
Please if you are going to use 9/11 in an argument... Study a bit of history of the Middle East and see what went wrong.
Re:Half a world away? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Half a world away? (Score:3, Insightful)