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."
Mega Watts are easy, and misleading. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Mega Watts are easy, and misleading. (Score:2, Interesting)
laser pointers and planes (Score:2, Interesting)
Does Homeland Security (and FAA) know?
Hope they don't point at other pilots or ppl on the ground....(though don't think there's anything in the law that says that pilots can't use laser pointers and point them towards ppl on the ground...the vice versa is prohibited.)
No, these weapons are already here (Score:2, Interesting)
http://tinyurl.com/r2t8q [tinyurl.com]
But on a more serious note, check out this video footage of new age technology
http://media2.foxnews.com/040606/040606_fr_tobin_
Re:ABL Systems are old (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh come on already... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, where's the giant bowl of popcorn?
-Ted
Re:Warning (Score:4, Interesting)
Then, they would go out to the boonies in New Jersey to test it. The Navy testing grounds is this large, flat, empty area in central Jersey. The thing was, birds (pelicans or gulls, I think) would swoop down right above the radar while it was being tested at full power. Needless to say, they made a rather disturbing sizzling sound as they dropped.
Oh my gosh (Score:5, Interesting)
I just hope this new weapon doesn't make it too easy to destroy wrong targets when your aim is kinda off, given the power and distancees we're talking about.
Not that I blame anyone. But I don't want a hole through my house (or me).
1/1000th of the way towards a useful big laser (Score:5, Interesting)
Liek Myrabo of http://www.lightcrafttechnologies.com/ [lightcraft...logies.com] has been developing beamed power launch technology for some years now. In my correspondence with him, he has estimated that a 1-ton payload can be launched into low earth orbit using a 1-Gigawatt class pulsed laser cannon.
This ground-based launcher is the ultimate tool, and if you build a ring of them around your country, you can be pretty well assured of having utter domination of not just the sky above you, but the skies above everywhere. The first to deploy the network wins the game!
There is almost no end of uses for this array of gigawatt laser cannons:
1) Beamed Laser launcher, with total cost to orbit of just cents per kilo.
2) Inbound missile melter, extraordinaire.
3) Extreme Bug-eyed alien tamer. Unfriendly invaders might think twice before tangling with a species capable of focusing better than 100 Gigawatts of energy at inbound bogies.
4) Surgical Strike weapon par excellence. Reflected back to earth via large space-based mirrors allows you to wave the thing in a decreasing spiral which will turn your neighbours house to molten slag, but barely singe your fence.
5) Galaxies' brightest Search and Rescue spotlight: defocused in orbit, and reflected to earth to illuminate areas currently under search and rescue operations.
6) Illuminate work sites on the moon during the long luna night. Defocused to make a nice night light back on earth.
7) Interplanetary messaging system: embed knowledge into the beam, and send it to likely looking planets. Long term payoff - unknown.
8) Asteroid deflection device: light pressure alone is enough to deflect an inbound near earth object. Just 2cm/s velocity change is enough to deflect most inbounds.
9) Interstallar probe launcher: lightsail driven robot craft accelerated to a decent %age of light speed in fairly short order.
I'm sure there are other uses too - but these would seem to be the obvious ones.
Overcoming countermeasures? (Score:3, Interesting)
What increases the protection of the missile most effectively? I realise this is probably all top secret, 'mums the word old chap' etc.
Re:fantastic new weapons (Score:5, Interesting)
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. Its merely used since even the slowest kid in the class knows that Nazis = Bad, and as such, panders to the lowest common denominator. If you think your audience is stupid, sure use the Nazi's, since everyone knows they're bad, but otherwise, show your audience some respect and get a bit of nuanced thinking in there.
oooo, popcorn...must be a genius or two here (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:ABL Systems are old (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps you are not seeing the big picture. With this system, the threat of a world-ending nuclear war has just ended. Also on a somewhat scary note: the US would be able to nuke any country with little fear of reprisal. In theory the US just became the only country capable of using nuclear missiles.
Sure there will always be the chance of suitcase bombs and such. However, the worst that would happen would be a small-scale coordinated attack taking out a few large cities. Yes, that would be horrible, but it is still much better than destroying the whole world.
They have already been testing inflight operation. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep. I noticed this in the last month on a government website that maps NOTAMs [nifc.gov].
It is quite common for there at the national scale map, to see a purple dot. This purple dot indicates that there is scheduled laser activity in the area. Frequently a laser light show. The NOTAMs advise altitude and range for which precaution is advised.
Then suddenly broad sections (that can only be assumed to be flightlines) stretching from Texas, down the Gulf of Mexico (just off the Mexican coast) to the Yucatan penensula and over to Florida. These NOTAMS frequently advised precaution of several thousand feet "below the aircraft" and "above the aircraft" and for a range that makes the "light show" type NOTAM seem laughable.
Re:Half a world away? (Score:2, Interesting)
If two peoplle are on the banks of a lake 50miles wide and one travels 100mph over the lake directly to the other side, and the other travels 100mph around the lake, they both traveled at the same speed but one gets there before the other.
BTW, if it were a perfectly circular lake what would the average speed toward the opposite point be for the person who went around? (hint: find the circumfrence, halve it, find out how long it'd take the guy to travel that distance and divide that by 50mph)
Re:Oh my gosh (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:fantastic new weapons (Score:1, Interesting)
The presumption on your part is that America had some sort of intrinsic responsibility to spend billions of dollars that it didn't really have on a war effort to save millions of Europeans who are now largely ungrateful, that corrupted our society and has caused us nothing but grief since. Up 'til the time of World War II, America was a relatively insular nation. We didn't want to be in that war, tried hard to stay out of it (see: Lend Lease) and yes we got into it when Japan foolishly attacked Pearl Harbor (which was a military base, in case you've forgotten.) Like it or not, we expended vast resources to put the lid back on when you Europeans raised yet another demagogic dictator and were yet again unable to handle him. So watch it with the snide remarks. They're not much appreciated at all. If the United States hadn't stepped in when it did, the results would have been very different. The remnants of the British Empire were no longer up to the task, and the rest of Europe combined couldn't stand up to the Axis. Yes, a lot of Russians died in that war
By the way, here's a picture of the Arizona resort [navy.mil] to which you were referring.
Jawohl!
Re:Half a world away? (Score:2, Interesting)
Assume a 400m/s gust hits the plane...
400 m/s * 1s/10^15 fs = 4*10^-13 m/fs
a 4*10^-13m displacement during the beams lifetime caused by that 400m/s gust of wind... wind isnt really the issue here nor is unexpected movement.
SAVING LIVES IS 'SOMETHING USEFUL' (Score:1, Interesting)
Well, I'm all for megawatt class lasers - as this means the technology is about 1/1000th of the way towards using lasers for something useful:
Protecting our ground forces against TBMs carrying chemical or bio weapons is "something useful". Or is your definition of "something useful" restricted to sci-fi items of interest to middle-class caucasians and items of interest to lower-class minorities who make up our armed services don't count?
Re:fantastic new weapons (Score:2, Interesting)
Militarization, anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)
On the other hand, at least the airborne defense lasers fulfill the actual premise of a "defense budget" - it is meant to defend us, and not to invade or destroy other countries, though I could see its purpose being perverted there as well.
Re:Great, but that was last centuries' war (Score:3, Interesting)
If you can ionize air with that beam, you can pass it by a thundercloud on the way to the target and make it look like it was a normal lightning bolt, and thus an "act of God".
Even if the tech is not good enough to hit a fast moving missile, it should be able to easily hit someone walking about or even standing about in a public area - you could even aim it manually.
Perhaps this is what the tech was actually intended for in the first place. But of course that can't be since assassination is a no-no right?
Re:Great, but that was last centuries' war (Score:4, Interesting)
But when a terrorist blows up some people, the finger is always pointed back at the evil western powers who obviously drove them to it.
"Treat people with respect and they will treat you with respect as well". Ask Neville "I have in my hand a piece of paper" Chamberlain about this. Sometimes, people are not reasonable, and you have to kick them in the ass.
Personally, I thought that the Iraq war would be a mistake, and sadly, I feel proven right. That said, what do you think the people blowing up US troops want? In your worldview, once the troops leave, there will be peace and the people doing this will stand down and get involved in a democratic, political proces. Because after all, they are victims of US aggression, and not aiming for a power-grab.
Re:It's being done (Score:2, Interesting)
Hitting a mirror on the moon with a fixed ground based laser was done in the 60s. Hitting it when you are on a plane with a velocity changing almost randomly in 3 dimensions isn't easy
Re:Half a world away? (Score:2, Interesting)
I think its not so dificult... Do you know how a tank works? Its a moving target, moving source and a balistic trajectory... Almost the same problem. Solution? Gyroscope. In a tank, when you lock a target, whatever movement makes the tank, it keep pointed to this target locked.
With laser in a plane or whatever, it's just have to adjust those thing faster and more precise.
Re:fantastic new weapons (Score:1, Interesting)
America never did this. It is a very greedy nation, as, in the limit, all are. If it spends billions of dollars it is for it's own self-interest.
"..we got into it when Japan foolishly attacked Pearl Harbor
You can't have it both ways. If we raised the German menace by trying to appease Hitler then you unquestionably caused the Japanese threat with your 'starve-them' commodity and oil policies.
"If the United States hadn't stepped in when it did, the results would have been very different."
Not actually so different. Europe would have collapsed, the British Empire would have fought Germany to a standstill, and Russia would have taken the spoils. In fact, after El-Alamein the British had Germany surrounded, though still in possession of a lot of raw material. But I am assuming that Germany could have survived the usual British blockade weapon about as well as Napoleon did.
The reason the Americans came in was to deny all of Germany and France to the communists. For America's sake, not for Europe's.
Re:fantastic new weapons (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:fantastic new weapons (Score:3, Interesting)
In the meantime Russia would be still be winning on the Eastern front and would eventually beat Germany and take over Europe at which point both the future of both the US and the UK would be very different especially since it would the Russia and not the US making use of all the German developments in rocket science etc.