Northrop to Sell Laser Shield Bubble for Airports 648
NeoPrime writes "CNN Money web site has a story about Northrop Grumman forecasting development of a laser shield 'bubble' for airports and other installations in the United States within 18 months. The system will be called Skyguard — a joint venture with Israel and the U.S. Army. It will have the capability to generate a shield five kilometers in radius."
I have this rock that keeps tigers away. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Failure modes (Score:5, Funny)
Rocks don't do that. Their failure mode is to lie there and gather moss.
Re:Failure modes (Score:5, Interesting)
Nevertheless, the idea another slashdotter has posted about putting countermeasures on the airplanes, sounds much cheaper and safe than the laser thing. As far as I know, the Israelis are already using this in El Al planes, and I heard stories about them actually having to use this (and being successful).
Re:Failure modes (Score:3, Interesting)
Explosives, you say... you mean like jet fuel? It's not just for breakfast anymore.
Re:Failure modes (Score:4, Informative)
That's fine until they're all repainted with reflective paint.
That shouldn't be a problem. The mirror would have to be virtually flawless. The slightest scratch or bit of dust and the first few pulses burn any reflectivity right off. From the Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
"Some believe that mirrors or other countermeasures can reduce the effectiveness of high energy lasers. This has not been demonstrated. Small defects in mirrors absorb energy, and the defects rapidly expand across the surface. Protective mirroring on the outside of a target could easily be made less effective by incidental damage and by dust and dirt on its surface."
New Scientist says lasers can be reflected (Score:3, Informative)
- New Scientist [newscientist.com].
Re:Failure modes (Score:3, Insightful)
"Some believe that mirrors or other countermeasures can reduce the effectiveness of high energy lasers. This has not been demonstrated. Small defects in mirrors absorb energy, and the defects rapidly expand across the surface. Protective mirroring on the outside of a target could easily be made less effective by inciden
Re:Failure modes (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, this kind of new defensive weapon is always rolled out in several phases.
First phase is characterized by an upsurge in Northrup's market cap. That's just begun. All Aboard!
Second phase is characterized by initial installations and mild cost overruns (not to exceed 250% of estimated costs). Given the current Administration in Washington, that is almost certainly going to start before Nov 2008.
The next phase will see something "unexpected" happen, that will have the nickname "laser chaff" (possibly other nicknames, depending on how the decoys are actually implemented by the nasty, clever blackhats). Somebody's gonna die.
Then Northrup's market cap will drop again.
The trick to mastering this new technology is appropriate monitoring of potential terrorists' phone calls and email so you can know when to tell your cronies that it is time to trim their portfolios of Northrup stock.
The whole thing does point out the critical need for improving and expanding Homeland Security's capabilities for monitoring email, phone conversations, and the like. When it comes to protecting stock market portfolios of the rich and famous, we can't be too careful.
Re:Failure modes (Score:3, Funny)
http://resources.ubi.com/resources/39/39273-11-12
Re:What kind of fallacy is this? (Score:3, Funny)
therefore,
A -> -B (a rock is a sufficient condition for their being no tigers)
Missile Command! (Score:5, Funny)
Protect those cities!
Re:Missile Command! (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes it seems funny to have a real-life space invaders defence, but it's not the worst idea in the world.
We know that light is faster than any other Surface to air defence we currnetly employ, but also that it follow a (reletively) straight line.
i think that with enought testing and debugging, you should be albe to knock a missle out of the air even when it's raining/snowing - in reply to a diff
Can we please take this seriously? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Missile Command! (Score:4, Funny)
Picking up the "clue words" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Picking up the "clue words" (Score:3, Funny)
So, (Score:2)
Re:So, (Score:2, Insightful)
It may affect visibility, and if you're outside you might get wet.
Re:So, (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't worry about it. If decades of Star Wars have taught us anything it is that (1) you always run tests under artificially optimal conditions, and (2) it doesn't actually have to work to get more contracts.
Re:So, (Score:4, Informative)
If this is feasible, I wouldn't be surprised to see it mounted in places where mortars, Katyusha-style rockets, and RPGs are common -- places like the areas surrounding Israel, and in the cities of Iraq. Removing the major ability of insurgents to use such mobile weapons may reduce overall casualties and introduce a frustration factor strong enough to either get them to do something easier to do but less likely to succeed (roadside or suicide bombs), or even get some to give up altogether. (Yes, it's optimistic, but still possible.)
Suicide bombers in Cessnas (Score:5, Insightful)
I have always marveled at the willingness of the military industrial complex to come up with expensive ways of guarding against rogue cruise missiles, which are expensive and unlikely compared to the simplicity of stealing a Cessna and cruising over the border like any other returning drug plane. Or pack your nuke into a stolen cargo ship, packed down in the hold under enough metal barrier cargo to keep its radiation hidden, and sail right into a harbor.
Osama bin Laden is notorious for doing things cheaply. I can't believe he has much interest in stealing cruise missiles when he could steal Cessnas or a cargo ship.
This recent North Korean volley of missiles made me wonder if anyone at the top actually was worried about it. I think rather they saw it as a wonderful opportunity to spend more money on useless weapons to make it look like they were defending liberty. Osama bin Laden and his ilk have nothing to retaliate against and nothing to lose. North Korea and Iran do. Their glorious leaders may be crazy, but they're not stupid. If they actually did land a warhead in the US, even just a few hundred pounds of dynamite, there would not be a single dissenting voice trying to talk the US out of pulverizing their countries. They know that, and we know they know that. Even their own citizens know that.
Re:Suicide bombers in Cessnas (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider network security. We use firewalls to deal with certain connectivity threats. We use IDS/IPS to deal with certain threats that go through connectivity that must remain open. We use antivirus to deal with certain e-mail and file-based threats. We use logs to look for deviations from accepted activity within systems. None of those on its own will deal with all of those threats on its own.
Consider the threats faced out in the world. Whatever you think of the background reasons, Katyushas, RPGs, mortars, and even artillery shells are real risks to soldiers on the ground as well as to civilians near threat zones (think Israel, Iraq, and maybe Turkey). The ability to knock these down in flight, at least in the small quantities used by guerillas, saves lives and property. And to clarify for those that may not know, the Qassim and Katyusha rockets are not cruise missiles. They're simple rockets that can be constructed with the tools found in a basic machine shop. While THEL can knock down cruise missiles, that's not what they're intended for here.
Your mention of cars, light aircraft, and ships are another threat entirely, and much harder to deal with. Stolen ships are a less-likely vector, because a stolen ship is a lot harder to hide, especially when you're trying to get into port. It's more likely that it will be legitimately purchased by a shell company and then sailed under legal registration. In any case, THEL is not intended to deal with those threats. Those have to be dealt with largely by eyes. As a would-be pilot and an occasional commercial flier, I have the most concern with the light aircraft and the car bomb at the loading zones. I have no desire to deal with a plethora of additional FAA regulations to deal with just to rent a Cessna or a Piper, nor do I want to have to take a shuttle two miles from another drop-off point (which just moves the target) to the drop-off point.
Re:Suicide bombers in Cessnas (Score:3, Insightful)
That goose is cooked (Score:5, Funny)
Luckily, Reagan National, in DC, can just use shark-mounted lasers swimming in the Potomac River.
It would make sense for all sites to communicate (Score:5, Funny)
Protect the Airports? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Protect the Airports? (Score:2)
Re:Protect the Airports? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Protect the Airports? (Score:5, Funny)
Having worked at an airport, I can say first hand that low altitude planes are very rarely about to take off.
Tastes like chicken! (Score:3, Funny)
New safety notice for pilots (Score:5, Funny)
I'm unconfortable with this (Score:5, Funny)
Can I safely assume this is for military applicati (Score:3, Insightful)
While most airports have a great view of everything more than 20-30 feet in the air, many are in congested areas where there is no way they would be able to see an individual with a Stinger. Since shoulder-fired missiles seem to be the most plausible form of attack, I simply can't see how this system offers much protection at all to urban/suburban commercial airports.
Re:Can I safely assume this is for military applic (Score:3, Informative)
Do they work? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Do they work? (Score:5, Insightful)
Spelling (Score:3, Funny)
Eye used Opera's spell cheque on the post
Remember it does not have to work to fit the bill (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember folks - it does not actually have to work when the criteria is to spend money on anti-terrorism devices to show that you care. It is just more silicon snake oil - what more can you expect in an environment where intelligence agencies are using voodoo such as polygraph tests and pretend they are a highly accurate way of telling the truth, reading minds or whatever is the fashionable delusion these days.
We need better science education to stop the people who control the public purse getting sucked in by confidence tricks.
A license to print money... (Score:5, Informative)
Major US airports (http://www.fly.faa.gov/flyfaa/usmap.jsp): Approx. 40
US airports with international flights (http://aerospace.web.mtsu.edu/usinternational.ht
Minimum likely cost using low-ball $25 million per airport figure and only major airports: US$1 billion
Mid-range likely cost using higher $30 million per airport figure, and all international airports in the US: US$2.16 billion
Realistic projection, expecting a 50% cost overrun, and ~100 airports: US$4.5 billion
Potential maximum even if cost per airport is reduced to 1/10th the lowest projection, and only 1 in 4 US airports is protected: US$9.3 billion.
All this just to stop something that's never happened on US soil, and AFAIK never successfully happened elsewhere (terrorists using a missile to shoot down a commercial passenger aircraft). Who said terrorism was bad? It sure as heck is good business if you're Northrop...
Re:A license to print money... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:A license to print money... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A license to print money... (Score:3, Interesting)
Spent that way, you'd likely cause more severe injuries and cost more lives. At least the laser system is less likely to actually cause as much additional harm.
From wikipeda [wikipedia.org]:
Re:A license to print money... (Score:3, Insightful)
Im not saying you shouldnt do anything about terrorist attacks, but on a cost-benefit analysis basis, spending this much money on this system, rather than (for example) better healthcare, or road safety measures, is just inefficie
Re:A license to print money... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ya know how we caused the Soviet Union to collapse by forcing their military to spend, spend, spend?
$10B here and $10B there and pretty soon you're talking real money.
For a couple hundred thou the terrorists could drive America to complete, parnoiac economic ruin (not to mention social ruin) buying worthless "security."
I think that's why they call it "terrorism."
KFG
Re:A license to print money... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is only half true because you're missing the most important part of the equation: we outspent the Russians because we were in a better position economically to do so. Our strength is our Capitalism, which has collectively allowed the citizens of this country to build up wealth the likes of which cannot be found anywhere else on Earth. Even the poorest person in ths nation generally has a home, a car, cable TV, air conditioning, and a cell phone. Reagan knew the Russian strength was gross manpower, quantity over quality. If we tried to beat them using the same philosophy, we'd have lost. You never fight your enemy where he is strong, you fight him where he is weak. Case in point, we outspent the Russians and still won the Cold War. They spent less and went bankrupt. Q.E.D.
While it is true the current crop of Republicans is spending like a bunch of drunken sailors, it's important to keep perspective. We beat the Russians because our economic philosophy was so much more efficient than the Russian planned economy. What's so damned tragic is that after we beat them, we're now starting to resemble them more and more each day.
Re:A license to print money... (Score:3, Insightful)
Poor birds (Score:2, Funny)
Pointless. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pointless. (Score:4, Informative)
It's not a 'shield' (dome) over the airport.
"Northrop described Skyguard as capable of destroying rockets, mortars, artillery shells, unmanned aerial vehicles, short-range ballistic missiles, as well as cruise missiles. Against shoulder-fired missiles, which are relatively easy to heat with a laser and destroy, the protective shield would extend to a 20-kilometer radius"
Or they would just go to Japan and knock down a plane bound for the United States.
""If it goes that path, it's a very large market," he said, citing potential demand from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and what he called virtually any country facing a threat from a neighbor."
Northrop's one simple request (Score:5, Funny)
But why... (Score:3, Funny)
Does it work *now*? (Score:4, Insightful)
Give it time. Some of these defense mechanisms WILL work. And work quite well.
useless against low-tech threats (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:useless against low-tech threats (Score:5, Insightful)
It is NOT easy to hit an aircraft with a rifle. This is why anti-aircraft guns are
machine guns or cannon. On approach, a 747 is traveling quite fast (around 170 knots, or 314 kph). It has four engines.
A Barrett
is PROFOUND. You probably couldn't shoot down a CRJ-6000 effectively with one of these, let alone an
inbound heavy.
Also, Since the effective range of a B.50 is 2000 meters (2 km), you would have about 22 seconds to make all eight shots in the best conditions. That may seem like a lot, but it's not. Especially considering your target is moving erratically (turbulence), is far away
(you have to begin shooting at the edge of the range of your weapon), and people are going to notice this firearm being discharged.
And this is with a
Why be afraid? The world is dangerous, but fear of someone shooting down a jet with a pop-gun doesn't help anybody.
Re:useless against low-tech threats (Score:3, Interesting)
For defense, you need to be able to shoot planes down reliably. For terror, even a rare hit would be sufficient.
you would have about 22 seconds to make all eight shots in the best conditions
Why would a terrorist need more than a single hit? It seems to me that there are lots of vital structures on an airplane that, when hit by a single bullet, could cause serious problems.
Why be afraid? The world is dangerous, but fear of some
Re:useless against low-tech threats (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, no.
Commercial aircraft are designed with multiple redundant systems. They are designed to withstand things like engines disintegrating and spewing turbine blades all over the place, bird strikes and other random foreign object impacts, lightning strikes, landing gear tire explosions, and miscellaneous failures like random hydraulic line ruptures or doors not properly latched. An Aloha Airlines 737 successfully flew to an airport and landed after a large section of fuselage ripped off because of excessive corrosion and pressurization cycle stress fractures.
Boeing learned aircraft design lessons by examining WW II bombers that returned from missions full of flak damage. Were the holes were, they knew they'd designed it right. In areas where no damage was found, they knew that aircraft that had been hit there hadn't made it back -- so they redesigned that area.
Most places on an airliner where a bullet hit would probably go unnoticed until the ground inspection crew noticed the hole or dent.
(Heck, even a shoulder-launched SAM might not do significant damage. There was a great photo in Aviation Week some years back, of a private jet (Gulfstream? Citation? I forget which) owned by some African country (presidental plane) that had been fired on and hit. Blew one of the engine pods apart. The rest of the aircraft, and the pilots, essentially treated at as a "routine" catastrophic engine failure and continued on to friendlier territory on the remaining engine.)
headless chicken (Score:3, Insightful)
You should only defend against threats if the defense makes sense in a cost/benefit analysis: how many lives to you expect to save for every million you spend.
Say that again after the first airliner is shot down by a MANPAD.
Demanding perfect safety is irrational. We could lose a commercial airliner to a missile every month and flying would still be safer than driving a car. People need to stop acting like headless chicken.
A deeper
Re:headless chicken (Score:3, Insightful)
Get real! There has never been a missile-based attack against a US airliner on US soil. To my knowledge, th
Re:headless chicken (Score:3, Insightful)
How does buying a high-tech boondoggle improve intelligence work, police work, or in-flight security?
This system is NOT a high tech boondoggle - it is based upon proven technology, a
Re:useless against low-tech threats (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, you shouldn't try to defend against such threats in the manner discussed. The wasted money would save more lives buying helicopters for rural areas to improve emergency response. The wasted money would save more lives being invested in immunization programs for children. The wasted money would save more lives in many, many ways I could list. To spend it on a very-low probability event with minimal effect (300 on a plane once in a while - if ever from such threats, 3000+ per month die in auto crashes every single month) is a gross waste of money. About the same number died in September of 2001 of car crashes as in the Twin Towers, yet no one bats an eye at the highway fatalities. Spending trillions based on that one event is completely irrational. Give me the same money, and I'd save more than 10 times the number of lives per year as lost on 9/11.
bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:useless against low-tech threats (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:useless against low-tech threats (Score:3, Funny)
Re:useless against low-tech threats (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not the question of simply hitting a target but doing damage. Oswald was what? 120 yards out, maybe? Shooting at a vehicle moving nearly straight away from him traveling at about 8 miles an hour shooting at a soft target. If rifles were too pathetic to pull that off we wouldn't even have firearms today. But in this case we're talking about doing enough damage to a commercial airliner to either destroy it, make it crash or kill pe
Re:useless against low-tech threats (Score:3, Insightful)
If acting alone, yes. However, this attack scales linearly with the number of terrorists involved... and getting together eight terrorists and training them to be good marksmen seems considerably easier than getting 20 terrorists to become pilots, which has been done. Plus you could always add more terrorists for redundancy.
Which would also make for a great acrony
Re:useless against low-tech threats (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt you would hear a bullet hit the plane while inside. The engines are extremely noisy and the whole plane is shaking. The first sign would probably be either the pilots noticing a loss of fuel, or an engine going out (not terribly uncommon even without terrorists - birds are far more dangerous to engines). The passengers would never know, and the pilots are trained to deal with both fuel leaks and loss of engines. Fuel leaks and engines failures already happen - terrorists adding a few more won't make a difference.
Besides, even when planes do lose and engine, they continue to fly 11 hours anyways [usatoday.com].
If a bullet hit the wing, nobody would know or care until the next ground inspection.
What about the cabin? There was even a show on Mythbusters where they showed that a bullet hole through the cabin wall would do just about nothing. No explosive decompression, no people being sucked out through a tiny hole - just a whistling sound where the hole is. They actually pressurized a plane and then shot it with a bullet, pretty neat.
Re:useless against low-tech threats (Score:4, Insightful)
.
Actually, the failure they are designed to protect against is much more energetic than a 50 cal bullet. Sure, I will agree with your general sentiment that a 50 is quite a destructive force. But it isn't actually even in the same league this particular equipment. So, without even addressing the rest of your comment, I can tell you that you're already off course right here.
I would also argue that with tank design and modern fuel additives even serveral dozen holes in the gas tanks of 0.2 inches would not present a critical hazzard to a modern liner, but I would have to admit that I have no scientific data on that particular topic.
Terrible idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Weaponizing civilian installations such as airports is a horrible idea. Sooner or later this system will accidentally shoot down a civilian aircraft. It's like weaponizing cars. You think there won't be mishaps? Increasing the number of ways an airplane can crash does not decrease the overall airplane accident rate.
Perhaps we should concentrate our efforts on finding people who want to commit homocidal acts and imprisoning them.
Or maybe stop international policies which cause people to want to commit homocidal acts against our airports.
While I'm at it...maybe we should stop trying to identify all the people that are not homocidal maniacs in a brain-dead attempt to find the homocidal maniacs by a process of elimination...
Does fear run your life?
Impractical (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't have an exact figure, but there are roughly 500 airports with commercial flights into and out of them in the United States. Some of them only have a couple of scheduled flights a day. At, say, $25 million a pop, it will cost $12.5 billion dollars to equip all those airports with such a system, plus operating costs (presumably you have to have at least one guy babysitting the thing).
And you pretty much have to install these things everywhere an airliner flies. Terrorists aren't stupid (well, actually the evidence is that most of them are, but that's another story. Assuming they're stupid isn't a good idea IMO). They'll realise that if these systems exist, they should pick somewhere that's unlikely to be equipped with it. So while the planes at LAX and La Guardia land and take off with laser-guarded safety, our friendly local terrorists cruise on down to Bum's Rush, Iowa, and take potshots at the one RJ that lands there every day.
But assume these things *do* get installed in every airport in the country. What do our terrorists do? They scrap plan A - missiles at airplane takeoff - and go to the equally lethal plan B, a couple of tonnes of explosives under the grandstand at the local high school football game. Or any one of plans C through ZZ. So we've blown 10 billion dollars to achieve very, very little.
This is almost a quintessential example of protecting against a movie plot threat [schneier.com].
Star wars (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, good idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, good idea... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yeah, good idea... (Score:3, Insightful)
That is ignoring the fact that a commerial (or e
Re:Yeah, good idea... (Score:3, Insightful)
Evil Emperor On Airport Security (Score:4, Funny)
They need something.... (Score:3, Funny)
spear and shield (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like Northrop Grunman is doing the same thing here, selling on one hand space laser gun that can destroy anything from outer space, and protective shield against laser gun on the other hand.
Someone is getting screwed somewhere.
Mmmmm (Score:3, Funny)
On the other hand, we have birds, flying past the detectors.
That's it... I'm bringing Jamaican Jerk spices when I fly next....
-m
You people just don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Brilliant.
Pictures (Score:3, Funny)
Stupid Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and regarding it's promising utility against shoulder-launched SAMs? Yes, I've seen the test films on laser-missile defense and, in a clear sky with no clutter, no ground interference, it can take out AAMs in a second or two...of course, if Terrorist Abdullah is going to fire a SAM-9, he's not going to wait until that 747 full of people is 2 miles away on a departing vector at 5000' giving the laser a nice multi-second chase solution. He's going to nail it when it's 1000 yards away, 150' in the air, loaded to the gills with fuel, engines on HOT, and the pilot has no altitude to cope with the consequences. This laser system going to detect, track, power up, and fire early enough to kill the warhead in that case? (Not to mention to track and compensate for, I dunno, that landing JAL 747 full of 300 Mall of America shoppers that's about to cross the beam during firing????) Um, no.
And can you imagine the maintenance contract on a ultra-high powered system with that sort of a hair-trigger, that has to basically sit "charged" 24/7? Egad. Yeah, I BET Northrop is hoping to sell a few of these.
Re:Terrorists? (Score:5, Insightful)
Presumably, the more likely concern would be shoulder-fired SAMs shot at approaching/departing aircraft. A system that could actually acquire and zap such a thing from anywhere around the airport grounds would have to be highly automated and very fast... I'm a little concerned about false positives. A lot, actually.
Re:Terrorists? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Terrorists? (Score:5, Insightful)
A false negative will be almost as bad as a false positive.
"It didn't detect that missile, the airliner got shot down, 300 people dead, $25B wasted....SHUT THE SYSTEM DOWN!"
Re:Terrorists? (Score:4, Insightful)
True, but... Since you don't have several hundred ballistic missiles being fired at each airport, every single day, which senario do you think is more likely, and more of a cause for concern?
Just wait....... (Score:2)
MANPADs (Score:5, Insightful)
You never know if the reporter got it right or if the publicist had an overactive imagination, but the big threat people are worried about is some dude hiding in the weeds and shooting one of those shoulder-launched heat-seeking missiles at an airliner trying to take off or land. There has been talk about equiping airliners with countermeasures against heat-seeking missiles.
The way the countermeasures are supposed to work is that most heat seekers are not full-fledged imaging devices but are instead rotating scan devices, and if you know the nature of the threat, you could pulse a heat source on and off to throw such a missile off target. I really think it is a stretch for a laser to stick in an airport control tower to actually shoot down a missile by zapping it with the laser. I think it would be a much safer thing, especially around a civilian airport, to spoof such a missle by pulsing it with IR to confuse the scanning seeker, or if that doesn't work, to blind an imaging sensor with a thermal pulse.
It kind of makes sense to provide a central, airport-based spoofer/blinder instead of having distributed spoofer/blinders on all of the aircraft. That avoids the old-aircraft retrofit problem, and the planes really only need this protection as they are landing and taking off -- those shoulder-launched missiles don't go very far. It would also make a lot of sense to provide protection against heat-seeking missiles because terrorists in theory could get a hold of them and they are small and portable to sneak around with. It would also make more sense that the laser system would be a spoofer/blinder kind of countermeasure rather than a Star Wars type of shoot-down ballistic missile defense.
Re:MANPADs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MANPADs (Score:3, Interesting)
Besides which, I'm sure a .50 caliber machine gun or even a automatic rifl
Re:Who needs this (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Who needs this (Score:5, Insightful)
Well it's good to see that genocide has finally lost that bad-boy image it got during the reigns of Hitler and Stalin...
Really, you can argue all you want about whom was there first and who stole what from whom, but what it comes down to at this point is that there are two groups of people who desperately want to protect the areas which have been their homelands since birth.
Neither group is going away. At this point it's coexist or cease to exist.
Re:Based on worthless technology? (Score:5, Insightful)
As to why rockets keep landing on Israel, well, consider how many people have been killed by all those unguided Kassam rockets. According to Wikipedia, thirteen people have been killed by Palestinian rocketeers after hundreds of tries. That's far less than one suicide bomber can do in a pizza joint. In the great scheme of things they're more of an annoyance than a danger - they're a psychological weapon. There's probably a hundred ways Israel can spend two billion dollars that will save more than thirteen lives over four years.
Re:Interesting, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
The real difficulty is keeping the beam perfectly focused on a moving target (need to re-adjust the focus, keep on precisely the same spot), probably flying during a heavy fog/rain (cannot use IR there).
Why does the beam need to be focused? Because the target energy density would need to be at least on the order of 30 GigaWatt/m^2 (and much more if you are dealing with hardened stuff: e.g. a Russian SS-18).
The work on Ballistic Missile shield
Not for ballistic missiles (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if this is just a fairy tale along the lines of the Alaska ballistic missile defense system, whose purpose seem to be propping up the starving defense industry and making it look like the Current Occupant is doing something.
Re:Not for ballistic missiles (Score:3, Informative)
I'm guessing that a falling RPG after it has been detonated(mid air) might have enough energy to harm a person/place/or thing, but the overal eff
Re:Not for ballistic missiles (Score:3, Interesting)
You say it like 'donating' to weapons development is a bad thing for the US. But when shit hits the fan, America will still have its weapon pipeline even while everything else is outsourced to China...
They aren't. I was merely pointing out why Reagan-style missile defences is hard to build.
Overall, deploying rocket interceptors (like in Patriot) o
Re:Not for ballistic missiles (Score:3)
I don't mind the spending itself so much as what it's spent on. The missile defense system was authorized in spite of being known in advance to not be workable, and authorized to bypass all the normal checks at each phase to proceed to the next phase. The missiles in the ground in Alaska are known to not work,
Re:Interesting, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
For instance, if it can only actively track and destroy one target at time, then fire two missiles concurrently.
Get a bunch of birds, paint their undersides with radar reflective coating, and let them loose near the system. Might be more fun that feeding alka seltzer to seagulls.
Re:Blaming the victim... (Score:3, Insightful)
Similarly, there are terror attacks (successful and foiled), against countries, whose foreign policies bully no one -- like Canada or India.
Huh? Canada, while not ever experiencing a terrorist attack in response to Canadian foreign policy, hasn't experienced a terrorist attack [wikipedia.org] since 1985 (Air India 182), not including violence deemed terrorist in nature against Cuban, Turkish and Indian politicians on Canadian soil, which brings me to my second point. You might want to ask Pakistan, Sri Lanka, or any Sik
Re:Feel the Force (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly what do you want Bush to do? His choices are:
a) Do nothing. In the case of North Korea, a synonym for this option is "diplomacy."
b) introduce UN sanctions, which Japan may do anyway, and which China will probably veto.
c) bomb North Korea, thus probably inciting another war in Southeast Asia.
d) invade North Korea. I can't imagine South Korea letting us, and North Korea also has a million-man