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."
Who needs this (Score:1, Insightful)
Protect the Airports? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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:So, (Score:2, Insightful)
It may affect visibility, and if you're outside you might get wet.
Do they work? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Do they work? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Pointless. (Score:5, Insightful)
Does it work *now*? (Score:4, Insightful)
Give it time. Some of these defense mechanisms WILL work. And work quite well.
Failure modes (Score:2, Insightful)
The cure might be worse than the disease...
Re:Based on worthless technology? (Score:2, Insightful)
I was wondering how the advancement of high energy laser beams powerful enough and accurate enough to destroy "rockets, mortars, artillery shells, unmanned aerial vehicles, short-range ballistic missiles, as well as cruise missiles" has managed to progress this far without anyone hearing about it. Also, if this technology actually works, why are any of the tests by North Korea bothering anybody near them. I mean, if you can shoot anything down with a laser, who gives a flip if they lob a small rocket or two towards you.
You have, of course, hit the mark with the Palestinian rocket issue. The entire west bank border is only 300km long. For less than $2B they could protect the entire border from rocket attacks. Which means that either (a) Israel doesn't care about bombings or (b) it doesn't work with shit. I'm betting on (b).
useless against low-tech threats (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:cheaper way (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:MANPADs (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't see why you think this is a stretch. This kind of system has already been tested against mortar rounds and Katyushas, and it seems to work. With the right sensors there's no reason this can't be done.
Re:semantics (Score:1, Insightful)
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].
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.
another boondoggle (Score:1, Insightful)
how about taking the $150 million for this toy and use it to actually improve airport security? could hire a personal valet for every passenger for that price.
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: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:cheaper way (Score:2, Insightful)
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 lasers involved building a megawatt-range IR deuterium fluoride laser for the cost of about $1,000,000,000. While N-G's local shields would deal with softer targets at closer range, still, expect the cost of a 100kW laser alone to be on the order of 10-100 million. Steep price to pay per airfield, given that one cannot use the darn thing during fog/rain.
Re:Give Israel +1 moderation (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, good idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
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!"
Feel the Force (Score:1, Insightful)
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 Sikh about that lack of bullying thing [countrystudies.us] you're claiming for India.
Re:useless against low-tech threats (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:useless against low-tech threats (Score:2, Insightful)
True, but does that mean you shouldn't try to defend against such threats?
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.
Have you ever watched aircraft coming in to land? Trying to hit a specific spot with a single bullet would be amazingly hard.
If it is landing, it is already landing. Taking out an engine, given a good pilot, would cause a serious pucker factor, but no crash. And remember...you have to take out this engine with one bullet.
If it is taking off, just about all civilian airliners can continue the climb minus an engine. Climbing out of range. Again, raising the pucker factor, but no crash.
Neither do illusions that an overpriced ray-gun is going to make air traffic safer.
Say that again after the first airliner is shot down by a MANPAD.
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: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
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.
Re:A license to print money... (Score:5, Insightful)
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 army.
So what would you do?
Re:A license to print money... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Protect the Airports? (Score:2, Insightful)
If a large explosion occurs on an airplane, everyone in the plane will die (or be severely injured), as well as whatever the plane hits on the way down, which, in the vicinity of an airport, may be other expensive planes or the densely populated airport.
Other more realistic laser defense systems... (Score:2, Insightful)
and the laser stun gun [hsvt.org]
One can defend runways and power plants from the much more likely event of lightning strikes. The other can give police a non-lethal recourse when dealing with ongoing street crime.
A frickin' laser defense system to stop missiles?
For what this costs we could have better-trained eyes on the ground and a lot more of them. Terrorism is composed almost entirely of the human element, technology is merely a means to an end. We can keep building gadgets to stop their gadgets and never see an end to the arms race, or we can better prepare our specialists to deal with the human element directly.
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 problem is that the tax payer is supposed to foot the bill for all of this: taxes already subsidize airports, fuel, airline bailouts, airport safety, and now airport missile defense systems? Where is it going to end? I say: leave it all to the free market. Airlines and airports can figure out the right tradeoff between safety, security, ticket prices, and passenger willingness to fly. If flying safely enough becomes too expensive, we should all just stop flying.
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?
bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:useless against low-tech threats (Score:2, Insightful)
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:useless against low-tech threats (Score:2, Insightful)
A. Ones ability to shoot the plane has a lot to do with his orientation to the plane.
B. Even assuming it was necessary to hit all four engines, who says you can only have one shooter? Is there some rule against multiple shooters?
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.
You people just don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Brilliant.
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.)
Re:cheaper way (Score:2, Insightful)
"Which country did we invade to explain 9/11, USS Cole, etc?" Stop inventing the strawmen, and answer straight.
Assuming you accept U.S. government propaganda like the faked Bin Laden video tape, then the countries we invaded to provoke these attacks were Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
If you are a little less gullible, then you can figure out that it was a long pattern of U.S. foreign policy since the end of WW II. Just naming the highlights, we have the overthrow of the democratically elected Iranian government and the installation of the Shah; the slavish financial and military support for Israel and its genocidal campaigns against the Palestinians including the veto of over 200 U.N. resolutions against Israel; the support of various hated puppet regimes in the Middle East such as the Saudis; directly causing the deaths of 100,000's of Iraqi's after the first gulf war; the promised but withheld support of the Kurds and Shi'ites in their bid to overthrow Hussein after said war; etc.
I could go on, but, unless you have your head in the sand or other places, you get the point.
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:MANPADs (Score:5, Insightful)
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 inefficient.
I know WHY the govt would rather spend your money on a high profile l33t laser, but in logical terms, its an insane waste of money best used elsewhere.
Re:Who needs this (Score:0, Insightful)
It's really that simple. The terrorism practiced by the palestinian militants is merely asymmetric warfare, if they had Apaches, F-16s and artillery they'd use those instead.
Re:Suicide bombers in Cessnas (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think you can turn a rich man into a suicide bomber/pilot. You might get that man to give over his money, but when you get down to it, rich people aren't the footsoldier types. For one, they tend to be grateful for their circumstances. For another, they tend not to want to stand in harm's way. Imagine Al Franken doing a ride-along in Iraq with a US Army convoy. He's a wealthy comedian-turned-politician and he just doesn't want to take that kind of chance with his life.
The fight is at the flight schools, we didn't detect 19 of them, but we did detect one of them. As for the U-Haul full of explosives, well, if it wasn't for the LA Times and New York Times alerting the enemy to the SWIFT program, we would have had a better chance of nabbing them at the rental counter. Now the enemy will just use your stolen credit card/identity to rent a vehicle and fill it with stinking death.
Re:Yeah, good idea... (Score:3, Insightful)
That is ignoring the fact that a commerial (or even GA) aircraft has a vastly different radar signature than a MANPAD missile, so the aquisition radar ought to be able to easily discriminate between the two.
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:headless chicken (Score:2, Insightful)
"Demanding perfect safety is irrational" is just the argument used against you just a couple of posts back.
Nobody said that this defense is perfect. But the point is that, if, as you argue, we "just stop flying", our economy would tank in a week! "We could lose a commercial airliner to a missile every month and flying would still be safer than driving a car." Yeah, because nobody would be flying! So we need something that will make the masses of air travelers feel that there is a system in place that will safeguard them, so they will keep flying.
This system is based upon technology that works. We have had the technology to track fast moving objects like artillery shells for over forty years. Where do you think counter-battery artillery fire came from? From the ability to use radar to find out where the shells were fired from. This takes the counter-artillery defense one step further, from "find the bastards shooting at our guys and kill 'em" to "Let's stop the artillery fire from killing our guys, first, BEFORE we kill the bastards!"
On slash dot, just a few weeks ago, there was a story that linked to some cool footage of what was described as a defense shield against anti-tank fire. It was a short range radar that could detect incoming fire, real time, and direct laser fire or anti-missle missles at the incoming round to detonate the warhead before it struck the tank. It was not described as ready for prime-time, but it is apparantly pretty advanced in development.
This argument is ironic - most of the time, the government gets pilloried because, like with 9/11, it didn't do enough to protect us ahead of time. Now, when they really have an opportunity to buy a system being developed by a commercial outfit to protect us BEFORE an airliner gets shot down, you say they're wasting taxpayer money!
Talk about headless chickens!
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:bullshit (Score:2, Insightful)
No kidding. I'm sure it looks very straight to you, sitting wherever you are. Try looking through a nice 10x scope at a moving target. I'd be amazed if you could keep the weapon still enough to actually see the plane, much less target some nice vital spot. Here's a hint for you: when you see the crosshairs tracking the target in the movies.....that's not real. In the real world, it's very difficult, and more so if the target is :
A. Moving
B. Far away
People have been tossing around figures like 1,000M as though it were trivial. I'd feel pretty safe sitting in a lawn chair at 1,000M and letting you run through those 10 rounds shooting at me, particularly in around 20 seconds. Because long-range shooting is a lot harder than it looks.
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.
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: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, there hasn't even been one in Israel. This just isn't a real-world problem. And if it were, chances are that investing the money in better police work and perimeter security would be a whole lot more effective than these high tech gadgets.
"Demanding perfect safety is irrational" is just the argument used against you just a couple of posts back.
Indeed. Trouble is: that poster was using it in the wrong context. He was basically saying that we should deploy this system because even if it isn't 100% effective, it is still useful, and that argument is just nonsense.
But the point is that, if, as you argue, we "just stop flying", our economy would tank in a week!
If people actually stopped flying cold within a week, it would, simply because there are no alternatives right now. But people wouldn't do that even if there were on-going terrorist attacks. In the long term, there is just no question: if current commercial air travel is inherently too prone to terrorist attacks, we need to stop flying and let the market find other solutions. Big economies can function quite well without air travel.
This argument is ironic - most of the time, the government gets pilloried because, like with 9/11, it didn't do enough to protect us ahead of time.
The government "got pilloried" on 9/11 for the specific and avoidable ways in which they screwed up: lousy intelligence work, lousy police work, lousy in-flight security, lousy border security.
To my knowledge, nobody criticized them for failing to waste billions of dollars on high-tech boondoggles.
Re:useless against low-tech threats (Score:2, Insightful)
The shooter only needs to fire a few times to achieve a reasonable chance of success...
Re:headless chicken (Score:2, Insightful)
Nope, but that doesn't mean there couldn't be. Again, goes back to what I said: For once people are looking towards a future threat, not reacting - and who are you to recognize what terrorist groups are looking at for the future?
"because even if it isn't 100% effective, it is still useful, and that argument is just nonsense."
BS, that argument is NOT nonsense! If we wanted every defense system to work perfectly, we'd never mount any defenses at all! There isn't an anti-aircraft defense system that is 100% effective, yet air forces the world over deploy billions of dollars worth of anti-aircraft defense system every year.
"...if current commercial air travel is inherently too prone to terrorist attacks, we need to stop flying and let the market find other solutions. Big economies can function quite well without air travel."
I'd ask businesses that depend on air freight to get products around the world overnight just how well their businesses could function. I think your head is in left field somewhere. The US economy had serious problems from just a week's worth of no air travel after 9/11.
"The government "got pilloried" on 9/11 for the specific and avoidable ways in which they screwed up: lousy intelligence work, lousy police work, lousy in-flight security, lousy border security."
I think that is just what I said - for not doing enough to protect us ahead of time. The details you mention just illustrate my point.
"To my knowledge, nobody criticized them for failing to waste billions of dollars on high-tech boondoggles."
Wrong again, they get criticized for that all the time. Remember the Osprey?
I'd rather the US government spend those billions setting up defense systems to protect airports here in the US, rather than sending them to ungrateful dictators that hate us anyway. At least the money stays here and employs US citizens.
This system is NOT a high tech boondoggle - it is based upon proven technology, and smarter heads than yours or mine have access to better info than we do to determine whether this is needed for US deployment.
THAT decision hasn't been made yet - according to the article, it is being developed by the manufacturer in hopes that the US, Israel, or other governments may find it useful.
And the decision will be made at a pay grade higher than yours or mine - unless your name is George W. Bush! (or whomever his successor may be)
Re:Yeah, good idea... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:useless against low-tech threats (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A license to print money... (Score:2, Insightful)
Well of course, but bear in mind that although we employed different strategies we were playing on the same field, by the same rules. The terrorists aren't.
What did they spend to bring down the WTC? What have we spent in response? Even a solid economy can be destroyed if you spend like a bunch of drunken sailors and we have transfered much of our economy from real wealth to paper "wealth" based on confidence, not "stuff."
There was this day in 1929 when the confidence went away. My grandparents were 20 years old on that day. My parents grew up in its aftermath (you can read a short description of conditions on my family's farm in the book Finding Dr. Schatz. Ask your library to buy a copy) and so, as a result, to an extent, did I. I have no illusions about the ultimate strength of our economy. In some ways we are stronger now than we were in the 20's, but in many ways we have made ourselves far, far weaker as well. Our strength is brittle and may thus be shattered.
I might also argue that it wasn't really the Soviet Union's economic philosophy that caused its collapse, but rather its social philosophy, which in response to the terrorist attacks we are daily moving closer and closer to adopting.
KFG
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.
Re:A license to print money... (Score:2, Insightful)
I bite my thumb at them. They may shoot me while I do it, but they will have only my body, not my soul.
Freedom is not free. It has been paid for with the blood of patriots, but most of those patriots were not soldiers in the field, but rather just ordinary members of We the People steadfastly going about their daily lives in stubborn independence, bowing to and before no man, even though it cost them their lives.
Most particularly not to mere presidents and Rent-A-Cops.
That has always been the foundation of America's strength. The Soviet Union did not fall because it ran out of money. It fell because it's people had nothing left to stand for. America had no economy and no military to speak of when a group of "backwoodsmen" defeated one of the finest professional armies in the world at Beamis Heights (you call it Saratoga). The Afghans have no money and no military to speak of, yet it takes all we can do just to keep the "Mayor of Kabul" (you call him the President of Afghanistan) alive.
Simply because they will not captiulate to an outside force. Not the British, not the Russians and not the Americans.
Even though it cost them their lives.
America is selling its freedom for "security" that no amount of money can buy, because we now live under the delusion that it is the security of our bodies that is at issue, when it is our spirit that is at stake.
If we lose our spirit we shall fall.
I believe that's why they call it "terrorism."
KFG
Re:bullshit (Score:1, Insightful)
and anyway, you dont neeed a SAM or anything else.
$400 -- 1.5 HP RC aircraft.
$150 -- C4 shaped charge
Downing an airliner with an RC aircraft by hitting the cockpit despite the laser shield : priceless.
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 acronym, RAIT: a Redundand Array of Inexpensive Terrorists!
(That said, I'm not much of a marksman myself, so I can't really judge whether it's feasible to hit a starting 747 at all.)
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 people on board (at the very least). First is the issue of being close enough for a light rifle with a high capacity clip, most posters who seem to know anything on the subject agree that an AR or AK doesn't have the distance or power to really do anything worth anyone's time to attempt. 308 or 30-06? Maybe, it has good range but I still have heavy doubts of it's ability to do more than kill a passenger inside the craft and that's going to take a very good shot. Semi-automatic is your best bet and 30-06 is about as good as it gets for the average guy on the street. Perhaps even 7.62x54 is a viable choice but you're just splitting hairs at that point considering what the target really is.
A 50 is too heavy to simply swing around the way you could with an AK. The range and accuracy is there but a single round to any vulnerable system is likely to do little damage. Planes simply wouldn't be viable transport if they were that fragile and getting off multiple shots in a small area of vulnerability at such a fast target would take more skill than any marksman I've ever seen or known. The idea of destroying an airliner in flight with small arms is laughable. It could be done on the ground but even then you'd have to have the range. Most airports I've ever been to have been large open areas. A guy running across the runway with a rifle would be easy to spot.
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, and smarter heads than yours or mine have access to better info than we do to determine whether this is needed for US deployment.
It doesn't matter how "proven" the technology works; even if the system shoots down missiles with 100% accuracy, it's still 0% effective against terrorism. Unlike combat situations, terrorists have a nearly unlimited number of options of killing and terrorizing populations; you simply cannot prevent terrorism by protecting asset after asset.
The only feasible solution to terrorism is politicial; force and high-tech gadgets will not work.
And the decision will be made at a pay grade higher than yours or mine - unless your name is George W. Bush! (or whomever his successor may be)
The decision will be made by all of us at the ballot box, and if you're smart, you join me in voting people like Bush out of office, people who waste our hard-earned money on boondoggles and pork for their buddies in industry.
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 incidental damage and by dust and dirt on its surface.
"Oh yea, if its in Wikipedia it MUST be true.
Even if it is entirely accurate, the Wikipedia statement only says the defects make the mirror "less effective". So what? That could mean that only 98% of the incident radiation is reflected instead of 100%. You are making a completely illogical inference that a less effective mirror at any level means a destroyed missle. This is not necessarily the case.
This is another example of the government spending hundreds of millions on high-tech, gee whiz systems that only give the appearance of protection, and that can be rendered useless by low-cost adaptation by the attackers. Lasers big enough to insure destruction of an in-flight missle are so powerful they have to be pulse lasers, not continuous lasers. Pulse lasers have to be recharged before the next firing. All attackers have to do is put two, three, or five missles in the air at the same time to make this system embarrassingly useless.
Also, this system protects to 5 kilometers? That's less than 3 miles. That means that attackers can render this multi-million dollar gee whiz Buck Rogers laser shield useless by the no-cost adaptation of simply firing 3 or 4 missles at a plane four miles from the runway (Does anyone really think missle-firing terrorists are going to drive into the airport parking lot to fire a missle anyway?). Sounds like a total waste of money and effort that would better be spent in developing humint in terrorist organizations.