More on JSF Laser System 422
An anonymous reader writes "Seems Lockheed Martin has won a contract to equip future versions of the Joint Strike Fighter with a 100-kW laser. Housed in a dome within the aircraft, the laser's turret would emerge for firing [sound familiar?], and the laser itself is spec'ed to achieve airborne and ground kills at a distance of more than six miles. The problem? According to this Aviation Week article, Lockheed Martin has to figure out how to dissipate 900 kilowatts of heat. Maybe the Finnish airforce could value-add to the OEM model." We mentioned this earlier.
Popcorn anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
Time to buy some really good sunglasses (Score:2, Insightful)
Beginning of the end of US aerial dominance (Score:3, Insightful)
Outranged outgunned outnumbered airplanes are NOT what we want. We are trading decades or our airpower in for a few measly years of SAM and ground strike invulnerability. This direction is NOT smart for us.
Re:Can somebody give me an idea... (Score:3, Insightful)
A calorie is the amount of energy to raise 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius and there are 4.19 Joules in a calorie. Therefore, 100 kilowatts = 100 000 W = 100 000 J/s ~ 25 000 calories/s which means we could raise 25 kg of water by 1 degree in 1 second. Now this would have to depend on the surface area of the target - it could be 2.5 kilograms of water by 10 degrees in a second or
Re:Not all THAT much heat. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Time to buy some really good sunglasses (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A sophisticated way of relating to others? (Score:3, Insightful)
Christianity is a religion of violence, historically spread through military conquest. The Catholic Church basically offers two choices for the "pagan:" conversion or death.
Jesus Christ can now take his place beside Charles Manson, another leader of a dangerous and bloody cult.
Jesus (and Mohammed) your grasp of religious history is awful. Islam's history of violence pales in comparison to the millions killed in the various heresies, pogroms and Inquisitions the Holy Roman Apolostic Cathlolic Church has either directed or tacitly supported since the Council of Nicaea. Men were burned alive at the stake for merely saying that Jesus may have been part human and part divine; entire cities were sacked and burned because the inhabitants dared to have a different definition of the Trinity than those in power. The rise of Islamic Fundamentalism dates from the late 1700s. The rise of Christian Fundamentalism can be dated from the end of the Roman Empire, when the academies of the ploytheistic religions were forced to shut down.
All religions have been turned to the uses of power and violence. Singling out Islam is part of the problem.
Re:A sophisticated way of relating to others? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A sophisticated way of relating to others? (Score:3, Insightful)
Islam is a religion of violence, historically spread through military conquest. The Koran basically offers two choices for the "infidel:" conversion or death.
Dead wrong.
Go find a copy of the Koran (hint, it's on-line several places) and find me a single passage that says unbelievers must be killed. Guess what: it ain't in there.
Quite the opposite. What you'll find is lots of statements about how Allah will punish the unbelievers, and quite a few that tell the believers to take care not to incite the unbelievers, but to live alongside them in peace, unless the unbelievers try to stop the Muslims from worshipping Allah.
And history bears this out as well. Historically, Islam is a far less violent religion than Christianity. For example, consider Moorish Spain. Although the conquest of Spain was violent (that being the accepted manner of expanding your territory), the Muslims at the time did *not* force the Christians and Jews to convert. In fact, from the point of view of the Jews, the Moorish occupation was a golden age, one of the few times that they were pretty much completely free of oppression. Not only were they not killed, or forced to convert, both Jews and Christians managed to gain high ranks within the government.
When the Christians finally managed to eject the Moors, *they* gave all non-believers three choices: convert, leave or die. And they often neglected to offer the second option. You may have heard of a little bash called the "Spanish Inquisition".
I'm not slamming Christianity; I'm Christian. I'm making the point that the teachings of Islam are *not* inherently violent. Everyone knows that Christ preached turning the other cheek, and yet supposedly Christian people have repeatedly perverted his doctrine. Islam teaches that violence against another man is only permitted when that man is trying to stop you from following Islam.
There are a some violent and despicable people in the world who happen to be Muslims and have chosen to use the rhetoric of "Jihad" (specifically, the lesser Jihad, which is the fight for freedom from religious oppression) to justify their hatred and their murders. The term doesn't fit the application, but that has never bothered propagandists.
You can't negotiate with people who want nothing more than to see you dead.
True, but keep in mind that the number of Muslims who feel that way about Israel is small relative to the Muslim population. Don't try to smear all Muslims with that same tar. Most of the Arab world has sympathy for their Palestinian brethren, but that's a far cry from wanting to see all Israelis (or all non-believers) dead.
As for the Israel/Palestine conflict, neither side is totally right, and neither side is totally wrong. The Palestinians have a legitimate beef about wanting their land back, but they should have figured out by now that they're not going to get all of it back and been content to accept some of the numerous offers to share. Their use of terror tactics is despicable in the extreme. On the Israeli side, their deep hatred ensures that there will never be any kind of peaceful settlement, and they're guilty of frequently applying excessive and indiscriminate force. Israel was the embattled underdog, trying to pull something good together after thousands of years of oppression but they've turned into a bully that causes many of their own problems by overreacting.
In short, it's a mess caused by hatred and selfishness on both sides, and although the debate is often wrapped in religious clothes, the core problems are racism and land, not doctrine.
its so ironic... (Score:1, Insightful)
Its all really quite sad, and to hell with it all, its their problem and not ours, and its up to them to fix it. Give the arabs a state, just like the world game the jews a state. If they cant understand it then they are as bad as AH. him self.
Hey, just give a a few E's and LSD to every one and party one that would fix it all.
Easy... (Score:1, Insightful)
All they need is an eximer frozen in it's excited state. It's like lasing a stick of dynamite.
Very large power? Portable? Limited firing time? Unlimited range? All you'd need is a large spinning mirror and you could vaporize a human target from space.
Re:A sophisticated way of relating to others? (Score:2, Insightful)
A year ago, I would have agreed with you completely. In fact, your reply is so reasonable and lucid, I still have a hard time disagreeing with it.
And I will agree that my reaction here is born more from emotion than logic. I teach at a college in Japan, where I watched the exultation of the Muslim community after 9/11. Maybe it was the assorted bomb threats that got phoned in to the registrar's office in Arabic-accented Japanese that pushed me over the edge. (It's a secular college that was founded by Christian missionaries long, long ago.)
Having lived abroad for almost ten years now, and marrying a woman whose native language is not English, I've lost that subtle racism that most liberals, and I am one, have -- the idea that people born in the third world somehow have an excuse not to behave in a civilized fashion.
Looking at my own history, my grandparents lived in Appalachia, without benefit of indoor plumbing or electricity. Possums formed a staple of their diet. Somehow, I don't recall them chanting in the streets for anyone's blood.
France helped my country throw out the British, and they did it for purely selfish reasons. Without the French, it's entirely likely that Washington would not have survived. After 1776, France didn't stick around and send aid and workers to help us "nation build." With their purposes accomplished, they got out. You know what? I'm still grateful for the help. Left to our own devices, fractious and quarreling colonies somehow managed to have a meeting and come to an agreement about how to live together. We did it, France did it, England did it. Australia did it, India did it.. We're not unique. The list of people who have found themselves in chaos, had a meeting, made agreements and lived by them is quite a long one. When they do, we refer to it as a "civilization."
Afghanistan could have done the same thing. We built the mujahadeen purely so the Soviets would have a thorn in their side, and then we left. Fine. There's not a reason in the world that the Afghani people couldn't have had a meeting and worked it out.
Instead, they chose to run around the streets beating their women and staging public executions. They wasted time in pointless feuding and religious nonsense that threw away their one chance at a viable nation. They submitted to the rule of the Taliban, despite the fact that they had just ejected a far greater power, the Soviets.
Currently, the provisional government of Afghanistan has a myriad of problems. No agriculture, no utilities, no infrastructure of any kind. They apparently can't do anything, but theyve somehow managed to reinstitute the Office of Vice. Once again, religious police walk the streets of Afghanistan making sure women wear their veils.
Sure, Cletus, we ain't got no food, no water, no plumbin', but dammit, them wimmen are wearin' them veils.
The original poster argues that this is somehow America's fault, that the 3,000 dead in New York deserved to die.
Complete and utter bull. The Arabs are not the only people with grievances. If anyone should be bombing American cities, it should be the Cherokee and Lakotas. Somehow, I don't see the Native Americans doing anything more violent than holding sit-ins at Alcatraz. Furthermore, historical grievances do not excuse atrocities. If they did, then by all rights my family should start bombing London and assassinating anyone named "Campbell."
But the Arabic world in general is hardly a charity case. They've been flooded with oil money for almost five decades now. A reasonable people would have taken the oil money and built prosperous nations.
I still can't get over the fact that the first request of the Kuwaiti ruling family from the Army core of Engineers was to rebuild the royal palace, complete with solid-gold faucets, even before basic life-saving services had been restored.
I'm sorry. Muslim behavior has pushed me over the edge on this one. The dancing in the streets after 9/11. The joy that I saw among the Muslims here at the sight of people jumping from windows. The utter and complete lack of condemnation from the Muslim community until only recently. The meeting in London last month "celebrating" 9/11 and vowing to bring England under Sharia law. The fact that the Daniel Pearl murder video is reported to be a best-seller in the Arabic world. The Palestinian infant dressed up as a suicide bomber. (I don't care if the black-oil aliens from the X-Files have taken over. There is no excuse for the babarism of teaching children to blow themselves up.)
I look at the Middle East and I see Isreal, with no oil money but significant American support. I see a democracy with reasonable people who have gone from decimation to prosperity after WWII. I see Taiwan, with greater problems, accomplishing the same thing.
Then I see the Arab countries, awash in oil money, ruled by feudal lords, stricken by poverty, beating their women, chanting in the streets for blood, supporting people whose main goal in life is the death of civilians.
I use to make excuses for these people, but no longer. It's long past time for these people to grow up, let their women come out from under the rock, and step into the sunshine. It's time for the Muslim community to live like human beings and quit making excuses for the homicidal maniacs in their midst.
Imagine the response from the pulpits across Christendom if Jerry Falwell had blown up the great Buddhist Temple in Nara, claiming he was following the Old Testment instruction to smash idols, claiming he was drawing vengeance for the thousands of martyred Christians here, including the American pilots who were vivisected just up the road from me in WWII. I'd begin every day here by saying: "Hi. I'm from America. I'm a Christian. Falwell is a monster. He's completely wrong." CNN would be one nonstop show of Christian ministers lining up to denounce him.
I have yet to hear the same response from Islam. Bin Laden appears to be a popular hero in the Middle East, a modern-day psychotic bloody version of Robin Hood. I've heard a few qualified, mealy-mouthed responses from the Muslim community here in America about how "violence is not the best solution." What I have not heard is the shocked thundering raging denouncement and the commensurate police activity coming from Islam if the situation were truly what you say it is.
I'm sorry, but the Muslim community has burned through their "benefit of the doubt." Until they start acting like civilized human beings, I'm not going to pretend that they are.