Factory Testing of Airborne Laser Cannon Completed 568
Acid-F1ux writes "Lockheed Martin has completed factory testing of the optical benches for the Airborne Laser's Beam Control/Fire Control (BC/FC) system. The Airborne Laser (ABL) is the first megawatt-class laser weapon system to be carried on a specially configured 747-400F aircraft, designed to autonomously detect, track and destroy hostile ballistic missiles."
Ballistic? (Score:0, Insightful)
TWW
More Info? (Score:3, Insightful)
Does anyone know whther this is the same thing?
It seems kind of useless if you need that much raw material, you'd only get one shot per plane.
Do they have "friendly missile detectors"? (Score:2, Insightful)
does it leave the friendly ballistic missiles alone?
Re:747-400F (Score:1, Insightful)
As for how wasteful it would be to deploy it, all you have to do is consider how wasteful the entire missile defense program is in general, and it makes perfect sense. Building this part of the program will funnel money not only to Lockheed Martin, but to the producers of jet fuel.
In any case, it's unlikely anyone with a significant number of ballistic missiles is going to attack the US, and if Russia or China did launch a massive attack, none of the anti-missile technologies we're spending so much money on would be effective enough to make any difference. The military is just continuing a long tradition of planning to fight the last war, in this case the Cold War.
On the other hand, they're determined to spend lots of money, and throwing a trillion dollars at trying to find a way to prevent a wave of suicide bombings before they start probably won't have very good results either. Plus the technology they created for that would have us all reaching for the tinfoil hats.
Re:747-400F (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhmm... NO. In this case, they are working towards the next war, the rogue nation with a highly limited number of fairly crude ballistic missiles. Our experience during the cold war proved that while the consequences of major nuclear war are very high, the probability is rather low. The exact opposite is true of the rogue nation/terrorist group scenario.
Autonomous? (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyone else have the willies that the thing is autonomous? Last I heard this thing had some serious range and could heat up stuff pretty hot. What if it misses? As it is there is nobody to blame, just a plane doing all the work. Its kind of hard to court marial an aeroplane.
Maybe it would be better if it autonomously detected and tracked, then popped a windows popup that said "Would you like to have being destroying a ballistic missile now Yes/no?". Put a noob in front of the monitor and you're done.
Re:747-400F (Score:3, Insightful)
And something we have habitually done. Look into the Strategic Air Command, or just watch Dr. Strangelove.
KFG
Re:Waste of time and money (Score:2, Insightful)
We can combat this two ways: kill everyone who doesn't like America, or make America the good guy again by improving the lives of people. And not killing them in the process.
Re:747-400F (Score:4, Insightful)
So, should we continue down the path of no missle defense system at all? No.
It seems to me that this system is the most versatile & effective thing anyone has come up with so far. Since the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction requires a proactive approach (defense & offense) we had better get on the horse and start developing defenses such as this.
One of governments primary responsibilities is protection of the people. Even if spending 500 billion on this only saves one city, it's worth it. Plus, there is a deterrent factor there for those nations with only a couple of shots. With a system in place, they can't be sure if they will successfully strike or not. If they don't, they're doubly screwed.
Lockheed Skunk Works pwnz Wright Brothers (Score:2, Insightful)
U-2 Shot down over Soviet Union 1 May 1960.
subtract "almost 50 years"...
Wright Brothers were still working on wheeled landing gears in 1910...
Lockheed Skunk Works rules!!!
Re:Project Website (Score:2, Insightful)
What an awful web site. It's forced into a tiny 600 pixel frame, the gifs are badly dithered, the HTML is W3C noncompliant, and worst of all, the shopping cart isn't built yet. How do they expect to stay in business? I haven't seen such a pathetic ecommerce site since 1999.
Re:747-400F (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Eventually rogue nations will begin acquiring (either by purchasing or developing) ballistic missles capable of hitting the U.S. or our allies. Eventually someone will try to use them.
Yeah, because rogue nations are suicidal.
My major concern is that some terror group (you know, those guys that hate us and are willing to die for their cause) gets ahold of a warhead and drives it someplace interesting. Not sure how a missile defense shield would help that.
no (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:747-400F (Score:5, Insightful)
The consequences for a so-called rogue nation are actually higher than they would be for a classic cold war confrontation. There would be no reason for the US to not respond in full force because the "rogue nation" will have shot its wad with the first salvo.
The scenario you posit requires a leader of a nation to be so completely irrational as to initiate an action that guarantees the complete and total destruction of their entire country. There is absolutely no evidence that any leader in the world is this irrational. Individuals like Hussein, Qaddafi, Il Jong or Castro may be vicious, sociopathic, megalomaniacal killers but they have never shown an indifference to their personal self-preservation.
Backtracking a ballistic missile launch to its source is now a trivial exercise. The US response would be overwhelming and final. Nothing would remain of the "rogue country" except blast glass.
On the other hand, smuggling a nuclear bomb into the US in a shipping container, for example, leaves no mathematically certain way to track it to its source. It's also much cheaper and simpler. This is the real threat from terrorists or "rogue nations." And it is a threat for which we are woefully unprepared.
One of the many reasons I think the Bush Administration is dangerous is the continued insistence on missile defense at the expense of defending the sort of threats that have already killed thousands of Americans. A few tens of millions of dollars could allow the installation of radiation detectors for every point of entry for Manhattan (it's sometimes good to be an island) and most of New York City. Instead we'll waste billions defending a threat that doesn't exist. This is irrational. Faith-based defensed is insane.
Back to planes constantly in the air? (Score:4, Insightful)
A better use of this would be as a battlefield deployment. Something like the first Gulf War and defense against SCUDs. Not sure what the range is on this laser, so you might have to be pretty close to the source which might make this impractical.
Re:Waste of time and money (Score:3, Insightful)
In the case of Kim Jong Il, we probably can't do #2. He is not ready to accept anyone's assistance as far as improving the lives of his people.
Re:747-400F (Score:3, Insightful)
If I were a rogue nation or terrorist group, why the hell would I go through all the trouble of developing balistic missiles when I would probably stand a better chance of developing a more covert weapon delivery system.
Balistic missile tests get noticed, much like nuclear tests get noticed. If I were planning to attack the US or Europe with WMD, I'd imagine I'd have a much better chance of success if I assembled smuggled components in the target country. Balistic missiles are only good as a defense and use in the MAD doctrine. No one with balistic missiles would try to launch at us, unless we were already on the brink of war. We'd know where the launch came from and be able to HBomb them back to the stone age.
The parent poster's point is valid. It is Cold War thinking to believe that someone is going to pop up with a balistic missile one day and lob a nuclear device at us without warning. I highly doubt China would up and start shooting at their best customers and the source of much of their growth. Developed and developing nations don't want to go to war. If India and Pakistan are even trying to put past conflicts behind and look towards the future, I think there is a good chance that Nukes and balistic missiles aren't the threat.
That's the reason that people think missile defense is a pork barrel project that should be killed. The return on investment in terms of security sucks. It's expensive and only deals with contingencies that are unlikely in the future. Terrorists turn passenger planes into balistic missiles because it's easier than building one under the radar of the global intelligence community.
We'd be much safer spending that money on intelligence gathering and monitoring entry points into the country. Bush and Co. have been pushing missile defense since before 9/11, which makes sense given the number of accusations that the cabinet hasn't been able to see past a Cold War strategy. Missile defense is dumb because it's a costly, misplaced priority.
We're spending this much on missile defense when so many container ships come into the country big enough to house all the finished parts you need to assemble WMD in the US. I'd rather see those ports secured and our borders protected, and given the current anemic funding for those activities due to the huge freaking budget deficit, I think it's idiotic to support missile defense.
Just my US$.02.
Re:747-400F (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not that they sucidial - it's that the leaders are not rational. It is very difficult to reason with someone that doesn't not percieve the world in the same way that you do. North Korea is a very good example of this at work.
Nice, but boost phase missile defense doesnt work (Score:3, Insightful)
You can get the American Physical Society's report on boost phase missile defense here [aps.org] - its in lots of pdfs.
There is a lot of cool stuff in here. Airborne lasers are covered on pages 293 - 342.
Here are their conclusions from the executive summary
"Our main conclusions are the following:
1.Boost-phase defense against intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) hinges on the burn time of the attacking missile and the speed of the defending interceptor rocket. Defense of the entire United States against liquid-propellant ICBMs, such as those deployed early by the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China (China), launched from countries such as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Iran, may be technically feasible using terrestrial (land-, sea-, or air-based) interceptors. However, the interceptor rockets would have to be substantially faster (and therefore necessarily larger) than those usually proposed in order to reach the ICBMs in time from international waters or neighboring countries willing to host the interceptors. The system would also require the capability to cope with at least the simplest of countermeasures.
2.Boost-phase defense of the entire United States against solid-propellant ICBMs, which have shorter burn times than liquid-propellant ICBMs, is unlikely to be practical when all factors are considered, no matter where or how interceptors are based. Even with optimistic assumptions, a terrestrial-based system would require very large interceptors with extremely high speeds and accelerations to defeat a solid-propellant ICBM launched from even a small country such as North Korea. Even such high-performance interceptors could not defend against solid-propellant ICBMs launched from Iran, because they could not be based close enough to disable the missiles before they deployed their munitions.
3. If interceptor rockets were based in space, their coverage would not be constrained by geography, but they would confront the same time constraints and engagement uncertainties as terrestrial-based interceptors. Consequently, their kill vehicles (the final homing stage of the interceptors) would have to be similar in size to those of terrestrial-based interceptors. With the technology we judge could become available within the next 15 years, defending against a single ICBM would require a thousand or more interceptors for a system having the lowest possible mass and providing realistic decision time. Deploying such a system would require at least a five- to tenfold increase over current U.S. space-launch rates.
4. The Airborne Laser now under development could have some capability against liquid-propellant missiles, but it would be ineffective against solid-propellant ICBMs, which are more heat-resistant.
5.The existing U.S. Navy Aegis system, using an interceptor rocket similar to the Standard Missile 2, should be capable of defending against short- or medium-range missiles launched from ships, barges, or other platforms off U.S. coasts. However, interceptor rockets would have to be positioned within a few tens of kilometers of the launch location of the attacking missile.
6.A key problem inherent in boost-phase defense is munitions shortfall: although a successful intercept would prevent munitions from reaching their target, it could cause live nuclear, chemical, or biological munitions to fall on populated areas short of the target, in the United States or other countries. Timing intercepts accurately enough to avoid this problem would be difficult."
Re:747-400F (Score:2, Insightful)
This was certainly true during the height of the Cold War.
The cost of keeping 1 747-400 airborne is chickenfeed compared to the cost of keeping 50 B-52's airborne at all times.