Air Force Looks To Laser-Proof Its Weapons 347
slugo writes "This wired.com article has probably the coolest laser destruction video you have ever seen. The video shows the Israeli and US Air Force working on laser defense systems. The US Air Force is starting to look for ways to laser-proof its bombs and missiles — with spray-on coatings, no less. They think everyone is going to figure this laser thing out sometime and need a defense against what they are already very good at — shooting things out of the sky with a laser."
Re:One of the best laser defenses (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry for the self-reply, but my brain's still spinning. White Sands missile range had some success shooting down artillery shells, but it had a hell of a time with it. Basically they just spin to damned fast to heat up any single point enough to cause the device to fail.
I am not an aeronautic engineer, but would spinning a bomb be efficient/effective? What about missiles?
Probably more difficult than a reflective spray, but spinning could be predicted and could still have a competent guidance system with existing targeting methods.
well that was a waste of money (Score:5, Insightful)
The answer is mirv (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not so obvious... (Score:4, Insightful)
Once it discovers it, security becomes an issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Hopefully the guy making the decisions weighed espionage. You can really shoot yourself in the foot if you find a counter to your own missle defense and then someone publishes the counter. Do you really need an anti missle defense technology so bad that it is worth endangering your own missle defense?
Oh no, not in the desert! (Score:1, Insightful)
Dragged along for the ride (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet another defense industry scam, and all of us are dragged along for the ride.
Re:Environmental Impact (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it ready for real-world testing? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The answer is mirv (Score:5, Insightful)
perhaps that money would be better spent on a plan to grow some crops to eat.
We already grow enough crops. Hunger is a politically created distribution problem, not a problem of lack of food.
Re:Armour them and spin them. (Score:5, Insightful)
yup the 81MM mortar is a smoothebore but it's round has fins at the base that are canted so the projo spins in flight. 81's are slow too, after you drop one down the tube you can look up and see the round about 100m down range and watch it going until after it's a little past it's max ordinate and it disappears. Howitzers have a rifled barrel so the round spins. All artillery rounds that I know of have a fuse that doesn't arm until the round has spun so many times, this prevents most barrel bursts. Shooting one 81 doesn't impress me, shooting 3 fired in a ripple that's getting interesting; shoot down 3 fired at the same time I'm impressed, but remember real world is going to be somebody see all the loud IR energy pointing at the laser source and they are likely to answer with 3 81mm;s in flight, backed up by three salvos of 3 60mm mortars all taking the high trajectory while 6 more 155mm howitzer rounds are coming in low and fast.
Yawn (Score:3, Insightful)
Every time this comes up someone trots out "it's a distribution problem, not a production problem" line.
Here's a clue for you, while better distribution might be one part of the solution, so is more production, ie production where food is needed.
Any solution based on distribution is inevitably reliant on political goodwill. Production can empower people so that they aren't so dependant on ongoing political goodwill.
Re:Armour them and spin them. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not so obvious... (Score:2, Insightful)
Bounced off a sat? How would you do that? You can't reflect this laser because it melts your mirror and it would be even worse if you could (just put the same material on the projectile).
Re:Environmental Impact (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, only use it where you shit but not where you eat.
Do any American troops ever consider the fact that people might be LIVING in that regions after the war ends?
(That is what you are fighting for, isn't it, the right to live?)
This is one of the reasons the US is not welcomed with open arms when they're coming to liberate a country.
Re:Not so obvious... (Score:1, Insightful)
No clouds, low humidity, line of sight. Guess what laser weapons don't do well in?
Yeah, our DOD ppl just can not think for themselves. Thank God we have you to point out the screw ups that we make.
I don't think the GP meant "Those DoD folks haven't thought of this!". I read it as "They're demonstrating it under optimal conditions to make it look better than it is. Take it with a grain of salt.".
Re:Yawn (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably because it's the truth.
True, but the problem still isn't that the technology or capability to grow that food isn't there.
Got news for ya, bunkie. Any solution *period* is inevitably reliant on political goodwill. Your assertion is incorrect; production can't happen without ongoing political goodwill either. The reason these people can't grow their own food is that the local warlord comes and burns the crops to serve his own political ends.
Re:Armour them and spin them. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's just what I was thinking. This gadget is easily defeated by simply saturating the target area with shells
Uh... If you're up against a technologically and materially superior enemy, saturating the airspace with artillery fire is not done "easily". It could be achived temporarily with good tactics, but in general just trying to do it is a very quick way to do a suicide. You see, a technologically superior enemy (ie. the one with the state-of-the-art defensive lasers) also has superior counter-artillery capability, and will wipe out your artillery as soon as it tires any kind of concentrated bombardment.
Re:Environmental Impact (Score:2, Insightful)
Yea that and maybe for a drop of oil or two. Actually, ah well, forget about that right-to-live thing...
Re:Best Offense Is a Good Defense (Score:3, Insightful)
So pathetic, it *hurts*! This is what the internet is truly for!
Re:As a former artilleryman... (Score:0, Insightful)
While the US may or may not have this as a concern, the threat (and still not unheard of, despite the "ceasefire") that Israel has certainly involves morters and rockets being launched from inside residential neighborhoods, schools, etc.
Showering the launch site (or worse, some point beyond it) with anti-missile rounds is NOT a reasonable option.
In the short term, you're right.
But in the long run, it's better to obliterate the launch point no matter what's there. And then obliterate the news media that shows up to stage fauxtography events.
Yeah, it's really cruel. But it will only happen once or twice.
Because eventually, the next time a Hamas or Hezbollah mortar or rocket team starts setting up, the locals will reach for their AK47s and give the whackos a few 7.62mm headaches. And "reporters" who are supposed to report facts will know that if they allow themselves to be used by one side in a conflict, they will be treated as a member of that side, which they de facto are anyway.
And then we'd have "cease fires" where the firing actually, you know, ceased.
There's a fundamental problem with the type of proportional response today's media environment puts on democratic governments responding to attacks. Such forces allow aggressors like Hezbollah to dictate the conditions of an armed conflict.
And if you don't think Hezbollah is the aggressor, you know nothing about fundamental Islamic theology. Hezollah's publicly-stated goal, based on Islamic theology, is the obliteration of Israel and its population - otherwise known as genocide.
Re:Armour them and spin them. (Score:4, Insightful)
As effective as that strategy may be, it does raise the cost of the mission quite a bit.
With any luck, it will keep the US gov't from wiping entire villages on the cheap 'just to be sure' and moving on to precision strikes.
Are you talking about enemy forces using laser weapons against US ones? Because if so one valid solution would be saturation - you can only shoot down so many bombs/rockets/morters.
So having an effective anti-munition laser is probably going to encourage saturation attacks - with the attendant misses, whether by failed guidance, poor aim, and munitions still armed that lose guidance due to the laser.
They just prefer to use (cheap) unguided weapons, which might miss a bit but makes up for it with a bigger bang.
Uh, no. We use the guided stuff all the time, matter of fact I believe that the majority of the bombs we drop today a precision guided. The guidance system doesn't always work, but we try. Even our dumb bombs are dropped on a rather precise basis today.
As for bigger bang - even the MOAB is technically guided, the difference between a 'dumb' unguided bomb and a guided one is simply the addition of a guidance package.
And, quite frequently, the guidance package costs more than the bomb.
Laser defenses work better against opponents with relatively limited assets - palestinians, for example, can only get ahold of so many rockets. They currently choose to mostly stutter them out, producing a more or less constant presence, effect on israeli morale. The damage to life/infrastructure is actually pretty insignificant. The same deal with insurgents/terrorists in Iraq/Afghanistan.
With some laser systems, a soletary rocket becomes a non-issue, even three-six might be handled by a single laser depending on the laser's attributes. So they'd have to switch to mass attacks. Morters and rockets don't need expensive, hard to hide tubes like artillery does, so that's handlable, but having to warehouse rockets until you get enough to penetrate the laser defenses in a meaningful way hurts in a number of ways.
First would be that both Isreal and US Forces have active intel agencies - the stockpile of rockets is more likely to be found and subsequently bombed or otherwise eliminated. This results in NO rocket attacks(bad for them). Second would be that many of these rockets are built on the cheap - their stability isn't the best, so stockpiling them for an effective attack increases the chance of an accident, again costing the terrorists/insurgents casualties and supplies. Third would be that while a trickle of rockets damages morale, it doesn't generally get Isreal or US Forces on the warpath. An attack of a couple hundred after no attacks for months might. By warpath I don't mean a flyby attack with a fighter or chopper. I'm talking about ground assault, massive retaliation.
Re:Armour them and spin them. (Score:3, Insightful)