Airborne Laser Successfully Tracks, Hits Missile 287
fructose writes "The Airborne Laser managed to acquire, track, and illuminate a test missile a few days ago. According to the press release, the Boeing plane 'used its infrared sensors to find a target missile launched from San Nicolas Island, Calif ... issued engagement and target location instructions to the beam control/fire control system ... fired its two solid-state illuminator lasers to track the target and ... fired a surrogate high-energy laser at the target, simulating a missile intercept.' The sensors on board the missile confirmed the 'hit.' Michael Rinn, ABL's program director, said, 'Pointing and focusing a laser beam on a target that is rocketing skyward at thousands of miles per hour is no easy task, but the Airborne Laser is uniquely able to do the job.' The next steps will be to test the high-power laser at full strength in flight and do a complete system test later this year. Its success or failure will determine whether the project gets canceled. Looks like the Real Genius fans out there are finally living the dream."
Real Genius Fans? (Score:2, Funny)
Looks like the Real Genius fans out there are finally living the dream.
Eh, it's cool and all, but I'd rather see a house explode with popcorn.
Laser tag (Score:3, Informative)
Billion dollar laser tag. They didn't destroy the missile. The missile's laser tag vest scored the hit.
Re: (Score:2)
Because they didn't use the real laser. It was just to test the aiming system.
How does it aim? (Score:3, Interesting)
If it uses mirrors of some type to aim the laser "beam", won't missile designers just make the missile housing out of the same reflective material?
If it does not, how does it get pointed in the right direction fast enough?
These articles are always so light on the interesting details.
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If it does not, how does it get pointed in the right direction fast enough?
Easy. Think of how fast a shark can turn!
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Weight and strength. Plus, it's a game of measure/countermeasure. You invent the gun, I invent armor. You invent a stronger gun, I counter with reactive armor.
Eventually, someone will counter with a missile skin able to defeat this. And then a different type of laser/phaser/deathray will be invented.
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Eventually this is going to stop being the way we work, I hope. We could also think outside the box: put more resources into improving things for other human beings on the planet. Yes, we need to defend ourselves against REAL threats, and the biggest strength the U.S. has at its disposal is the good will we manage to generate by helping others and spreading wealth and pe
We do this enough... (Score:2, Offtopic)
and the biggest strength the U.S. has at its disposal is the good will we manage to generate by helping others and spreading wealth and peace in the world.
The USA has a trillion dollar trade deficit. Every year the USA buys more junk than it can possibly afford, made all over the world. Look at what the good will this has gotten us. Nothing. Germany and Japan and South Korea and China dump all their junk on the USA, and take our market for granted, but what have they done for us lately?
Conversely, the B
Re:We do this enough... (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you work hard to be this wrong?
The Germans have soldiers in in Afghanistan.
If you want an oil leaking POS british car feel free to buy one. If I wanted that kinda junk I would by a GM vehicle. I buy cars not from folks I like, but from people who build good cars. This is called capitalism, you should check it out it is a great system.
You are a fool if you think we have "friends", or if we should give those folks free money. The system you propose is no more than a hair's breadth from corporatism. Your appeals to nationalism are would make Mussolini proud.
I surely hope this is not the view center-right in this country.
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You might try looking into the body count of Iraqi civilians. That and the little fact that we have now setup them up to have a fun civil war.
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Not only mirrors (that occurred to me as well), but have the missile spin so the energy of the laser is spread out over a much larger surface. Spinning would also allow the areas of the missile to cool down somewhat.
In all military advances in offense, the defense will find a way around it (and vice-versa). It's a cat and mouse game. Look at how Iraq tried to foil GPS guided ordinance, they jammed the GPS signals. I don't know how successful they were but given time they might have been successful.
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The GPS jammers each got a nice anti-radiation missile.
Re:How does it aim? (Score:5, Informative)
All of the "obvious" solutions like you mention generally will not work. The power levels for the lasers are specifically designed to defeat the known technical counter-measures available to a missile designer. This is why laser weapons have a power rating orders of magnitude greater than is strictly required in most conventional circumstances; they are obviating counter-measures before anyone tries to develop them. Among other things, they are designed to ablate the target faster than you can reflect it or physically spin it.
This is also the reason a lot of US military research focuses on hyper-kinetic weapons these days; good ones can defeat all plausible molecular armor and even weak ones can defeat all current armor. The power levels of US weapon systems are getting to the point where any passive counter-measure would have to be very exotic.
This is based on a media-created myth. The US has never had GPS-guided weaponry, precisely because GPS can be jammed. Therefore, it would not have done much good to have a GPS jammer beyond attracting the attention of missiles designed to destroy RF emitters.
The primary guidance mechanism usually mislabeled as "GPS guided" is ultra-precise inertial guidance, which can't be jammed at all short of altering the physics of the universe. These inertial guidance systems can optionally accept micro-corrections from a GPS input, but only within the (classified) error bounds of the inertial system which are already known to be very small. If the GPS signal deviates from the inertial guidance, the GPS is assumed to be compromised and ignored.
The "GPS-guided weapon" thing is one of many myths about US weapon systems perpetuated by the media. The US never has and never will produce a GPS-guided weapon.
Re:How does it aim? (Score:4, Insightful)
The laser optics in the airborne laser probably have to be made out of narrow band reflectors which in practice can be made more than 99.999% reflective to a laser. It would be easy to slightly change the laser wavelength and optics (a few nm's perhaps) and the missile would absorb again.
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I think this is one of those "why don't they build the entire plane out of the black box material" questions.
Odds are that high-performance mirror glass is extremely expensive, heavy, and fragile. Similarly, it's difficult to keep something clean when blasting through the atmosphere at 1000mph.
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"Similarly, it's difficult to keep something clean when blasting through the atmosphere at 1000mph."
Kinda kills the "wino with a rag and Windex" option...
Re:How does it aim? (Score:4, Insightful)
you can always track a missile optically, or via infra red, or.. etc.
as for 'pointed in the right direction fast enough'... see Phalanx and Goalkeeper systems for some seriously-fast-aiming systems. As long as you can track the missile itself*, you can aim something at it. Lasers come with an advantage over the above systems... the laser tends to travel in a fairly straight line, bullets.. not so much. Even with atmospheric distortions, you should get much better aim with a laser than with bullets.
* As for tracking a missile - keep in mind that this system is intended to be used from some distance. Tracking a missile going 'thousands of miles per hour' just means having to rotate the system (fractions) of degrees. Think of regular ol' human camera operators tracking the space shuttle, which goes much faster than a typical missile, and having no problems doing so. It becomes easier the further away it is, in fact. (well, easiest is when it's still sitting on the launch pad, but you get the idea.)
Frequency tuning gets you... (Score:2)
won't missile designers just make the missile housing out of the same reflective material?
Free electron lasers, I think, can actually have their frequency tuned. It's like Star Trek. The Borg put up a shield, the Enterprise changes its phaser frequency.... blammo.
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f it uses mirrors of some type to aim the laser "beam", won't missile designers just make the missile housing out of the same reflective material?
Well, no. First, high-energy mirrors are fragile things. The reflective surface is very thin, and is kept very clean. Get some crud on it, that crud absorbs in the incident energy, the mirror fails. How are you going to coat a missile body, which needs must be exposed to the environment, with this fragile coating and still expect it to be a high-energy mirror?
Good (Score:2)
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WHile I am a BIG believer in Gates(robert, not bill), I think that his idea to kill ABL was dead wrong. If anything, we should be building these faster.
Like these lasers are going to help prevent a smuggled bomb from being detonated in LA Harbor. And the US needs another treaty to break, well Bush already broke the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Falcon
Shoot it down (Score:2, Insightful)
Hopefully they didn't fake it again (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/star-wars-fake-fooled-the-world-1461979.html [independent.co.uk]
I see a press release from the people who claim to have pulled it off... which doesn't mean a thing.
Time to buy lots of popcorn (Score:2)
Time to buy lots of popcorn and tinfoil. You're in for it now Hathaway; hope you're house is insured. ;)
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There. Now you've had your nod to 'Real Genius'.
Real Genius laser was in SPACE (Score:2)
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Real Genius laser was turret mounted in a B1 bomber bay. Did you even watch the movie?
Furthermore, Val Kilmer's character had it all wrong. Assassinations are way better than wars. In wars, the peasants who join the armies do all the dying, while in assassinations, only the assholes who command the wars get killed, because it's too expensive to assassinate each member of an opposing army individually.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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here you are. [wikimedia.org]
Was REAL GENIUS wrong? (Score:2)
I mean the technical idea behind the laser which I've always wondered if it would work. In the movie, some (Caltech?) students take an optically pumped up gas (like the gas used in a carbon dioxide or neon laser I suppose) and freeze it into a solid while it is still optically pumped up. Since the now solid gas is still optically pumped up and is many many times denser than a gas, they achieve a corresponding increase in the power density which allows a small rod of it to pop a lot of popcorn. Sure beats
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Disclaimer: IANAP(hysicist)
If I remember the laws of thermodynamics from my physics courses correctly, things at lower temperatures have lower amount of energy. Things are frozen by taking away the matter's energy at the molecular level. If you "pump up" some matter (i.e. give it lots of energy or make it hot) then the effect of pumping it up is negated when the matter is frozen, since you need to remove all the energy.
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anti-laser system (Score:2)
I don't trust the source of this story (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't Boeing have a lot of incentive to hype this to ensure that the contract got renewed for further research? It's possible that they set the bar for success so low and/or made the experiment so contrived that they couldn't help but achieve it.
Countermeasures (Score:2)
They cost money to do. A lot of money.
More importantly, such as system provides immunity to all the old out dated missiles.
We are no longer facing a gigantic super-power threat. Russia and China are friendly, (and Germany and Japan are some of our best friends).
Our enemeis now a days are Terrorists
They are not known for scientific innovation. They are not known for expensive equipment. They make do with what they have. They do suicide missions becaus
Re:Countermeasures (Score:4, Insightful)
So how will this anti-ICBM technology be used against a terrorist carrying these suitcase a-bombs that are said to exist?
The problem is, ss soon as we get a 100% effective missile shield, enemies will find a way to deliver nuclear armaments. It wouldn't even be that hard. They can just park a ship off a Manhattan and light one off if they wanted to.
This whole idea of shooting down missiles is a waste of fucking time and money. If we gave the money we were spending on this bullshit to the countries to foster good will, we'd be a lot better off.
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They can just park a ship off a Manhattan and light one off if they wanted to.
Ships move at 20-30mph. Ballistic missiles move at 15,000mph +. If we make it so that our enemies have to get a ship into one our harbors, it becomes a much simpler problem. We would need to have more Coast Guard people to basically board every ship, with neutron detectors, but, its something we can do. We can track ships as they are approaching the USA, track them as they leave ports, follow them, and pretty much monitor eve
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We can track ships as they are approaching the USA, track them as they leave ports, follow them, and pretty much monitor every boat on the ocean.
We can? [bbc.co.uk]
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Terrorists aren't the real threat. The old powers are. Russia and China have no great love for the US, and they have real missiles. I applaud whichever far-thinking generals are pushing these programs.
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When the terrorists blow up Los Angeles, they aren't going to be using an ICBM. They're going to be floating a bomb into the harbor on a container ship. Your fancy airborn lasers will be useless.
But don't let that stop you from wasting billions of dollars on this. It's just all the sooner China takes over as the world's primary superpower.
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When the terrorists blow up Los Angeles, they aren't going to be using an ICBM. They're going to be floating a bomb into the harbor on a container ship. Your fancy airborn lasers will be useless.
Will they?
I mean, everyone seems to think that loading a ship full of explosives is some unstoppable defense, yet, we certainly have the means to board, inspect, and if necessary, sink pretty much any ship.
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If we know which ships to stop.
The occasional container load of immigrants has made it here. What's to stop them from loading up a bomb?
Worse yet, they'll stash one in an old freighter and pile bails of pot on top of it. If they make it to port, they can sell the dope and fund future operations. If the Coast Guard seizes the boat, the first thing they do is tow it into port for the obligatory press briefing on the big bust. The bomb goes off when the network cameras are rolling.
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And how will you detect this cargo ship that has one nuke in one container at the bottom of the stack?
Unless you work for Boeing it should be clear that this system is a just a handout to Boeing.
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If any official claims this is to stop terrorist attacks, they're lying. This type of tech is to break the "mutually" part out of MAD. Once the US can confidently stop ICBMs 100% of the time with a mass-produced set of these things, it need not worry any longer about who it can threaten.
Our enemeis now a days are Terrorists (Score:2)
This innovation might delay their attack enough for us to stop them.
It might slow terrorists down if they plan to launch a missile and not smuggle a bomb into LA harbor. Guess which method terrorists are likely to use, a method that requires an expensive rocket as well as a warhead, or one where most of the cost is in making a bomb?
Falcon
Not living the dream - yet. (Score:3, Funny)
Sigh. Not until I can hammer a six inch spike through a board with my penis.
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"Sigh. Not until I can hammer a six inch spike through a board with my penis."
You can do it! Trust me.
Simply strike the opposite surface of the penis with a large hammer in order to drive the spike.
The penis will cushion the spike and leave a nice polished surface when you are done.
"
Those are toys (Score:2)
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aahhh, airborne starfish with frickin' lasers attached to their heads! mwuhahahahaha.
Next up - negative refraction skins? (Score:2)
Will take a while to achieve, but I'm somewhat curious if materials with negative refractions still vaporize if hit by a powerful laser at the frequency at which the material exhibits that quality.
How about retroreflective coatings? (Score:2)
Ok, a mirror won't work because it's not perfect and will quickly ablate, at which point the laser makes a hole in the missile even if it takes a second or two longer.
But what if you make a missile covered with retroreflectors that reflect that 90% or whatever a mirror can manage, but back at the laser itself?
Could an anti-laser missile be developed, which instead of a payload has several layers of retroreflectors to try to make the laser fry itself?
There is an even easier work around (Score:3, Informative)
Can you imagine the energy requirement and the number of laser necessary to deflect a full scale attack of say, the russian ? Even if only 50% of the missile go through (and from seeing the dfficulty of development I am being generous) , your country is about as parking-lotted as it can be.
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The ABL isn't intended to knock down warheads in mid flight. It goes after missiles during the boost phase. That's when they can get the laser relatively close to the target, its easy to spot (from the propulsion IR signature) and it hasn't released decoys yet.
What I'm wondering is whether the full power tests will be conducted against targets equipped with ablative or reflective coatings. Or worse yet; corner reflectors.
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Actually, this is one of the reasons laser weapons are being developed. It's much cheaper to shoot lasers at a bunch of decoys instead of missiles costing >1e6$ apiece.
Also, weapons like the ABL can be used to shoot at missiles during the boost phase, before decoys can be deployed.
And, the best defence against a full scale nuclear attack by the Russians is deterrence. The ABL is meant more for use against tinpot dictators firing Scuds.
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At $1e6 apiece, your supply of missiles is going to be constrained. A single warship, for instance, easily has $100 million worth of missiles on board; ISTR stories of a few years ago when the US Navy had problems buying enough missiles for all their ships. The same goes for anti-ICBM missiles.
Production is also a problem: when you expend your entire production run of missiles (iirc this happened in Gulf War 1) you'd have to wait months for new ones to be manufactured. A laser can easily be recharged.
The problem with ABL (Score:2)
ABL is certainly a cool concept but the problem is they are working on the wrong kind of laser. Since the ABL project has started, free electron lasers have made way more progress than the chemical laser used in the ABL. With a free electron laser, you don't have to haul around all the nasty chemicals, can have more shots, more power for the beam and even offers the hope of adjusting the beam frequency. I'm not one to really want to kill a defense project, but, if I were in charge, I would junk the chemi
Useless (Score:2)
So basically they have a system that must be on station when the missile is launched and can be defeated by launching more than 1 missile.
The Russians or Chinese would just use mobile launchers and launch 10+ ICBMs at one time, or better yet just launch from a submarine out in the middle of nowhere in the Atlantic.
If any useless program needs to be canceled this is it.
Transpart Aluminum (Score:2)
Re:Just what we need (Score:5, Informative)
Which is generally isn't above the clouds in the stratosphere.
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But the aircraft has to be clear of clouds, sand and fog....
What prevents the target from cloaking itself in LOX fog, by venting ?
Re:Just what we need (Score:5, Informative)
Nothing, in theory. Just like there's nothing in theory that says the rocket can't have a zillion other systems designed to defeat this laser. In practice, however, the answer is weight. A rocket's weight is around 80-90% fuel with payload being from 2-5%. A small increase in payload weight leads to a great increase in the rocket's size and fuel load.
A rocket designer ends up having to make a series of compromises between the strength of the rocket itself, the payload and the range. If you want to protect your rocket you're going to have to give up payload, give up range or increase rocket size, all of which make them less useful as weapons.
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My brother-in-law analyzed satellite throw weights for Sandia Labs. A reflective or camo paint job is a trivial addition to the mass of the rocket. OTOH, a perfectly polished surface might well serve the same end at no addition to the mass.
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That may be true, but you've got to see the limitations in that too. There are no paints that are reflective over a large amount of the light spectrum, so you gotta pick your poison. A normal mirror, for example, would not hold up against an infrared laser.
Furthermore doing that requires knowing the exact frequency of the airborne laser, something which is presumably not public knowledge. It is these days relatively trivial to change the frequency of the laser, e.g. doubling or halving it. Presumably such t
Re:Just what we need (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just what we need (Score:5, Interesting)
It is merely a single contrarian idea. The laser tests would be visible from orbit - and frequency/energy could be sampled as simply by mere spectroscopy: the interaction between radiation and matter as a function of wavelength and easily measured. Displaced / superheated air will reveal the operating wavelength and energy density of the laser.
If we are talking dye lasers or tunable cavity lasers - you still have massive problems dealing with the excitation as frequencies change. It might well prove to be too complex to fit aboard an aircraft.
I built the Scientific American CO2 Laser project back in the 1960s - it was impressive and it could shatter glass at more than 100 ft. Still, the energy necessary to power an airborne device is going to have to be stored - probably in banks of capacitors.
Realistically, an aircraft mounted rail gun might serve just as well and be far less complex to deal with (absent the effects on the aircraft of the massive magnetic impulse).
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Modulate the phase variance?
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Paint still adds weight. Remember the Space Shuttle's external fuel tank used to be white, but they stopped painting it because they could save weight.
Reflective coatings have very little utility against high powered lasers. The best mirrors we have only reflect 90% of the light that hits them (these are pampered telescope mirrors mind you) and 10% of 1mw is still 100,000 watts. Any polishing will be distorted and any reflective coating will be baked off in a very short period of time. Such coatings might g
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Even if you are right, if it's simple to increase the reflectivity of the rocket by an order of magnitude, then you make the ABL's job an order of magnitude harder. This
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Think about it for a while.
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Of course, the real point is that flying 747s around with fricking lasers is not a serious military project, it's performance art paid for with your tax dollars.
It's hard to name a single plausible scenario for which this absurdity makes any economic sense.
the problem with that trick is (Score:2)
Even if 99.999% of the energy was reflected then you would still damage the surface (causing the refection amount to drop) and then you still have the problem of SHINY != STEALTH.
the best way to evade is to NOT BE WHERE THE BULLETS ARE
and with this system even if it just "paints" the target i would bet is has a nice range to it
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Our anti-rocket defenses have been gross failures. This technology has a long way to go to be viable. Meanwhile, we spend vast sums on this technology when we really ought to be looking to get outside of Earth orbit. 40 years is 30 years too long. We ought to have manned Moon and Mars bases by now.
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Meanwhile, we spend vast sums on this technology when we really ought to be looking to get outside of Earth orbit
The better we get with lasers, the better we can do fusion, and a laser make a holram fuse is definitely something we would want for propulsion, rather than chemical rocket crap. Why spend all this money on chemical rockets, when if we get really good at lasers, and then fusion, we can be on our way to Mars with container ship sized payloads, rather than a boy scout tent?
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Deuterium-based fusion reactors are one thing. Aircraft mounted laser weapons are something entirely different.
And, exactly how do we exit the planet's gravity well with fusion power? Steam?
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With shields , offcourse :-) .
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Well, in theory, nothing.
Except for the HIGHLY nontrivial cost of designing, testing, fabricating, and deploying a whole new missile.
Except for the HIGHLY nontrivial cost of either building a whole new set of launch silos, or trashing out the existing missiles it replaced, because those existing missiles are still vulnerable to the Airborne Laser.
This is PRECISELY the continuing technological obsolescence and financial ruin scenario that Reagan promised Gorbachev, that eventually resulted in the reunificati
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Agreed.
Still, who are we defending against? China wants to be the planet's manufacturing giant. India and Pakistan have very limited range delivery systems. A middle east foe does not seem to be a reasonable threat for a few decades. Russia and the former client states are unable to maintain the systems they have now, much less put themselves into another arms race.
The costs will be ours, alone. How bankrupting the nation on the cross of superior military technology will make the US safer is lost on m
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And, that aircraft has to be ready and at altitude.... Are we going back to routine sorties similar to the old B-52 runs? How much will that cost??
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givem a few years and i bet UAVs will have these (and if you assume a 1 way trip you just doubled the range/time on station)
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They still have to be in the right place at the right time. Also, loss of the technology is entirely possible when using UAVs. Suppose you just ran out of fuel and the self-destruct mechanism fails?
And, that aircraft has to be ready and at altitude (Score:2)
Are we going back to routine sorties similar to the old B-52 runs? How much will that cost??
That's what I was thinking too. The only way I could see something like this as being feasible would be to have planes up in the air all the tyme which would be expensive.
Love those B52 though. My dad retired from the Air Force as a mechanic on them and he used to take me to look at and explore them.
Falcon
Re:And, that aircraft has to be ready and at altit (Score:2)
It is a costly idea with serious limitations.
I enjoyed seeing (and coming close enough to touch) a SR-22 Blackbird at the Boeing museum in Seattle. Never saw a B-52 up close and personal.
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Routine sorties would be really cheap compared to what it would cost to replace, say, Seattle or Los Angeles after Kim Jong-Il successfully nuked it.
Nobody ever said freedom was free.
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Kim Jong-il is 68 years old. N. Korea has no ICBM technology. The nation is the poorest excuse for an enemy that the US has had in hundreds of years.
N. Korea is under constant scrutiny - we can, and would, eliminate that nation with a first strike. We don't need to develop yet another weapons system to deal with a caveman....
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Refraction, reflection, dispersion and absorption. Those are the problems.
How many Joules does it take to burn through silica dust? How reflective is LOX? What if the inbound craft is covered with retro-reflecting beads (like stop signs)?
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Well, observe that the only significant difference between this test engagement and The Real Thing was the laser output power. Related to that is the fact that the test missile said "Yuh got me, pardner" instead of just dying spectacularly.
So most of the atmospheric issues would appear to have been solved.
Observe that the current generation of candidates for the "inbound craft" role are not covered with retro-reflecting beads, so the question is not applicable to those missiles. How much does your bead co
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So most of the atmospheric issues would appear to have been solved.
Or, they used an optimum testing environment. We have had the target craft carrying a transponder to make the target easy to find, if not hit, in the "star wars" missile defense tests.
And, what "bad guys are you referring to? Russia and China are not a problem. Pakistan, India, Israel, and N. Korea don't have ICBM delivery systems. No other middle east foe is a credible threat today.
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Apparently mirrors aren't nearly as useful as you might think. The laser is high enough power that it effectively creates a small explosion through thermal expansion when it hits something. A perfect mirror that is not affected by the heat or shock from nearby heated air might work, but such a thing does not exist.
Re:okay well... (Score:4, Insightful)
Doesn't matter, apparently. The total amount of energy in the laser overheats the reflective surface long before a significant amount of the light is reflected. One of the problems of aiming high powered lasers is that the mirrors that guide the beam melt.
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They will place these lasers in New England. They say you only have to wait 5 min. for the weather to change there.
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Actually, the lasers are on a plane, presumably above the clouds. See article.
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Space Chinese (Score:2)
This technology will be quite useful when we are facing the Space Chinese in 2385.
By then we'll be cruising around in Fireflies. In another star system because the earth became too crowded.
Falcon
paying for health care by reducing military spendi (Score:2)
Please inform the NRA-clown who asked you the question that the 30 billion can easily be taken from the military budget seeing that the US already spends more money on the military than the rest of the world combined
That wouldn't really help as a lot of military spending is off the books. On the other hand we didn't need to build a billion dollar embassy in Iraq [motherjones.com] about as big as Vatican City [wikipedia.org]. Or the hundreds of millions spent on other embassies [haqeeqat.org].
On the other hand, if you think health care is expensive now w
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A system like this won't seem nearly as useless when the missiles actually start flying. There are plenty of folks who might do the flying - been keeping up on Iran? They're not slowing down for Mr. "O"pologies. A much quieter but possibly worse threat is Russia. Mr. Putin of KGB success hasn't exactly retired, and Putin-critical journalists are dead or missing. Radiation poisoning is a nasty way to die, whether you're Litvinenko investigating your friend's assassination or a liberal enjoying your healthcar
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