Airborne Boeing Laser Blasts Ground Target 419
coondoggie writes "The airborne military laser which promises to destroy, damage or disable targets with little to no collateral damage has for the first time actually blown something up. Boeing and the US Air Force today said that on Aug. 30, a C-130H aircraft armed with Boeing's Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) blasted a target test vehicle on the ground for the first time. Boeing has been developing the ATL since 2008 under an Air Force contract worth up to $30 million."
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Informative)
No, permanent blinding weapons are illegal
Blinding weapons are banned by 1995 United Nations Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzler_(weapon) [wikipedia.org]
http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/0/49de65e1b0a201a7c125641f002d57af?OpenDocument [icrc.org]
Er, not exactly? (Score:5, Informative)
From WP [wikipedia.org]:
The Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) program is a US military program to mount a high energy laser damage weapon on an aircraft, initially the AC-130 gunship, for use against ground targets in urban or other areas where minimizing collateral damage is important. The laser will be a megawatt-class chemical oxygen iodine laser (COIL). It is expected to have a tactical range of approximately twenty kilometers and weigh about 5,000â"7,000 kg. This program is distinct from the Airborne Laser, which is a much larger system designed to destroy enemy missiles in the boost phase.
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Informative)
A great example is silver. In the very close UV, like 310 nm, it's completely transparent. Light goes thru it perfectly. by the time you get to Green light, it's over 90% effective at reflections. Good, somewhat expensive, white paint used as a reflectance standard is good between 250-2500 nm. The type of laser they have is about 1000 or so nm. Using frequency doublers you can make that high UV in 3 jumps and below the bottom of where the paint can reflect well. I've used such high powered lasers in Academia. Doublers are common.
Re:Sigh (Score:4, Informative)
I've not heard a valid example of the US violating it.
Do you consider general Taguba, who conducted investigation of Abu Ghraib valid source? According to him [telegraph.co.uk] prisoner were raped among other things. Is it good enough example of violation for you? I also remember (not link this time, but should not be hard to find) of hooded prisoner attached to multiple wires. The whole scene looked like something from Frankenstein.
Remember, the Geneva conventions are primarily concerned with the treatment of uniformed members of national military forces (and includes definitions of such).
Whole 4th convention is about civilians. Most relevant here is article 5, talking about spies and saboteurs (or in American newspeak "illegal enemy combatants").
Direct quote: [http] "In each case, such persons shall nevertheless be treated with humanity and, in case of trial, shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed by the present Convention. They shall also be granted the full rights and privileges of a protected person under the present Convention at the earliest date consistent with the security of the State or Occupying Power, as the case may be." Seems pretty clear, doesn't it?
It also is only in force when engaged in war with another state that is also bound by the convention.
Like Iraq which ratified it in 1956? Ah, I forgot: you just need to slap 'liberation' sticker on your invasion and it is ok.
Legally, at least; morally/politically is a different game, of course.
What is the problem? You just need to redefine 'morality', like 'torture' and 'war' got redefined.
Re:Sigh (Score:3, Informative)
Frequency doublers aren't 100% efficient, are they? In a high-power but compact laser, would the heat deposited in the frequency doubler be enough to cause damage?
Re:Faster than a speeding bullet? (Score:3, Informative)
You can only say that due to the absurdity of any other interpretation, not due to any clear communication by the author.
Re:Sigh (Score:4, Informative)
Yes but please see "Article 3" in your link.
Article 3
Blinding as an incidental or collateral effect of the legitimate military employment of laser systems, including laser systems used against optical equipment, is not covered by the prohibition of this Protocol.
So if one of those common laser targeters or this super laser can blind you, they still comply since they weren't designed specifically to blind people, they come under "incidental or collateral effect".
You're just not supposed to:
"employ laser weapons specifically designed, as their sole combat function or as one of their combat functions, to cause permanent blindness to unenhanced vision"
So just blind people and say "Oops".
Re:Is this really what passes for jounalism today? (Score:0, Informative)
Re:Is this really what passes for jounalism today? (Score:5, Informative)
What's wrong with that? Unless you're complaining about the use of Wikipedia, everything in that sentence is perfectly within norms.
A typical American household uses about 11,000 kWh [energy.gov] per year.
A very simple use of Google's calculator function will tell you that this equals 1,255 Wh per hour [google.com].
This in turn is 4.52 megajoule [google.com]. Expended over 5 seconds, this is 904 kW [google.com]. Pretty close to a megawatt laser.
Re:Sigh (Score:0, Informative)
What part of the convention covers cutting off heads? And while you're looking that up, find the section about strapping a shrapnel bomb to your body and walking into a crowded marketplace filled only with civilians.
Re:Actually the first SUCCESSFUL attempt... (Score:3, Informative)
Well, there are a few issues with that.
1) It'd probably count as chemical warfare
2) It cannot hit anything nearly as fast or track it as accurately
3) Not everything can be corroded
4) If air for a target in a city with a laser and miss, turn off the laser and that's it.
Now, if you think it's bad when unexploded cluster bomblets look like food rations [cnn.com] (picture here [mindfully.org]), imagine the reaction when a few kg of an insanely corrosive lands in the middle of a market place or playground.
Re:And Kent? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sigh (Score:2, Informative)
The only problem with that is: Good luck finding a frequency doubler that can handle that kind of input power. The best frequency doubling crystals I know of can handle at best a few dozen watts of laser power before melting. Also, because frequency doubling crystals don't have anything near 100% efficiency, you're talking about turning a tactical laser into (at best) an expensive, albeit high power laser pointer. Anyone with a superior knowledge of optics care to comment?
Re:Is this really what passes for jounalism today? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Actually the first SUCCESSFUL attempt... (Score:5, Informative)
Only aqueous solutions are limited to pH below14.
Re:Sigh (Score:3, Informative)
The more horrible war is, the less likely it will happen.
Only if horrors happen to both sides. If horrible things only happen to the other guy, most of the population forgets the war is even happening.
As for people not understanding that war is horrible -- of *course* people understand that; did you really think millions of Americans protested the invasion of Iraq because they liked Hussein? Complaining about civilian deaths is a weak fallback for people who don't have a clear enough anti-war position, something along the lines of "if you have to go kick in the door of some guy's shack and then shoot him forty times when he tries to defend it with a stick, at least try not to kick his dog, too."
Re:Actually the first SUCCESSFUL attempt... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:10 W? (Score:3, Informative)
This was the power of the aiming laser, not the main laser.
Re:Actually the first SUCCESSFUL attempt... (Score:3, Informative)
Within water you can't have anything more basic than OH- since the base will just dissocate water and be neutralized (leaving lots of OH-). In other solvents you can have far more acidic and basic substances and do lots of chemistry that wouldn't be possible in water.
However, I don't believe that the actual term pH is defined outside of water, since it is the concentration of H3O+ which doesn't exist outside of water. You could define something analogous for another solvent. However, since that solvent will have a different dissociation constant and/or pKa a "pH" of 7 might or might not be neutral.
In any case, if you make your measurements in a non-aqueous solvent you can have pKas that are far greater than 14 or less than 2.
Disclaimer, it has been a while since I took General/Organic Chemistry, but I am a chemist...
Re:Actually the first SUCCESSFUL attempt... (Score:1, Informative)
Er, no they're not. The sum of pH and pOH just adds up to 14, but the number is the exponent of the concentration. pH 14 implies the concentration of H+ ions in the solution is 10EXP(-14) - very small, and the concentration of OH+ ions is 10EXP(0) or 1.
You can have concentrations of H+ and OH- outside this range, but they still adup to 14. You can have pH greater than 14, and you can have negative pH