Watch a Lockheed Martin Laser Destroy a Missile In Flight 177
An anonymous reader writes "As well as providing the equipment necessary to fire missiles, defense contractors also want to offer customers the ability to defend against them. Lockheed Martin is doing just that with its Area Defense Anti-Munitions (ADAM) system. ADAM is a high energy laser system mounted on a trailer allowing it to be transported around quickly to help defend high-value targets. It is still in prototype form, but basically uses a 10-kilowatt fiber laser which can be focused on to a moving target up to 2 kilometers away."
Did this one havce a GPS unit hidden in it? (Score:1)
n/t
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The final application doesn't need GPS units as sharks can find their way without GPS guidance.
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Sharks have built-in GPS. You just need to purchase it's use "in-app".
Useless after ballistic trajectory (Score:4, Interesting)
2KM is kinda useless once the missile has achieved ballistic trajectory.
At speed of 2.5km/second, the missile will whiz pass this thing quicker than any damage can be done to it.
Note both the videos show the missile at launch, when they are not at top speed, may work for Hamas to Israel scenario, won't work for North Korea to South Korea type of scenario.
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And what missiles go mach 7+??
A lot of them do. For instance, the russian Topol-M achieves 7320 m/s, which is a lot more than 7 Machs no matter how you measure it. Missiles such as that one are hardened and probably impermeable to energy weapons for the foreseeable future, though, and they are not the intended target for this (or any) laser. Direct kinetic hits are likely the only way, short of nuclear weapons, to stop them in their tracks.
Interesting (Score:5, Funny)
But can it be mounted on a shark?
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Sure, as long as it's a trailer sized shark
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_shark
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But they were the ones that donated the shark.
Cool (Score:2)
Bet it costs a fortune, though.
Re:Cool (Score:4, Funny)
Bet it costs a fortune, though.
Just ask some loan sharks with lasers...
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Bet it costs a fortune, though.
Just ask some loan sharks with lasers...
Just loan them the shark long enough to fire a few shots.
Re:Cool (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not so bad when you put it into context.
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If your are Israel, thousands of times.
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Cost is not a big issue. The big issue is power.
A laser of this type is almost always a chemical laser because that is one of the best ways to portably produce that much energy in a hurry. The drawbacks of this are
1) the laser reactant supply needs to be reloaded after every shot or few shots. This is time consuming.
2) toxic chemical byproducts of the power-generating reaction. If you're defending a base in the middle of the desert, this may not be an issue. If you're defending land that you care about
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The article refers to a '10-kilowatt fiber laser.' That's means electrical, and probably continuous operation too. 10KW isn't a huge amount of power for something that size. You could run it off of an ordinary engine and generator, though I expect it uses batteries or ultracaps with a generator or external power hookup for charging to avoid keeping an engine spinning all the time.
2 kilometers isn't very far away. (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering this a defensive system 2 kilometers means the high velocity threat is nearly on top of what you want to protect. It's 'destruction' is still likely to rain down debris nearby.
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The 2km limit is likely due to the heat lost due to the atmosphere.
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Or just due to the ability to focus over those distances
Well, that's exactly the thing that thermal bloom screws up, isn't it?
Re:2 kilometers isn't very far away. (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering this a defensive system 2 kilometers means the high velocity threat is nearly on top of what you want to protect. It's 'destruction' is still likely to rain down debris nearby.
well.. most missiles aren't kinetic energy weapons.. few broken windows isn't as bad as a warhead exploding inside your building.
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It's 'destruction' is still likely to rain down debris nearby.
Which would you prefer? Debris or an explosion?
Re:2 kilometers isn't very far away. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:2 kilometers isn't very far away. (Score:4, Insightful)
Depends, how big is the debris and what's it made of, and how far away is the explosion?
Big giants chunks of debris would be no fun, nor would it be if the missile had radioactive material and destroying it turned it into a dirty bomb.
I'm more curious to know how much of this test was 'real', and how much relied on some of the tricks they've done in the past by essentially making it impossible for it to miss.
It's not like they haven't stacked these tests in their favor in the past to the point that you'd need whoever might be shooting at you to schedule an appointment and tell you exactly where the missile is coming from. Which kind of defeats the purpose.
Re:2 kilometers isn't very far away. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Big giants chunks of debris would be no fun, nor would it be if the missile had radioactive material and destroying it turned it into a dirty bomb."
No, that would be the BEST CASE scenario.
If the missile has radioactive material then:
1)- It is already a dirty bomb. Destroying it minimizes the damage.
2)- IT IS A NUKE. Destroying it saves likely a city.
Neither of these are likely, but you'd rather 1000 dirty bombs than one fissile warhead.
Just a few seconds to react (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering this a defensive system 2 kilometers means the high velocity threat is nearly on top of what you want to protect.
Let's say we have a cruise missile traveling at roughly mach 1 or about 1,150 kph - actually pretty slow compared to many missiles. That means that the missile would cover the 2 kilometers in about 6.25 seconds. Better have a hell of a good target tracking system...
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not all missiles have to reach the ground to deliver their destruction. This seems to be most useful at a distance from the target, in between the suspected launch point and target. Depending on the range of motion, that could nearly double the amount of time to destroy the missile. Like you say, this may require slowish missiles, and a somewhat low trajectory to stay in range. Still, portable tracking, aiming, and power is impressive.
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Re:Just a few seconds to react (Score:5, Insightful)
A target tracking system for an incoming missile will have a much lower slew rate than the video, where the target is flying perpendicular to the beam. Unless the missile starts doing the Harlem Shake on the way in, it's a sitting duck for a laser adjacent to the target. Also note that the internal tracking system is good to 5km out, so that gives it 10 seconds to lock onto the final trajectory, and it can be tied into a larger tracking system as well.
This is clearly limited to smaller, slower, less sophisticated munitions right now, but I would anticipate larger power as they get better, which means effectiveness further out and quicker kills. Heck, you don't need any laser research to quadruple the power of this laser - just bring in four of them and target the same incoming vehicle.
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That was what I was thinking. ....) Costs a lot but firing is fairly cheap iff you can keep it supplied. And whatever you hit still fragments and rains down on the original target.
Currently you have available:
a) A Phalanx Centurion C-RAM (land based version) which can possibly hit something up to 4km away but generally much closer and sprays god knows what downrange (if that is a town then
b) A short range anti-missile missile system. Something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome [wikipedia.org]
Far longer range up t
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Let's say we have a cruise missile
Why? What exactly do you think this system is designed to protect against, an attack from a sophisticated air force? There's a reason they say that they are testing the system on Qassam [wikipedia.org] style rockets. A Qassam rocket isn't supersonic. But you can bet that if they get a few years of good experience with this thing deployed in the field, they'll eventually end up with a bigger version.
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The scary thing about these new weapon systems is that given enough time and money a laser, electronic, or kinetic based missile interceptor will render every countries missile stockpiles practically useless. What would Russia do if the US was able to reliably counter their ICBMS? You know their would be some moron in Washington that would start proclaiming that the US could actually win now so full steam ahead. The only thing that has stopped a global all out war is the nuclear stockpiles of the major play
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(1) A small shower of hot debris is a hell of a lot better than a successful missile strike.
(2) 2-km is further than you think. Most of the small rockets this is meant to protect against don't have a blast radius even *remotely* close to that distance. In most scenarios even the debris won't reach the target.
(3) As another reply noted, the distance limit is probably due to laser heat loss in the atmosphere. That sort of implies that the closer the target gets, the faster the laser destroys it. I'm not s
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Even the US probably doesn't have any easily-portable system to fire high-velocity kinetic missiles of significant mass.
They're called cannons; been around for centuries.
For a decade, the US Navy has been developing rail guns to shoot *really* high speed projectiles. Progress has been slow, though.
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Small pieces of debris have a considerably lower terminal velocity than an aerodynamic missile. I'm sure some larger bits would still be deadly but probably wouldn't penetrate a building.
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Considering this a defensive system 2 kilometers means the high velocity threat is nearly on top of what you want to protect. It's 'destruction' is still likely to rain down debris nearby.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy [wikipedia.org]
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Debris from 2km away seems preferable to a detonating warhead 5 metres away.
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Given that usually missles you want to destroy are aimed AT you and not flying OVERHEAD, esp when just 2km away, I wonder how useful this system is.
Maybe we can ask our enemies to put them next to their launching pads?
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Until rifles, a trained longbow men could out fire and out range firearms. (trained is the operating word here – some English bowmen’s left arm was 2 inches shorter than their right due to repeated compression of holding the bow.) (Out damage is questionable.)
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Longbows could out-range muskets. Early rifles could just about match longbows for range and accuracy. However the bows could be fired far faster than any muzzle loaded gun. The downside is that arrows are expensive to make and it takes a lot (I mean a really lot) of time to train an archer. Not so much someone to fire a musket.
Strange but true.
Hmm... I have a question. (Score:5, Insightful)
How long before we start seeing missiles with highly polished chrome finish on the outside?
Re:Hmm... I have a question. (Score:5, Funny)
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That raises some interesting questions:
Given the stresses of launch, how long would such a finish remain highly polished, or at least reflective enough to protect against a laser?
Is the laser accurate enough to target the engine nozzles, which would very quickly lose any lustre they may have?
Re:Hmm... I have a question. (Score:5, Informative)
Given the stresses of launch, how long would such a finish remain highly polished, or at least reflective enough to protect against a laser?
I think you're dealing with a cascade degradation problem anyway. Once a tiny part of the reflective surface loses its reflectivity because the beam melts it, or for whatever reason that can happen, the rocket is done for. There's no problem with laser weapons that can't be solved with the pulse being strong enough and short enough, since you'll never have a 100% reflective surface. Even in experiments with laser-initiated fusion, where the cleanliness and optical properties of the whole system have lab-grade care taken of them, the optical interfaces are a bitch.
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Given the stresses of launch, how long would such a finish remain highly polished, or at least reflective enough to protect against a laser?
Ever seen footage of those old unpainted aircraft? I'm sure these days the alloys they use are even more resilient.
I imagine designers will start to double insulate missiles as well, so that the outer skin can get extremely hot without affecting the inside temperature much.
Is the laser accurate enough to target the engine nozzles, which would very quickly lose any lustre they may have?
That will only work if you position the laser such that it can hit the nozzle. A smart missile might even use the laser beam to target itself at the emitter, similar to how anti-radar missiles work, or adjust its flight path to shield vul
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I imagine designers will start to double insulate missiles as well, so that the outer skin can get extremely hot without affecting the inside temperature much.
Yes, and if the weapon designers decide to send the energy in very short pulses, you end up having to cope with mechanical stresses - the pulse will turn a small amount of the missile surface into plasma which will send a shock wave through the construction. Essentially, this could work like a small HESH warhead. I really don't think there's a lot you can do against lasers in a flying object that has to be lightweight (by virtue of having to, you know, actually *fly* and deliver some sizable payload to its
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something like clay would probably have better time at dissipating the heat. or heck, a layer filled with water or something else that evaporates.
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Yep it would. However it is heavy and the out gassing would change where the thing is going unless it is still able to move.
Re: Hmm... I have a question. (Score:2)
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How long before we start seeing missiles with highly polished chrome finish on the outside?
How reflective is chrome (or any other coating) at the frequency of the laser? What are the chances the laser will simply "punch" or "torch" its way through the finish?
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That would be a 7% absorption in ideal conditions only during initial contact. Once the coating and reflective surface reach a critical temperature then there'd be a cascading failure. The coating would be subject to both ablation and charring, which might actually help the laser more than hurt it.
There are a lot of factors that would quickly degrade the initial absorption figure (quality of coating, wavelength, surface contaminants, etc...). But even with that, I'd bet that a reflective mechanism would onl
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From the point of view of the defenders such a race is a good thing - because it increases the difficulty of handling the missile, and either decreases it's range or decreases it's payload (for the same si
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A new generation of reactive armor will have to be developed to defend against lasers. Some kind of fun phase-change material stored in layers of lattice?
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I have more objections than that-
1) looked like a hobbyist type rocket, paper and wood
2) rocket didn't go very fast at all
3) was on a wire with a predetermined path
Pretty unimpressive from my standpoint
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Polished chrome varies depending on wavelength. For example a clear plexiglass sheet is opaque to FLIR. On the otherhand an oxidized grey sheet of aluminum plate is a polished mirror at the same wavelength. White aluminum oxide paint may protect it at some wavelengths. Note in the video the targets were painted black. Reflecting 95% instead of absorbing it will require a much higher power LASER.
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Last second maneuvering would be one way to avoid this, but this has a far higher tolerance than a kinetic vehicle defense system. For an incoming munition, a quick shift just a few feet is enough to foil a kinetic attack as the reaction rate is low even for a thrust vectored, active kill vehicle. An az-el tracking system at 1km out is going to be dealing with arc-minutes of shift per second even if the incoming vehicle is pulling several Gs of acceleration. At burnout, that rocket was likely seeing 5-10 G
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It makes a nice point defense system at the very least for a critical target.
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Even the most basic evasive manuevering algorithms have proven amazingly effective at getting past other missile defense systems. It's hard enough to target something moving in a straight line, and the complexity of the problem rises nonlinearly as the target's course becomes more erratic.
It's also very difficult for a missile in terminal flight to evade and hit the target at the same time.
Act Now, Supplies Are Limited (Score:5, Insightful)
>> As well as providing the equipment necessary to fire missiles, defense contractors also want to offer customers the ability to defend against them.
Naturally. How else would you extract top dollar from both sides?
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How else would you extract top dollar from both sides?
Lobbyists, bribery, paranoia, and threat construction. None of which require you to offer defensive systems against your own "defensive systems."
Aircraft carriers (Score:1)
Maybe carriers won't go extinct after all
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Maybe carriers won't go extinct after all
I'm sure they'll have a missile design that's immune to this soon enough.
moreover, this design looks like it needs to know the type of missile?
and editors, why the fuck is the subject in flight if it's tethered missile? or am I superman since I "flew" on a zipline once??
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This laser with its 1.5km range would be of little use against a maneuverable DF-21D [usni.org] traveling at Mach 10. SM3 is the missile being tapped to for that duty but the kill vehicle is not the big challenge.
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That *might* be true. Remember that Mach 10 is not the likely speed of the craft at full atmospheric density, and at high speeds the integrity of the heat sheilding is very critical to performance. For an incoming missile, the long range slew rate on the laser will be very low (i.e. easy to acquire and track), and actual penetration of the airframe won't be necessary if the skin is at or near it's thermal limits on final approach to the target.
So, yes, 1.5km will be covered very, very quickly by a hyperson
not as useful as you might think (Score:1)
These are designed to defend against qassam type rockets. Qassam rockets are very simple rockets (steel tubes, warhead on the tip, no electronic gizmos) that are fired into Israel by the Palestinians. I doubt that they could defend against something more substantial.
Yet (Score:2)
you forgot that part.
This is extremely out of date. (Score:2)
Ft Bliss USA, they were testing lasers on conventional ballistics. Maybe the program finally completed and this is the end result. But I suspect this can also shoot down ballistics as well.
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I don't know the details for you sorry =/ There's a good chance your right. I will tell you that I heard about lasers targeting ballistics from my CO. He could have been bullshitting us. But he was not prone to that kind of behavior =)
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That sounds like it. Thanks for the informative response =)
In 2000 and 2001 THEL shot down 28 Katyusha artillery rockets and 5 artillery shells. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_High_Energy_Laser [wikipedia.org]
Is pretty much what he was talking about then.
The I guess I'll have to RTFA about this new one ;p
Noticed (Score:3)
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It takes .125 seconds to destroy a black target, .1251 to destroy a non-black target. Seriously, at these energy levels the color of the target is largely irrelevant.
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Fog or Rain? (Score:2)
I'm guessing you need pretty clear weather for the targeting system to work.
Until it rains?... (Score:2)
Missile defense system is designed to operate when the target is in *clear* sight? What if skies are not so clear - heavy rain, fog, or dust?
"Baron, my apologies. These madmen are attacking under cover of the storm." --Frank Herbert, "Dune"
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Phased plasma rifle in the 40 watt range (Score:2)
Terminator: "Phased plasma rifle in the 40 watt range."
Shopkeeper: "hey, just what you see here pal..."
Terminator: "Uzi nine millimeter."
Shopkeeper: "You really know your guns. This baby's perfect for home defense..."
PETA Approved? (Score:2)
Apparently no birds were harmed in the making of that video.
We'll probably never see the videos where they were :-)
What are the alternatives? (Score:2)
Honest question.
What alternatives are there to a low-production, high-powered laser that likely requires a ton of support crew/machinery to take out missiles?
Phalanx or successors? Are these considered competent?
What about missile-to-missile platforms?
And how useful is this thing if it's not an on tangential course?
The Crossbow Project: (Score:2)
There is no defense, like a good offense.
Hmm - naming issue, anyone? (Score:2)
ADAM - Absolute Destruction of Available Mass
(Megazone-23, part 2)
Missing the potential (Score:2)
Skeptical. It probably does not work. (Score:2)
Given the history of these contractors of doing rigged demos... Remember back to the rocket defense system where it came out they put tracking devices into the the rocket so all it had to do was fly towards the beacon in the target? After that huge PR nightmare one would think they would learn .... and usually it is not the right lesson (make it actually work) but to learn to do a better job of not getting caught.
Everybody forget the F-22? That was lockheed martin. So, does this laser work in the rain?
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A trailer is considerably more maneuverable than a 747. It also uses a lot less gas if defending a stationary target. And a lot less $$$ overhead just to mount a weapon.
Plus pretty much all of the other reasons why automakers are still around when aviation manufacturers can make stuff that *flies*
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Why don't you take an existing product and put it on a truck.
Boeing did this years ago from a 747, while in flight.
so LM, who makes planes, said lets do that but do it easier by not making it fly.
yawn.
The Boeing system(the YAL-1) was a chemical laser. Those things are markedly better at high power compared to ordinary photopumped gas lasers or solid state lasers; but are somewhat disliked because of the difficulties involved in supplying and exhausting substantial quantities of nasty halogens under field conditions.
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They are very different creatures. The Boeing YAL-1 was deigned to shoot down missiles 100s of miles away (ballistic missiles in launch phase.). And part of the problem was its lack of range– it had to linger close (for ballistic missiles that is) to its target, which means you would have to have multiple plans covering the same area to accommodate refueling, service, etc.
Re:home version (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, that's been done.
http://www.ted.com/talks/nathan_myhrvold_could_this_laser_zap_malaria.html [ted.com]
Pretty cool, imo.
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In response, all the worlds missles are now chrome plated, and you're burning the city or a forest, or whatever on the ground.
That wouldn't work. The reflective surface wouldn't be able to do that with the beam hundreds of meters away. Why do you think that optical mirrors are so precisely shaped?
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It just takes slightly longer to destroy them. The best reflective surfaces are easily fouled by handling. Ever see what happens when you accidentally touch a headlamp (or projector) bulb with your finger while installing it? It still looks perfectly transparent, but *boom* it doesn't last long under even a 50W heat load. Now take your awesome mirror finish and send it through tens or hundreds of miles of atmospheric dust/bugs/ impurities. All of a sudden your ideal mirror becomes just good. Then we hit i
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A) This is for targeting smaller missile (non-balistic). Smaller missiles are... well smaller. They take less heat to damage and cause failures and they have less surface area to spread the heat out over.
B) That was 30 years ago. Laser power and tracking has improved just a bit since then.
C) This is more about defending against the kind of dumb rockets that Hezbollah fires into Israel every so often as it is about an engagement with a highly funded modern military.