Ground, sea and air forces are working to develop practical battlefield lasers. Wired says the Army is working on a truck mounted directed energy weapon that can zap incoming mortars with a device that generates more than 105 Kw. The Air Force announced that it used a megawatt class airborne laser to take down a ballistic missile target. The megawatt class device did not instantly vaporize the targets, as science fiction aficionados might expect from watching the movies. Instead it heated the missile to structural failure. An Air Force press release says:
At 8:44 p.m. (PST), February 11, 2010, a short-range threat-representative ballistic missile was launched from an at-sea mobile launch platform. Within seconds, the ALTB used onboard sensors to detect the boosting missile and used a low-energy laser to track the target. The ALTB then fired a second low-energy laser to measure and compensate for atmospheric disturbance. Finally, the ALTB fired its megawatt-class High Energy Laser, heating the boosting ballistic missile to critical structural failure. The entire engagement occurred within two minutes of the target missile launch, while its rocket motors were still thrusting.
But no mobile ray weapon can generate as much power as a ship-based system which can draw on the resources of a massive propulsion system. The Navy is considering equipping the Gerald Ford class carriers with free electron laser weapons which may possibly be used as anti-missile defenses. One of the principal differences between the Ford and older Nimitz class vessels is the much larger amount of electrical power available to the newer ships. This power will drive its electromagnetic catapault system, its electronics and of course, its laser defense systems.
Although the existing research is centered around defensive requirements — anti-ICBM, anti-ASM and anti-artillery — offensive uses under development include the advanced tactical laser (ATL) system which marries up directed energy weapons to the C-130 gunship platform. The ray gunship will be able to attack targets on the ground. The Hand of Allah now comes at 186,000 miles per second.
Nor is America the only player in the game. Russia and Israel have active high energy development programs. If anything proves the age of the ray gun has arrived, only need look to Greenpeace, which attacks Japanese whalers by attempting to blind the bridge officers with lasers, one of which is deployed on their “Batboat”, the Ady Gil.
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The strategic implications of directed energy weapons are still being thought through. One possible effect might be to alter the balance, once again, between offense and defense. Missiles and aircraft (whether of the manned or unmanned variety) may cease to be effective platforms for attacking targets. The power-generation capability of the platform may becoming the deciding metric of combat capability. The energy potential of a platform like a 747 may become more important than the speed and agility of an F-22 when weapons travel at the speed of light. No matter how fast and agile a naval vessel is, or how many missiles it carries, when directed energy weapons are in play, what use is there is going up against the nuclear core of a Gerald Ford?
The importance of space may also change. Can satellites survive as ground-based weapons grow in capability? Will military space eventually even up by moving towards deploying large power generating units in space, consisting perhaps of solar collectors of epic size, as the game becomes which literally has more power than the other; the heavens or the earth? And in politics, what will it mean if raw power generation becomes a measure of military might? What will the market for carbon credits be in such a world? Whither will windmills go?
Nobody knows. But nobody ever did. As we move well into the second decade of the 21st century we might look back on the vision of a poet who strained to look into the future and saw only vast and indistinct shapes. Modern man can no more see the future than Tennyson could. And that is perhaps a mercy.
Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new:
That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do:For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales;Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew
From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue
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Navy ships armed with laser defensive weaponry, aircraft and missiles cease to be effective platforms for attacking targets. Hmmmm. Return of the battleships and battlecruisers to the High Seas anyone? Tanks regain their spot on the battlefield too.
Wretchard, you just amaze me with the breadth and width of yout literary references. Tennyson and lasers all in the same article. I’m blown away.
BTW; I want my pocket laser soon.
I have no doubt that various frequencies of ray weapons will be the future of warfare. The problem is that there is no certainty, or even high probability; that this technology will be funded and allowed to be deployed here. Indeed, the more successful the technology the less likely that this regime will allow it to be deployed. The entire thrust of their foreign policy has been to weaken this country and increase its vulnerability to foreign threats.
The military is the enemy to the Democrats and they seek to dismantle it, not use it to defend the country.
Incidentally, we are waiting for the other shoe to drop on defense spending. After literally wasting $Trillions, now Obama wants to slam us with higher taxes [and not only on those making over $250,000 a year as he formally reneged on that repeated promise (over 40 specific instances of unequivocable statements to that effect on tape) yesterday]. One of the secrets of taxation is that if you took 100% of all incomes over $250,000 a year, for that one year you would still not get enough to cover even normal spending. And you would only get it for that one year, I promise.
He has spent us into bankruptcy, and even slamming everybody above the poverty line will not dent it. That means that he will be “forced” to make cuts. He is not going to cut his payoffs to cronys, nationalizations, etc. That means defense is going to be on the chopping block. The aforementioned Gerald R. Ford is only part-way built. There is no guarantee that her keel will ever touch water. Nor that any of the laser weaponry will ever be deployed … by any but our enemies.
Subotai Bahadur
I want laser zeppelins. With nuclear reactors! Nuclear powered laser zeppelins!
The old comic essay (Dave Barry?) had a dial on lasers that went from eye surgery to destroy tank.
FYI -
Airborne Laser: Bullet of Light
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/all.htm
4. John Lynch: Now we are drifting off into manga-tech……I love the idea however. Just park one over the capital of any regime that is pissing you off and I think you would have their attention.
All well and good, Wretchard, but it will take soldiers to win. It has always taken soldiers, and always will.
SOLDIERS
Past green trees newly leaved, new green fields on either side, we marched. Distant white farmhouses, distant dogs barking nervously, cloaks against the misty Spring rain, we marched. North Africa the rumor, Zama the town. We didn’t care. We marched. And sang. Sang because we were young, sang because we were immortal, sang because we were Scipio’s boys.
All the silver’s for Centurions
The gold is for Triarii
And all the sweet young women are
For Publius Cornelius
Publius Cornelius Scipio. We would die, and they would call him Scipio Africanus. We marched, to the sea and the waiting ships.
The long swells laid many of us low, but finally, blessedly, we reached the bay and the river. Alexandria at last. We formed up on the quay, a bit unsteadily, still weak from the seasickness. Fifers leading, we marched up King Street, past capering boys and waving and cheering men and women. Braddock was but waiting on us, it was said, before pushing off for the great western forests. Fort Pitt was the rumor, and that meant a long campaign for the Forty-fourth Regiment of Foot, but that was all right, we were young and immortal. The long sea voyage and the longer campaign was a hardship on the married men, but for the rest of us women were a luxury of camp. But that was all right too, for we all loved the same woman, and her name was Brown Bess.
In the forest clearing we made camp, fires flaring into light, the smell of bacon on the cool night air. We thought of home, and of the coming days. The Cilician Gates was the rumor, then south along the coast to Aleppo, where was waiting King Muwatalli and the rest of the army. The weather, thanks to Tarhunna the Weather God, has been fair. Crown Prince Hattusili has told us the Pharaoh Ramses has left Damascus and is marching north, that the fight, when it comes, will be a hard one, for the Mizziri are accomplished warriors. We lay on our blankets, and in the growing dark came a voice, singing softly, an army song, a song a man sings when far from home and family, a song that reminds him of why it is he fights, why it is he dies. Welling up from the darkened field, the voices of the Tuhkanti regiment joined the lone voice, singing of home. Across the fields it spread, to the other regiments, sitting in the dark by their dying fires, until the night was filled with the sadness of young men thinking of mothers and sisters, wives and sweethearts, seeing their fathers in the fields, hearing the crickets and the birds and the wind in the plaintive leaves.
Hatti, beautiful Hatti,
Will I see thee once again?
Will I see the morning sun?
Will I see the evening star?
Hatti, beautiful Hatti,
I can see thee now.
The last line trailed away, the last notes faded on the soft evening air, until in the distance, from the direction of the Golden Aspens, another ubati took up the song, and once again the sad voices filled the night.
Hatti,beautiful Hatti,
I can see the fields aglow,
I can see the mountain snow,
I can see thee now.
We sang the final chorus, all of us, the entirety of the Kussara Division, our voices swelling on the final line. I can see thee now. The last sad notes faded into the night, and we rolled ourselves into our blankets and our thoughts, knowing that sleep will make us whole, knowing that tomorrow we’ll be soldiers again.
The coast road to Aleppo was clear, the Mizzri still far to the south. Rumor was if we hurried we would reach Kadesh before the Mizziri. The sea sounded very near at hand, and through a break in the trees we could see a beach.
Curiously, the beach looked peaceful. Boats coming ashore as if on a summer outing, no machine guns, no mortars, no arty. Equipment rolling off and onto the beach, long files of men trudging up the beach to the exits, not a shot fired. It was surreal. I found the beachmaster, and he stuck out his hand. “Welcome to Okinawa,” he grinned. Inland, clear in the distance, lay a range of hills.
Purple hills shimmered in the heat hazy distance, the day growing hot. The muted sounds of birdsong and insect hum swirled around us. Across the field, drawn up in battle array, waited the Carthaginians. We raised our shields, and at the order, advanced.
Back in the 80’s a friend of mine worked on laser systems for Los Alamos National Laboratories. He couldn’t tell me much but he described his work in a power supply that was several stories high. Land based systems might be collocated with power plants.
As far as balance is concerned, our adversaries will choose the low tech approach most likely. Beware the camel and its payload.
Sb- “The military is the enemy to the Democrats and they seek to dismantle it…”
I have been thinking that the Dems are jealous of the US military for having a successful monopoly of force and are trying to find ways to steal the mantle of legitimacy that it creates to put to use in a civilian endeavor such as… health care, cap and trade, et al.
@4. John Lynch
No, No.
What we need is sharks with frickin lasers on their heads.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh7bYNAHXxw
The Pentagon contacted me to see if there was any possibility they could test just how I shoot my mouth off.
I’ll soon be travelling to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia Labs for testing..
Annoy M …please see my last post on last thread.
A couple of speculative thoughts:
High-tech, autonomous or semi-autonomous weaponry can actually appeal to the Obama/Clinton types as an alternative to boots-on-the-ground — we’ve already seen that to be the case whenever these types of politicians want to appear belligerent for effect.
Free electron lasers may be well-suited for launching quick response reconaissance satellites, because of the distances these lasers can project their beams before the beam is diffused by a “blooming” effect.
In the end though, we’re just talking about weaponry that has to be deployed because there have been both intelligence breakdowns and a projection of weakness that encourages an enemy to become rash and bold. Until we 1) take Humint seriously again and redevelop (and improve) those capabilities, and 2) always show stength and resolve and brook no nonsense — even in negotiations — we will blunder into armed conflict.
There are also rail guns. Theoretically, used from a ship, they can shoot kinetic energy projectiles more than 200 miles. Allowing coastal ships to hit far inland, the return of the Battleship.
HOWEVER, this reminds me of the Greek Fire used against the armada of the Muslim fleet outside Constantinople in 674. A miracle. But one not repeated.
The problem is, that such weapons don’t just grow out of the ground. It takes a LOT of very, very smart people in basic science, engineering, and mathematics to design them, and more very, very smart people to produce them. A one-off genius like Kalishnikov may make a robust, game-changing single weapon, but that does not provide systemic advantage.
We are now filtering out High IQ (to some measure low IQ as well) men from the dating and reproduction pool. All the future engineers of 2020 in America have already been born. And there are not that many.
It is also certain that producing these weapons systems takes a lot of money. Can you imagine the coalition of Blacks, Latinos, White Women, Gays, and Elite White SWPL folks agreeing to spend money on laser and rail gun armed ships instead of Affirmative Action driven spending on welfare case workers and environmental impact statements and “green” windmills? Neither can I.
This is why Byzantium fell. No matter how much technological advantage it had (and it had considerable) the influence of the priests and women directed more and more money to both bread and circus distractions to the populace and arcane disputes over religion. Instead of mobilizing “Roman Style” to simply march in and destroy the enemy. Utterly. Eventually even the technological advantages were cast away, as they were deemed irrelevant to the court issues of religion and intrigues.
These advances will go nowhere. First, we don’t have the people to properly develop them to production ready weapons systems. Period. Because our social system produces not “Idiocracy” but “Jersey Shore,” where reproductive success is based on well, “the Situation.” That is the situation. All the engineers and scientists needed to move these concepts to production were never born. But we’ll have plenty of average IQ salesmen with great abs.
Second, we don’t have the political will to spend the money on defense. PERIOD. Even if Obama is gone after 2012, the current opposition to him is based solely on being AGAINST what he is for, which is a double-down screwing over of the middle class financially. There is ZERO constituency on spending money on defense because bottom line it takes money away from the 52% majority of Blacks, Hispanics, Gays, White Women, and Elite White folks, such as Larry David, Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, Tom Friedman, David Gergen, and those who aspire to that class (Markos Moulitsas and Charles Johnson).
I don’t even think NYC being obliterated by a “nuclear car bomb” would change that equation. I believe it would take four to five cities being annihilated before the fundamental desire to spend pork on the current ruling coaliton would be forced aside for defense. Not the least of which is the breakdown of the nuclear family and therefore strong female desire for massive social spending.
After all, is Greece even capable of changing? No. It and Spain and Portugal will have to be bailed out by Germany and France, or the Eurozone collapse. Even if Turkey seized half of Greece, the population would still demand social spending instead of military spending.
Osama bin Laden was probably right. Huge manpower advantages plus lack of Western Will (and wasting away of western defense which resembles Byzantium) equals eventual Muslim triumph. Nuclear car-bombs and “swarming” AK-47 attacks beat lasers on airplanes as a concept eventually.
Obama has already gutted missile defense, and this program is IIRC being shut down. Meanwhile Mark Steyn predicts that the fatwa against airport scanners will have TSA exempting Muslims from the scanners while grannies and middle class people are subjected to a technological strip-search.
The Imperial Navy and Army commanders felt that Americans lacked the Japanese “fighting spirit” and that superior will would allow them to defeat the soft, decadent Americans. They were just off by about 60 years. I don’t think it will take 800 years for the West to fall, as with Byzantium. More like fifty, at the most.
At one time a few years back the idea of arming the F-35 with a laser turret was being discussed very seriously. They would use the drive shaft designed to power the lift fan to power the laser. They were trying to figure out whether it would be best to put the laser on the top or the bottom.
So maybe we are getting back to the era of the Balton Paul Defiant? It was a nutty idea, a modern late 30′s airframe armed with a 4 gun turret. The pilot had to maneuver so to enable the gunner in the turret to engage the target. The worst part was that there were no guns in the front. It worked great – once. Some German fighters decided to sneak up on what appeared to be some unsuspecting Hurricanes, only to discover they had their targets right where the British wanted them. They never made that mistake again, and the Defiant was all but useless in the Battle of Britian.
Now, though, espcially with R2D2 to run the turret, things could be different. The days of air combat in which the two adversaries get a good look at each other but can’t get into firing position may be over.
As for the tactical laser on the 130, anyone recall that movie “Real Genius”? Exactly the scenario, bumping off high value targets in a motorcade, that so horrified the college kids at Pacific Tech. Post 9/11/01 we perhaps have a different perspective, or maybe Horrywood is still horrified.
I have been thinking that the Dems are jealous of the US military for having a successful monopoly of force and are trying to find ways to steal the mantle of legitimacy that it creates to put to use in a civilian endeavor such as… health care, cap and trade, et al.
Perhaps they’re also jealous of the fact that our military has shown itself to be the most competent arm of the federal government. “Competence” is a relative term, of course, but the military has borne not just its typical roles in deployment, but has had to compensate for the shortcomings (and institutional cowardice) of both the State Dept. and the CIA. They were also the most competent component of both the Tsunami and Katrina responses. Joking aside, I wouldn’t be surprised that these observations by progressive operatives were a part of the inspiration for Obama’s creepy “civilian security force” speech and calls for enforced “volunteerism.” What Obama & Company don’t realize is that they’re “civilian force” will end up being a “civilian farce” comparable to Mussolini’s hapless armies.
How much is hubris or not is difficult to say. Bluffing is part of the game yet a difficult and risky tactic.
Iran is not the only player yet the most vulnerable in the big-weapons game. They are getting better and have basically defeated diplomacy as a way to get them to quit the nuclear option.
The Iranian gambit relies heavily on the concept that enough warheads on enough missiles can provide sufficient leverage for whatever goal they want. Old school. Until now missiles could not be stopped. That is where to attack in my opinion.
Yet today they announce 20% low enriched Uranium which is barely enough for production of medical isotopes.
I think they are mistaken. Before they have enough to be a threat the missiles can be made obsolete and decades of guns vs butter tradeoffs will only serve to further the internal political discontent among the Iranian people. What has this bought them to this point?
Nothing of substance. The revolution is imploding before our eyes. They rule by violent supression of their own. They are losing on every front.
It is only beginning of third quarter and the game is far from over.
Iranian people will be liberated from the suicidal path of their totalitarian government. We need to stand by and respect them now.
Spindok
I’ve finally finished an ungainly piece on <a href="http://www.rdwaterpower.com/pipelines/portable-nuclear-power-desalination-plants/portable nuclear power plants.
There will be a number of uses for them with regards to water. one will be for portable nuclear desalination plants. You can drop portable nuclear powered desalination plants anywhere along any barren sea coast or any inland desert where there’s a briny aquifer.
Or if there is a massive catastrophe a portable nuclear powered desalination plant can do the job that an aircraft carrier is currently doing off Haiti. Provide water during disaster relief.
Off grid portable nuclear power plants take much of the complexity –but not the cost..at least so far–out of bulk water transfer because you don’t have to string power cables 1000′s of miles to run the pumps. You just drop a refrigerator sized portable nuclear power plant in next to very large pumps and you can pump whole rivers where ever along very large pipelines or pipelines stacked up.
This is great for whenever desalinated water drops under 100@acre foot. Portable nuclear power plants will make it technically not so tough to pump small rivers of water inland for 1000 miles.
But there’s also another fantastic use that can be made whenever the portable nukes become available.
Portable nukes make it possible to do bulk water transfers on the fly. Currently everyone hates bulk water transfers in canada or the great lakes. no one wants their water shipped somewhere else.
But what if they had too much water. Say during the two months of the year when the missippi goes into flood stage. Rather than spend a couple billion dollars through the army corp of engineers for flood control and FEMA for flood management you spend the money on pumping rivers of water west over across south wyoming to the south pass and into the colorado basin.
Or you just a couple hundred miles to the sinks of eastern colorado to form large shallow lakes that percolate into the Ogallala Aquifer…so as to refill that aquifer. Or further south you pump the water out to west texas. You do that for two months to pull water levels below flood stage and then shut down the nukes ship them elsewhere or re purpose them.
Just a thought.
The Imperial Navy and Army commanders felt that Americans lacked the Japanese “fighting spirit” and that superior will would allow them to defeat the soft, decadent Americans. They were just off by about 60 years.
And just look at Japan now — and Germany. Whatever happened to the Bushido warriors and the Aryan supermen? They’ve become countries of old people with a pacifist bent. Well maybe that’s the fault of post-war American policy. But look at Britain, one of the “victors” and it is not much better off.
I think human beings and cultures all go through these phases for reasons that are poorly understood. But a century can flip things around. There are still people alive today who can remember “no dogs or Chinese” signs in public places — and that sign was posted in Shanghai! Rudyard Kipling then wrote that to be “born British was to win first prize in the lottery of life.” Today Britain looks pretty shaky. But in a 50 or a hundred years? Who can say.
If one lives in a world of competition the mostly likely result is that people are constantly rising to the challenge. Today the cynosure of feminine attraction may be directed toward shirtless werewolves in Twilight. But maybe someday it will swing back to the Last Starfighter because deep down inside men don’t want to be dogs on two feet, but members of the Star League, recruited to repel Zur and the Kodan Armada.
Well, we can easily make lasers and masers that can sweep a battlefield and cook every eyeball, but such things are inhumane and against the Geneva Convention, the Blackwood Convention, and the Italian System. Which makes me wonder how the Greenpeace ship thinks they can get away with it.
Destructo lasers aren’t as easy as all that. Cloud or two, and they’re NFG. For that matter, I’m not sure how many targets a single 747 can engage, before running out of Schlitz. So, a flood of bogies will probably defeat any currently achievable laser defense.
Apparently it’s not proving so easy to build solid-state laser blasters that might have greater duration, “droop” sets in as you try to increase power. I have some (totally layman) thoughts on the matter, I just hope we don’t wake up some morning and find the Chinese or Russians or whoever have cobbled together some crude laser weapons we turned our noses up at as inelegant.
Heck, didn’t Tom Clancy bring down an airliner with nothing but a spotlight, twenty years ago?
That bat boat was pretty aggressive. Too bad it’s on the bottom of the ocean now – they forgot the rule that little boats need to keep their distance from big boats.
And I suppose that can serve as a metophor for both the lure of this tech and the problem with it – even though it was very high-tech in every aspect and quite expensive, in the end that bat boat was no match for an old, crude, low tech freighter that was a lot bigger and was determined to go where it wanted to. In the real confrontation, the high tech didn’t count for squat – it just made a good show which was a nice way to raise money from rich suckers. The skipper of that bat boat was so taken in by it’s allure and it’s tech that he seems to have forgotten that he really couldn’t get away with anything he wanted to. But reality intervened, as it always does.
There’s a military analogy to this situation, as well – it’s well known that the German Wehrmacht weaponry in WW2 was far more advanced than that of the allies, and they excelled at the “secret project”, things such as the V1, V2, Me-262, etc. But in the end all those projects did was waste a huge amount of time and effort that could have been put into more prosaic efforts. The allies, and especially America were able to beat them by overwhelming them. A Panzer was far better than a Sherman, but 10 panzers and 1 infrantry brigade weren’t better than 100 shermans with 5 infantry brigades on an envelopment action. The German tech was better and in some cases far more advanced, but the allies won by having tech that was good enough, and by having huge quantities of it.
With regard to the laser being developed – if it can be massively deployed in a relatively quick timeframe, then it will be a significant development. If we only end up building a handful and they sit on test beds and display platforms, it will have been a lot of money and effort for nothing.
Tarns/1; re battleships, the Mighty Mo has just come out of drydock –
http://www.khon2.com/news/local/story/USS-Missouri-Reopens-to-Public/GB236kX4LEiYVjxLSKCpKg.cspx
Whiskey always has to weigh in with his psychosexual angle on things, even laser defenses. He is right, but for the wrong reasons. The Airborne Laser just shot down a missile. Accordingly, that line item will be cut from the 2011 Defense Budget Appropriations because in the Left’s playbook, a weapon system that actually works (such as depleted uranium armor-piercing shells) only frightens our allies and perpetrates the cycle of violence.
Three thousand dead in New York created the post-911 surge of spirituality and patriotism in America, and Whiskey now says that nuking New York won’t result in a repeat. Maybe nuking four or five cities would. That’s just nuts. He then goes on to say:
The Imperial Navy and Army commanders felt that Americans lacked the Japanese “fighting spirit” and that superior will would allow them to defeat the soft, decadent Americans. They were just off by about 60 years.
There’s nothing soft or decadent about our sailors, soldiers, airmen and Marines. Continuous combat experience since Gulf One assures that. As for the political will to fight, what was Afghanistan 2001-present and Iraq 2003-2009, chopped liver? Thirteen months of Obama’s emphasis on the domestic agenda, repudiated in Massachusetts, and Whiskey says America has grown soft and decadent and will collapse in fifty years. Give me a break.
oh btw did anyone catch Craig Ferguson last night, and the end of Don Rickles’ interview? Rickles making the observation that when you go to a Hollywood party today and say that Obama is not your cup of tea, you should expect people to start screaming at you about how Obama is the best thing in the world and we’re so lucky to have him.
Craig said nothing in response, that was the end of the show.
A laser weapon? Wow! I wonder how far along the Chinese and Russians
are to stealing the plans.
Timing of this essay is so wonderfully ironic. I just saw a program on the Japanese Death Ray experiments during World War II.
There was conjecture that they tested it on humans, but they always put in the report “monkeys”.
The Death Ray would melt the skin off and melt the eyeballs of its victims. The Japanese were having an internal debate whether to develop the atom bomb or the Death Ray.
They were experimenting with microwaves, which could stop vehicles dead in their tracks as well, but not from long distances.
Anyway, the war ended before they had fully developed either, or else it could have been a starkly different outcome.
Since we have abandoned our space program and basically handed off infinity to the Chinese and the Russians, we may get a chance to witness all the newest inventions that emanated from our space programs…from the sidelines. We seem to now take exception to American exceptionalism.
Pardon my scepticism about lasers as defensive weapons, but perhaps I just lack information.
How long does a laser have to lock on to a target to destroy it?
Ever heard of a sea skimming stealth cruise missile swarm? China has.
A laser defence weapon would be very busy indeed in such an event.
I wouldn’t want such a weapons system to be my best shot in a swarm attack.
As for those self righteous leftie punks with the laser in the bat boat. Those are adequate grouds to ram.
If I was in my car and someone pulled up next to me and did that my reflexes would put them into the next pole or out into a paddock somewhere at high speed in the absence of a convenient pole.
Punk stuff. Sometimes you just have to hold a person responsible for their actions.
#3 Subotai
<>
All too true. For a few $million there are many in government who will sell the USA secrets. There is also a man at the top
who will divert the necessary funds.
We all just hope that the blinded bridge officers
don’t accidentally steer the ship into the batboat.
Don’t we?
Three observations for your consideration:
1. The Navy has been working with Polywell on a self-contained fusion testbed called Wiffleball. They let a contract late last year for number 8 in the series. Some in the community think they are getting close to something interesting. I know, I know the chimera of fusion has been fleeing our grasp for nearly 30 years. Do a search on Pollywell and Wiffleball 8 and see what turns up. There are those that think the Navy is very interested in small, very powerful power sources for their new weapons.
2. I am reminded of the old Cold War days when every now and then the CIA would publish a strange photo in Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine – just to give the Soviets something else to think about. A photo of a U-2 landing on a carrier comes to mind.
3. There was an incident in the Seattle area 20 or so years ago with laser fire off a Soviet flagged or friendly vessel that caused eye damage to a couple military pilots. There were also some stories of bomber intercepts off Alaska where the Bear / Bison (normally Bear) crews used flashing light at the correct frequency to induce sickness in the intercepting aircrews – all part of the Great Game at the time.
Cheers -
Buddy/21 — The Mighty Mo has just come out of drydock
Halsey’s flagship, the USS New Jersey, is anchored right across the river from me. She is open to the public, and available for parties. She is now a bring-your-own-bottleship.
Walt 8: Fantastic! Loved it.
walt, thanks, i must come turret.
Buddy/32 — Who says you’re not a groan man?
grrr…i can’t win….
Wiffleball, piffleball.
Walt, too bad we don’t have those big boys in the fleet anymore, if China sent out a “sea skimming stealth cruise missile swarm” and hit that 17 inch steel hull, the Captain might have the Petty Officer of the Watch call away Sweepers.
Walt, too bad we don’t have those big boys in the fleet anymore, if China sent out a “sea skimming stealth cruise missile swarm” and hit that 17 inch steel hull, the Captain might have the Petty Officer of the Watch call away Sweepers.
Turns out not to be the case with modern shaped-charge warheads, which are depressingly effective.
Not to even mention nukes.
Tho I’m not a “laser guy”, I do have to work with lasers. A lot. One thing I’ve learned regarding eye safety is that when the laser guy says the thing is eye safe at 10m, then keep the goggles on at 50m.
If Greenpeace fired anything more than a conference room laser pen at my ship then I will consider it justified after I send them all to Davy Jones’ locker.
“A laser weapon? Wow! I wonder how far along the Chinese and Russians
are to stealing the plans.”
They get all their R & D for free,essentially, from the US.
See the new Russian fighter?
The techology only cost them a few million bucks in campaign donations!
And we’re all pretty sure who those contributions were to.
The Japanese should fund an activist group (GreenTea maybe) that deployed lasers capable of slicing and dicing greenpeace ships.
Ahhh…Dreams.
It’s amusing to watch how Whiskey seems to think that if all of the blacks, latinos, white women, gays, and rich white men all dropped dead, the United States would be transformed into a wonderful place to live. Perhaps he forgot about the Jews and the Irish, who have historically voted Democrat too. Or is the word “elite” merely a code word for Jewish and Irish voters?
Seriously, I think that the real divide is between Americans who are bought by Saudi money and Americans who see the Saudi royal family’s political influence as a threat to our national liberty. The Islamists would love to see Americans plunged into a civil war so we can do the dirty work of killing other Americans for them. We should have no patience for Saudis who would fund al-Qaeda with one hand while bribing officials from American government, academia, and media on the other.
George W Bush was too close to the Saudi monarchy. Now, Barack Hussein Obama bows down to King Abdullah of the Saudi Kingdom! The era of cozy American relations with the Saudi Kingdom must end. The freedom agenda of the United States must include the overthrow of Iran and the Saudi Kingdom and any other government that would harbor al-Qaeda. Those who support al-Qaeda must be severely punished.
Let’s keep our eye on the ball. We must wear down our enemies at a faster rate than our enemies can wear us down. There are many ways to do this, and the best strategy is an anaconda strategy that uses every means at our disposal to strangle the enemy’s ability to fight. Yes, we must defeat anti-war sentiment at home, but this is best done politically and not through the blunt and counterproductive weapons of civil war.
Victory at Home. Victory Abroad. Let’s fight to defend our Constitution, the same one that includes the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments.
In praise of Buddy & Walt
Historians give their research and opinions
concerning things that long ago did end Rome.
But here we must contend with Satan’s Minions
Whose posts show signs of “Turret’s Syndrome!” *
Each poster through the ether hurls a passkey
Logging in to add a few more brickbats
Advancing vitriolic verbal combats
Of hurtling burning spitting letters ASCII.
Sophisticated moderns opt for parsin’
Rants that yesteryear could prompt a stoning.
They leave a lot of Belmont readers groaning,
but we can’t help a laugh with Buddy Larsen.
Bikini waxes seem more fun to me than rhyming.
But punishment’s far worse for those caught miming.
* I grovel with apologies for debasing the English Language.
The French sent a covert team to sink a Greenpeace ship, the Rainbow Warrior which was interfering with their nuclear tests in the South Pacific, which in due course was transformed into a campaign to reject the NZ-US alliance.
There are really two lessons in that. First: it’s always America’s fault, even if the French do it. Second: there’s one set of rules for Greencpeace and another set of rules say for James O’Keefe. This is not illogical. It simply reflects that things are defined in the following way:
assert condition
If the condition is False, the program is in error; this statement raises an AmericaatFaultError exception. If the condition is True, the program is in error; this statement raises an AmericaatFaultError.
Because organizations like Greenpeace control the frame, they can assert it’s always America’s fault and that is always true.
wretchard:
Because organizations like Greenpeace control the frame, they can assert it’s always America’s fault and that is always true.
How does one take the frame away from “organizations like Greenpeace”? Since when do they monopolize control over the frame?
#43 Wretchard
I think you’re making it too complicated. The USA being wrong/evil is defined as a constant. No boolean evaluation is needed or required.
How does one take the frame away from “organizations like Greenpeace”? Since when do they monopolize control over the frame?
One of the goals of an activist organization is to condition public expectations. If the anti-globalization activists riot enough, it becomes the new normal for them. After a while two standards emerge and this is actually accepted. For example, the slaughterhouses and torture chambers of al-Qaeda create no outrage because we have been conditioned to apply one standard to them. Another standard is applied to the US — and we have accepted this as legitimate.
This goes on all the time. Conservatives should “reach across the aisle”, but the Left has no such obligation. This process continues until the exact assert condition I’ve described is to all intents and purposes set up. Heads they win, tails we lose. And since even conservatives accept these rules from constant repetition, then QED. Sometimes conservatives are a little dumbfounded when they see what the result of the assert statement is, and then some professor will walk them through it and indeed! it can be shown as if by magic that is truly always your fault. That’s because its rigged that way; ordinary people sometimes get the feeling that someone has tricked them, but since the deck of cards has been marked long ago it seems like the natural order of things.
I think you’re making it too complicated. The USA being wrong/evil is defined as a constant. No boolean evaluation is needed or required.
Would that be a global constant? Or a local one?
Would that be a global constant? Or a local one?
Oh come on Wretchard, you know its global.
MF/42; LOL –(*whew*) thank goodness, i was afraid we weren’t irritating anybody and it was starting to get embarrassing –
I remember reading the Rainblow Warrior story –back in its day –the press made the usual hero/martyr out of the drowned guy –but you have to wonder, what did he and his fellow rainbow warriors expect –interfering with a powerful nation’s nuclear weapons program –the rainbows did not understand that they had declared war?
BTW, wretchard’s link has a pic of the island where the two French agents did their time –jeeez — “Please, judge, remember i AM guilty, no need to show mercy, just go right ahead and exile me on that island….please.”
***
Alexis/44; since when…monopolize? maybe it’s just the simple volume of ink and air time, and the celebrity of the of the media folks who do the branding.
I don’t exactly jump for joy at the thought of killing whales, but I find this video an incredibly satisfying follow up to the video you posted. Guess I prefer whales and dolphins to the sanctimonious jackasses in Greenpeace, Earth first, etc.
Unfortunately the main problem we have is a static political class. Even when there is an infection within them, they would rather take care of their own rather than the little peasants which they proudly proclaim to be the champions of.
Most of our “conservatives” these days are like weak husbands with psychotic wives. They cater to their delusions because they can’t abide the tantrums they must endure if they do not. And despite being psychotic, they still can be fun between the sheets if properly humored. Think earmarks.
What a blend: corruption, laziness, and stupidity. Hopefully there’s a cure other than what comes out of the barrel of a .45 automatic pistol.
Alexis — I am under no illusion that if all the forces that currently prevent even mentioning JIHAD were to suddenly vanish, that America would be even a better place.
It would not.
But it would be a different place. Worse in some ways, better in others. It would at least fight. As of now, I don’t think America can fight. Certainly we could put everyone back to work building a fleet of airborne lasers and other weapons, plus a moon program. We can’t even go to the moon anymore. Because the money would be spent on putting men to work not women.
NOW and Feminist Majority got Obama to deep-six the Stimulus funds for infrastructure, shades of Robert Reich railing against White men being put to work by the Stimulus in Congressional Testimony.
Its funny I’m called an anti-semite. Given that most paleocons and liberals assert I’m Jewish (I’m not).
The elites (mostly degenerate, post-Calvinst, post-Christian WASPS) hate the people and want them replaced. Simple as the plot to AVATAR.
60 years ago, the 13th of february 1960, the first atom bomb test in Sahara was successful
http://tinyurl.com/yly2yn8
A few snippets from Telegraph UK:
Obama’s National Defence Review ignores Iran and Islam in favour of… climate change!
by James Corum
…
Obama’s plan is to spend, spend, and spend on domestic entitlement and welfare programmes. His next budget contains a deficit of $1.6 trillion – almost as much as Bill Clinton’s whole government budget of 2000.
…
However, President Obama HAS finally found the place to cut waste – defence! In late January he demanded that Congress cut $2.5 billion from the defence budget for the purchase of C-17 transport planes. Obama declared the money for military transport was “waste, pure and simple”.
Defense review
Three words: “Spies Like Us”…
Cowboy #38:
Some years back we were discussing putting a testing site for a prototype space-based laser anti-missile weapon on the Cape.
One of the safety guys asked me what the Inter Ocular Distance was for the laser, the IOD being the distance at which it was safe to look into the device with it operating with the unprotected eye.
I told him “I don’t know, but it can blow up a ballistic missile at 4500 Nautical miles. What do you think the IOD is? I would guess the IOD is somewhere out around lunar orbit.”
Bring on the high tech laser weapons, Has anyone read the Dorsai novels?
To outfox the high tech weapons was the way war was fought Infantry such as the Dorsai went to spring guns a sort of high powered flechette rifle/BB gun hybrid.
We will go back to ramming and swords while high tech lasers knock all the incoming out of the sky LOL
tomw/53; In late January he demanded that Congress cut $2.5 billion from the defence budget for the purchase of C-17 transport planes. Obama declared the money for military transport was “waste, pure and simple”.
http://www.armybase.us/2009/12/russian-air-force-will-start-receiving-il-476-heavy-transport-planes-in-2012/
***
( “Millions for Defense, Not One Cent for Tribute!”
–President Thomas Jefferson
“Billions for Mob Payoffs, Not One Cent for Defense!”
–President Bah-Wreck Obamsa )
Three thoughts:
Regarding orbital direct energy weapons and solar arrays.
Effective orbital arrays are fragile, huge, and make tempting targets. Moving an orbital battle station with huge fragile arrays would be a slow and meticulous process. Preventing damage to the relatively small arrays attached to the ISS is problematic when it moves. Huge arrays would make an easy target for high tech gravel tossed into orbit by the Chinese, North Koreans, or Iranians. It could even be done with a large enough cannon, or as was pointed out earlier, a rail-gun, without using rockets.
Self-contained fission reactors are relatively small, though massive. Current nuclear submarine designs are extremely reliable, and will provide all the power ever required.
Regarding Polywell fusion for powering naval ships.
See above comments on reliability of fission reactors. For a large naval vessel, the mass of fuel, cooling medium and shielding isn’t much of an issue. A destroyer or cruiser could be fitted with three or four submarine type reactors in place of the current turbine engines, fuel bunkers, magazines, etc. used in current ships of those classes.
Polywell fusion research is worth doing for the pure science. I believe DARPA or DOE should fund it instead of the USN.
Regarding Obamassiahs short sighted and treasonous decision to cut funding for C-17s.
The U.S. is currently grinding its tactical air transport fleet down to a nub fighting a prolonged war in a landlocked region on the opposite side of the planet. This is particularly true of the C-17 fleet which is in very high demand in Afghanistan because it’s many capabilities make it preferable to any other platform for a variety of airlift missions.
The inability to rapidly transport effective military forces worldwide (projecting power) is what separates regional powers from a super-power. Cutting the F-22, and now the C-17 is a devilishly effective way to hamstring the U.S. military and drastically diminish our capabilities for a generation or more to come.
What’s next, cutting our sealift capabilities, aircraft carriers, attack submarines and amphibious ships?
This decision is one more of many such examples of: “If he was trying to destroy the U.S. without being so blatant as to be impeached, what would he do differently?”
How many jobs could be “saved or created” by continuing to build C-17s and F-22s? I guess those workers tend not to vote for the correct party…
Regarding the QDR:
Politics intruding into intelligence work and warfare. Haven’t we seen this somewhere else recently… How well did that work last time?
Subotai @ 3: SecDef Gates already cut funding for the ABL, and there is no mention of it Ibama’s 2011 budget. And it surely not a black program anymore, so if it’s not mention, they’re cutting its funding. It must be an embarrassment for them that it works.
Of course, last week the NYT admitted that the Aegis/Standard systems can not take down Iran’s longest range missiles – the exact opposite of the reasoning we heard for Gates and Ibama when they cancelled the ballistic missile defense system in Poland and Czechoslovakia last year.
They’ve cancelled our manned space capabilities, once again lying that private enterprise companies will pick up the slack, and they will of course, you just have to translate “private enterprise” to “PRC” and it’s not a lie.
It’s the old-timey Democratic refrain, why waste money to send a man to the moon when I can use that money myself.
If Ibama actually wanted to weaken America strategically, it’s hard to imagine what he’d be doing differently. I agree with you on that, Subo.
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2010/02/12/peace-through-light/#comment-13
Whiskey,
I cannot really agree with this idea that Obama is opposed to defense spending or spending more on defense. In fact he’s actually increasing it to cover his right flank ahead of 2010 and 2012. The arms sale to Taiwan seems designed to piss off the Chinese while Iran seems to be saying ‘bomb us please’ with their new enrichment announcement. The whole world seems to be angling for at least a mid-sized Mideast war to distract the West from the fact that it’s going bankrupt.
Defense should be subject to review like every other part of the budget and saying he’s going to cut spending while leaving defense off the table is fooling no one. Even Clinton who was steeped in the idea of the peace dividend but really only escalated Bush 41′s Somalia and defense cuts (after years of using the military more and more in Bosnia, Iraq no-fly zones and Kosovo) started upping funding by 1999-2000. Granted Bubba had pressure from a Republican Congress but this constant ‘Democrats are weak on defense’ meme is bogus, and in my mind only means that Eisenhower was right about the MIC. Dems aren’t weaker on defense, they just prefer their wars to be air wars and ‘clean’ like against the un-PC Serbs.
I do agree though that of all the areas of U.S. defense to cut, picking on the C-17 (as opposed to the F-22 which will likely be superceded by UAVs, missile/supercavitating torpedo vulnerable carrier battle groups or large subs) seems to make the least sense. The only thing the U.S. military needs more badly than airlifters right now is tanker airframes that weren’t built between the Nixon and Carter years (DC-10, and don’t even mention how old the KCs are). Especially since the C-17 is the most used craft for humanitarian relief (think Haiti), although it’s also a compromise plane in the sense of not having the payload of the old C-5s Galaxies and even less than the stretch -141s it replaced. But once the Soviet threat to Europe and NATO Atlantic convoys vanished, DOD figured the Galaxies were no longer necessary.
Now the Pentagon charters the Soviet-designed counterpart, the An-124s and one -225 instead. So I guess if McCain’s lobbyists for Misha the Tie-Eater had received their wish and the U.S. had decided to have a Second Cuban Missile Crisis over Georgia, the Pentagon would have had to call Moscow and ask them to charter their airlifters for a confrontation with Russia.
Such Milo Mindbender realities show just how ignorant hacks like Max Boot really are of military logistics, as opposed to his fantasies about repeating the Soviet experience in Afghanistan and Georgians fighting to the death like mujahadeen.
On the other hand, since you seem interested in Byzantium you can watch the Russian documentary Lessons from Byzantium on YouTube.
whiskey:
There are quite a few “anti-elite” Jews out there who hate “White Anglo Saxon Protestants”. I’ve met some. In retrospect it’s rather funny to see highly educated Jews wage “class warfare” when they are unwittingly following the same path as the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge.
“Affirmative action” is a way for rich white kids to assume protective camouflage against the rest of America. They feign sympathy for their perceived enemies while keeping most of the loot for themselves. For them, it’s perfect. You’ve got rich white kids smirking when poor kids get so polarized by race that they beat each other up without noticing who’s really oppressing them.
Think about it. If desegregation had been coupled with an endowment for historically black colleges and universities to compensate them for federal and state negligence in living up to the doctrine of “separate but equal”, instead of this disgusting regime of affirmative action where the federal government counts people based on race, we would be a lot further along now. The fact is that rich white kids want the myth of the white race to go on because they can then force poor white kids to defend them if their “minority” tokens get too uppity.
The people who are running this country aren’t elites. They just think they are. They have the tokens of status in our culture, for sure, but they’re just tokens. When you call the rich kids “elites”, you are acknowledging their superiority over you, and they get a kick out of that.
Look, I’m not disputing that America’s ruling class wants population replacement in America. Many of them do. That’s like ruling classes everywhere because rich people usually want to differentiate themselves from the poor relations and delineate their status with something like race or ethnicity to cement their power over their servants. Remember Hyacinth Bucket?
I know very well how those who demand amnesty for illegal immigrants are generally the same people who would abolish the Senate and the Electoral College because they are “undemocratic”. In essence, they would destroy the power of states like Wyoming, Iowa, or Vermont to defend themselves against a horde of outsiders coming in, much as their forebears sought to replace Sacs, Foxes, and Winnebagos with Hungarian, Italian, and Chinese immigrants.
The wheel turns. A federal government that can remove one ethnicity can remove another. A federal government that can discriminate against one race can discriminate against another. It’s divide and rule. The ideology of “diversity” is a way to centralize money, power, and status in the hands of a rich ruling class. But elite? Elite??? There’s nothing elite about being a post-Calvinist post-Christian White Anglo Saxon Protestant, and if you think so, you’re deluding yourself.
If you go back far enough, those so-called “Boston Brahmins” are almost certainly my distant relatives. Elite they are not. If one of my ancestors happens to be one of the founders of Rhode Island, it doesn’t make me any better than you. If you go back far enough, nearly everybody is descended from a king, prince, or some such notable. There’s a Persian saying, “Camels, fleas, and princes exist everywhere.”
And just think – I’m descended from a Welsh king (Owain, King of Deheubarth) who closed down two colleges in 969 because they received Saxon students! And for all I know, I may be descended from some of those Saxon students too. If this makes you think I’m elite, then I feel sorry for you.
As noted, the program is CANCELLED:
http://closingvelocity.typepad.com/closing_velocity/2010/02/video-so-long-airborne-laser.html
Alexis — You cannot call the multicultural bullet back. Not ever. At best in America and the West, we are looking at a muddling through, slow-motion replacement of White populations with others, slow private economic growth, rising tensions and battles over White women who hold demographic power.
The idea that America will go back to some libertarian ideal of limited government, multi-cultural and multi-racial “agreement” on spheres of influence, limited AA, and so on, i.e. the “post-Reagan consensus” is laughable.
What we are seeing all across the West, from Switzerland to America, and Japan as well, is the battle for basically, who shall rule.
Right now, despite some promise, it looks like it won’t be the majority. The BNP is making its play for White women, offering socialism plus, but on their terms. Pointing out the NHS pie goes farther if immigrants (read Pakistanis, and their descendants) are kicked out (along with Polish plumbers).
White women LOVE NHS. And other social spending. It employs great amounts of them (and is more hostile to men than a marathon session of the View). It allows women to forgo the nuclear family and icky beta males. But it costs money. Money that can be spent on them if only immigrants are kicked out.
Its a direct play to the wallet versus heart (women are ground zero for PC, and no less than Cherie Blair has championed the Burqua and Islamization). But there you have it.
We know who the elites are. They are Hasterts, and Kennedys, and Bidens, and Ehrenreichs, and Rathers and Pelosis. Hereditary crony-capitalist/politician/media figures of great wealth pursuing aristocratic endeavors.
Things like airborne lasers are fantasies. They WORK. We are not going to build them. They are cancelled. Because women, non-Whites, and elites don’t like them — they employ too many White guys and allow defense against the enemy.
All these groups WANT America defeated, and humiliated. Because they share the same enemy: Average White men. Its why Robert Reich wanted no White Men employed by the Stimulus in Congressional Testimony, and Maxine Waters nodded her approval. Its why Feminist Majority and NOW got the stimulus changed to dump infrastructure (too many White men employed) in favor of women-friendly social spending.
Sad to say, Osama bin Laden was right. He took the pulse of the elites, from Clinton to Obama to Patricia Ireland, and laughed. They all want him to win. As do most non-Whites, women, and gays.
Barack Obama did not gain the Presidency out of mass hypnotism. His policy for American defeat and surrender has a huge appeal to anyone not viewing themselves part of the White middle class. Given that single women voted Obama 70-29, I’d say he has a substantial amount of support that largely agrees and would continue to agree with him even after NYC is nuked.
Whiskey/62; re Robert Reich –now an Obama economics advisor, he sat on the Citibank board of directors throughout several bailouts including the big recent one, and only stepped down in early 2009 (after the $25,000,000,000 loss of 2008). He stepped down at the same time as another Obama admin join-up, John Deutch, who joined the defense science advisory group as spy satt advisor.
Reich, an economics prof @ UC/Berkeley, was Bill Clinton’s Sec of Labor. Nowadays his message is, ‘the Stimulous was too small, it should have been much larger, we must spend our way out of this recession’.
Communists everywhere –it used to be a sort of joke. but now, the voters hath spake, and the breadlines and gulags have swum up out of the depths and are treading water with an arm over our rowboat gun’ls.
Whiskey, that video is enough to make a grown man cry, ain’t it?
A strong America is the world’s best hope for lasting peace and prosperity, and with the Ibama Administration, I keep seeing the glass half-empty and getting emptier.
We are throwing away hard-won technical dominance – the F-22, Ballistic Missile Defense, the Next Generation Bomber, and now the ABL.
But, maybe it’s not quite this bad, maybe it’s just us? Aviation Week reports on ABL shoot-down, maybe it’s not TOTALLY dead?
These trials — previously expected last year — took place at a weapons range off of Point Mugu, Calif., and represent a leap forward for the ABL program. The Boeing-led effort has been challenged by numerous technical problems and cost overruns, although it has received much attention as the Pentagon’s flagship chemical laser program. As of last spring, about $4 billion had been spent on ABL. MDA is requesting another $99 million in Fiscal 2011 for directed energy projects, which includes funding for the ABL test bed, and for exploration of potential future applications.
This will be the last year MDA manages the system; following flight trials, it will be turned to the oversight of the Pentagon’s director of defense research and engineering to serve as a testbed for other laser projects.
These airborne shootdown tests were originally scheduled for 2002; most recently officials had hoped to execute it last fall.
Boeing officials noted the achievement, saying, “This experiment marks the first time a laser weapon has engaged and destroyed an in-flight ballistic missile, and the first time that any system has accomplished it in the missile’s boost phase of flight. ALTB [Airborne Laser Test Bed] has the highest-energy laser ever fired from an aircraft, and is the most powerful mobile laser device in the world.”
Northrop Grumman designed and built the high-energy chemical laser while Lockheed Martin supplied the beam control/fire control system for ABL.
There are no plans to produce this design, and as ABL has evolved Defense Dept. officials have become more interested in solid-state lasers. Still, MDA has left the door open to a possible operational system in the future that would build off the lessons learned from ABL.
It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
That’s not cynicism.
The People who are intentionally effing things up subscribe to the insane irrational myths that have been driving Western culture for a long time:
These people in any other era would have been spotted and gently guided toward tidy little stone apartments where they couldn’t do much to damage the world.
Look at the idiocy of the Left’s delusional attitude to Islamic Jihad:
“We embrace your authentically-oppressed third-world ethnic victimly differentness just as we lovingly embrace the differentness and and oppressed authentic victimness of our alternately-oriented gay, lesbian, and trans-gendered friends…” while fully aware that the Islamic fanatics are in their own countries exuberantly torturing and executing their own alternately-oriented subjects. We’ve seen plenty of photos and videos of Iranian homosexuals and adulterers being hoisted by industrial cranes, to dangle and choke until dead. Their corpses are then left on display, to encourage the others…And that’s just ONE of a thousand idiotic self-contradictory attitudes.
We are on a ride with a teenaged driver high on crack who won’t listen to anyone’s screams or pleas to slow down or drive his daddy’s car more carefully.
Some idiots let a teenaged kid on crack get behind the wheel of his daddy’s car, and suddenly we are careering down a wet twisty road with the temperature hovering at 32 degrees. No guard rail, no shoulder, just rocks and swirling waters 150 feet below.
oops. I can’t blame faulty editing system, except my own sloppiness.
Time to return to a word processer for comment composition.
Whiskey @ 162,
The airborne laser platform only needs to be effective against domestic opponents of the incumbents.
Having achieved this, no further development funding will be budgeted. Or at least, no further budget figures will be seen.
The gummint won’t have another word on the thing until, oh, the next Tea Party Mass Rally.
I can imagine the reports in the New New YorkTimes:
“Belligerent and dangerous anti-Obama Tea Baggers were cleanly converted to component molecules earlier today, when they refused direct orders from EPA agents to cease polluting the public streets with their exhaled CO2. Analysis of volatiles in the remaining crumbs indicates they may have been under the influence of an artificial-trans-fat-induced rage.”
Thanks for the link to the extremely depressing video.
Jeez-o-peez. At Least Clinton got some magic blue pills from the Chinese for all that missile technology.
“Moving an orbital battle station with huge fragile arrays would be a slow and meticulous process.”
AR, don’t put the solar arrays on your battle station, put them on a seprate platform in a higher orbit and beam (microwave) the power to your battle station.
strange thought:
if you shoot the laser in the rain, does it make killer rainbows?
Vis, dude,
There are three lasers, one does targeting, one does atmospheric interference analysis, and one does ray gun duty.
If any, I would think the middle one kills killer rainbows.
One would hope. If not, change.
Sorry, that laser dog ain’t gonna hunt. Smoke, clouds, rain, fog all diffuse any beam in the visible and near infrared wavelengths to harmless levels. Free electron lasers are widely tunable, but only within these wavelengths. And they are really bulky.
Just as we’re not going to see orbital weapons platforms: too vulnerable, too expensive, too power intensive. The International Space Station has on board power of less than 140 kW. And that’s the biggest electrical system in orbit. Big Boeing birds run on less than 16 kW when new and go downhill from there.
Rail guns: we could do those. Microwave weapons: okay for close up large targets, but too much beam spread for anything at a distance. (Much worse than lasers in that regard.)
Nope, no solar power satellites, either: launch cost is too great and ya can’t get the power down efficiently.
Strangely enough, you could actually use ground-mounted lasers to power larger more competent satellites, but you’d need a lot of redundancy in the ground stations to overcome clouds, fog and rain.
Lawrence Livermore Lab actually bounced a laser off the Moon, but they could only detect it on the return leg because they knew what frequency of coherent light to look for. (It was detectable but very diffuse on the return leg.)
Neat stuff but, barring something like dilithium crystals or unobtainium or zero point energy, not gonna happen anytime soon.
Scotty will have you up on orders for that, commander rodson.
Whiskey @ 62 – I think The Weekly Standard owes you some attribution. Look at their previous week’s cover story.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/new-dating-game?page=2
Sadly there do seem to be too many women that confirm Whiskey’s thesis about females being attracted to ‘bad’ men in lieu of those boring stable beta males, even if in the case of these ‘pick up artists’ the Alpha-maleness is a complete fabrication. And even some of the fake Alphas are well aware of what they’re doing and how the dating world is going to hell on rails.
A long long time ago when I was a single male intern in D.C., I recall hearing people tell me that there were vastly more single women than men in D.C., at least in the summer time. But I never saw them in bar after bar, and the gals at Madam’s Organ were…well, besides my office mates who dragged me along (and she was half-Israeli) I can’t remember any of them. So presumably all the ‘hotties’ were off dating their bosses or at super-exclusive parties with Kennedys I wasn’t on the list for.
Now I look back and think how absurd most of D.C.’s pretenses to ‘hotness’ really are. Compared to Moscow or Kyev standards of female pulchritude and actual interest in normal men, well…I don’t want to seem insulting to Teresita’s younger friends.
Moscow or Kiev, or Houston or New Orleans –anyplace, really, but DC –which attracts –well, low people (present company excepted) –
Look at it, on the make for power over others, but (BUT!) on a safe government sinecure. Find me a more comprehensively bumfugged cross-purposed combo and i’ll eat my hat!
re: erc rodson@71 “Sorry, that laser dog ain’t gonna hunt. Smoke, clouds, rain, fog all diffuse any beam in the visible and near infrared wavelengths to harmless levels.”
For high altitude engagements against ballistic missiles, both you and your target are above the weather.
At lower altitudes, like ship versus surface skimming missiles, weather becomes much more significant.
But the biggest issue will be locating the target. Yes, a boost-phase missile makes a very big, bright, hard-to-conceal target. Against a stealthy opponent, it doesn’t make a difference how powerful your laser is if you never get a sensor lock on him before he takes you down.
Papabear #75:
“For high altitude engagements against ballistic missiles, both you and your target are above the weather.”
Exactly what I said at a meeting in the Pentagon in 1993. And at that time we were talking about shooting down AIRPLANES from space. “In all weather?” asked one officer increduously. “At 50,000 ft it’s always all weather.” I replied.
The O-6 running the meeting agreed with me and told us that Gen Abramson, the head of SDI, and told a bunch of pilots that the only reason he was not demonstrating the ability to shoot down airplanes from orbit was that it was politically too hot to handle. The general said “It’s like this. You get an order to deploy to Europe and you are cruising along in your F-15 above the Atlanic and something you don’t even know is there blows you out of the air.” That got their attention!
And power on orbit is not a problem, really. The most powerful lasers we have are powered not by electricity but by what are essentially exotic rocket propellants. That was true when I was working with the Airborne Laser Lab people to shoot down ballistic missiles in 1982 and it is still true today. You just fill’er up when required. And if you do get electric powered high energy lasers you can just use nuclear power to run them.
“At lower altitudes, like ship versus surface skimming missiles, weather becomes much more significant.”
The weather does become more significant down low – but so do the aerodynamic consequences of putting even a tiny tiny hole in a missile.
Bring-your-own-Battleship, funny. However, meetings and social events aboard the Battleship New Jersey are significant revenue producers for the non-profit museum and memorial, as well as a memorable and fun occassions for the guests.