His hair is reflective. It would just bounce back the beam and destroy the satellite.

Ah. I should have figured out there must be some scientific reason for his doo.

Yes we can - killing someone with one of these lasers is trivial compared to hitting a rocket or an artillery shell. Didn't you watch Real Genius?

Expect the Norks to deploy a shield consisting of large microwave popcorn containers.

Seriously, the devopment of UAV's has put push-button remote assasination on the table. The next steps are hypersonic missles, which enable

I think his hair actualy serves as a heat-sink. The spikeyness of his hair allows the heat to dissapate very rapidly. I'm pretty sure Den Beste wrote something about this.

Sorry, that got cut off:

which enabes sub-2hr global reach-out and touch someone from Montanta capability, and spaced based/high atmosphere extended duration laser platforms. If you can read license plates from space, you can focus a laser from there too.

It's turning into some sort of anime. Weird.

Ace--

Don't get *too* excited. We've still got a long way to go with this thing, and a helluva lot more money to spend on it, and a Congress to convince we can develop it, and an OSD testing community to convince we can develop it.

As for your "alternate targets" suggestion, you're absolutely right. However, this is still most definitely envisioned as "soft target" weapon. Beaming a fatal pinprick into the aluminum side of a stressed-out ascending liquid-fueled rocket is easier than blowing up an armored vehicle, or another plane (and, as ABL shows, that first one is damn hard).

But eventually, we'll have a tactical ability too. Science marches on. . .

Cheers,
Dave

Yes we can - killing someone with one of these lasers is trivial compared to hitting a rocket or an artillery shell. Didn't you watch Real Genius?

Hah. Yes, in fact I originally wrote, "I mean, look at Real Genius."

But I dropped that, because I don't think the laser there was specifically an anti human target weapon, was it? It seems to have been primarily designed for popping popcorn.

Mike--

I share your enthusiasm, but space-based lasers are a looong way off.

Big problems? Optics and fuel. In order to focus the beam from even low-earth orbit, you need large optics, larger than the size of most of our lift vehicles. There are ways around it ("deployable optics", i.e., folding fans, inflatable lensing, etc.), but it's technically challenging stuff.

Fuel's a problem as well. You can only carry so much fuel on orbit, and when you're done firing, you're done. Right now, we only have one capability to refuel on-orbit (the Shuttle), and even that is unreliable. Eventually, we'll have the ability to do on-orbit robotic refueling, but we aren't there yet (in fact, aren't anywhere near that yet).

Oh, and all this costs billions. Even after twenty years of missile defense research. Which is why the DoD's space based laser project was cancelled a few years back-- at this point in time, there are cheaper ways of getting the same effect (hit-to-kill interceptors, and stuff like ABL).

Not easy stuff. Not impossible, but not easy.

Cheers,
Dave

Sorry, but you'll never get Kim that way...he wears an extra thick tinfoil hat supplied by one of the reality-based communities.

It's a phaser! Why don't they ever get that right?

Big problem with lasers is the power supply. You could build a laser small enough and powerful enough for an infantryman to carry and use, but he'd have to have a semi following him around to power it.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned much; when a laser or particle beam weapon is developed that is battlefield-portable and useable- say the size of a APC or tank, or a SAM control vehicle- think about what happens to battlefield aviation...

Could you hire the protestors who were planning to light themselves on fire as test monkeys for this thing?

Mark--

Attack helicopters become stand-off NLOS platforms, just like AAA forced jet aircraft to become.

Transports carry "laser chaff", i.e., lots of opaque smoke/reflective particles. And reflective surfaces on anything vulnerable.

However, we'll still be dealing with power challenges for a long time to come. Damaging optics, CCDs and other electonics will be a lot easier than damaging anything even lightly armored for some time to come (and, potentially, just as good-- if they're blind, deaf and mute, they're combat ineffective).

Lasers are instantaneous, but at the current power range they have to stay on a target for a comparatively long time (seconds) to do lethal damage. Even scaling that up, it's not as efficient (and certainly not as cheap) as a bullet, a tank shell, or a SAM. Eventually, it will get there-- but barring a major arms race focused effort on laser weaponry, it'll be a long time in coming (30+ years for vehicle weapons, 50+ years for personal or crew-served weapons, I'd figure).

And, given the offensive/defensive spiral is always moving, I won't be surprised if the next-generation of platforms start dealing with at least the prospect of laser threats (just something else to deal with).

Dave,

The next generation Hubble, the James Webb, will employ folding mirrors that are interferrometrically aligned with active optics. This actually works fairly well. The fuel consideration for a space platform is valid, though.

But space isn't the only option. High altitude autonomous planes would work too, which greatly reduces the size constraint. I guess you have to worry about them being shot down, but if you weaponize space, that will happen for satelites too.

Given that the current chemical lasers are working in the megajoule range - well, let's just say that's a lot of photons. 10J's is the energy you get from dropping a kg, let say in the form of a ball peen hammer, from a meter onto your toe. A bullet has about 1-3 kJ. Granted lasers with these energies are huge, but they are coming online rather quickly. The Air Force is spending a lot of time looking at self-filamentation of high energy beams traveling long distances through the atmosphere. There is also a lot of money going into large scale adaptive optics to control this. It's fair to surmise that they're doing this because they are shooting very large lasers at lots of things from far away.

Hmm...The Moon is a stable platform. It's not like they could just blow it up like they could a satellite. We could base a mongo laser up there and just go around crushing people's heads like Gilbert Gottfried. We could call it the MoonBat.

OTOH, the moon goes through "phases" and often disappears from the sky, especially during the phase known as "daytime", so its effectiveness may be compromised. However it should be especially effective against werewolves, which only come out for full moons, and coyotes too.

I noticed that the acronym for "Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser" is COIL. I see a logo with a snake and the words, "Line of Sight."

Belive it or not, killing a man with a laser is acctuly a great bit harder than destorying a missle. The human body is 90% water, and water is alot harder to cut through with heat than a missle's skin.

Big problem with lasers is the power supply.

However, we'll still be dealing with power challenges for a long time to come.

It's a chemical laser. No power problems.

Ace, you're a moron. Y-Wings aren't the ones with wings, that's X-Wings. Duh.

---------

What's "NLOS"?

"Crispy fries!"

Apparently NG also will have a ground based laser platform that in tests has already intercepted both rockets and *incoming artillery shells*! Even allowing for company hype, that's pretty dang cool.

- Cliff

Golly jeez whiz new high tech military gear is great stuff. But people within the US, NATO, and Israel always end up selling it to China. Also, a man with a boxcutter knife willing to die for a cause can do a lot of damage....despite high tech.

Plane-borne lasers might have some use against missiles - assuming the enemy doesn't figure out a reflective coating on missiles to defeat them, and refrains from launching until there is a fleet of 747's in the air around their country that their fighter jets and AA missiles can't down.

Against a salvo of 2 dozen or so shells coming at you, you have laser recycle time and cooling restrictions to content with. Against soldiers? A Buck Rogers fantasy, unless you want a laser that works by burning retinas and permanently blinding the enemy combatant. The Soviets had such a system in the 70s in development, but decided against fielding it, as inhumane.

Brock, you're a moron. If you'd ever flown a Y-wing you'd know it's no X-wing - it flies like an X-wing with a hangover. Kinda like... a 747. Duh.

Ace, you've been beaten to the punch by a cute little bunny.

Wait a minute.. Wait just one minute. Developing long range lasers to fire from space? The seemingly reasonable decision to move the weapons system to the moon, where large amounts of fuel could be stored, and stability would be assured?

Then, See Dubya attends to the problem of lunar phases, begging the question... hmmm what to do? What to do? Perhaps put some manuevering thrusters on the surface?

If he has his way, that will be no moon.

What next, you want to start enslaving Wookies?

ChristopherF, I find your lack of faith...disturbing.

what id like to know is if the public could get their hands on this kind of thing. That would be awesome!!! I would solve the overpopulation problem too.