Posts by Neal Scroggs

US gov's flying laser hit by delays, problems

@Alan Donaly

Do you know what you're blathering about? It doesn't appear that you have the background to offer any reasoned criticism.

US wants trucks mounted with frikkin' laser beams

@ Malachy

On the contrary. This site is has more than its share of technically backward types who use sarcastic remarks that wouldn't impress a 9 year old to disguise their lack of imagination. Yes, there are many thoughtful and technically interesting posts here, but they're on my side of the question. To the rest I didn't reply in detail because none of the criticisms seemed worth the effort.

The "complexities" of hitting an artillery shell, mortar round or rocket are SOLVED and have been for centuries, at least since Newton anyway. The fall of anything in a ballistic path is predictable, that's how artillery is aimed. Of course the flight path is complicated by winds, differential densities, the Earth's rotation and several other variables, but these are known and manageable. The problem has always been the time in flight of the interceptor. A laser reduces that element of the equation to a negligible factor, especially against something that moves as slow as a mortar bomb. The weapon we're discussing isn't new, it's tested and it works. If all the so-called savy techies on this sited used their brains instead of their spleens they'd find this on the web:

http://www.defense-update.com/directory/THEL.htm

Interesting technical points you say? How about this one: "Light goes in a straight line" therefore limited range. Well, no. Light is bent by the atmosphere (refraction), reflected by objects and warped into curving paths by gravity. A straight line is a mental construct and is not an element of the natural world. But that's not germane to the issue. Any kind of defensive weapon needs only enough range to engage threats to the perimeter of the area to be defended. The enemy is presumably shooting AT you, therefore the range is closing all the time.

Here's another: "Disco balls." If the enemy wants to launch kitschy design elements rather than lethal explosives at American soldiers, that will achieve the laser weapon's purpose, however indirectly.

An how about this plan via Smokey Joe: Shoot lots of dud rounds, smoke and chaff to exhaust the laser before you attack with the real shells. The problem has always been an enemy who fires one, two or three shots in quick succession then flees to attack another day. I say let the enemy adopt this countermeasure, we should encourage it. Any Al Qaeda gunner who stays in one spot long enough to fire sufficient decoy rounds will be throughly dead from conventional counter-battery fire before he gets to the real weapons. (To Joe: Chaff is not effective against the kind of radar used to track incoming artillery. In fact, as a countermeasure it's obsolete)

Starace has some excellent points. His thinking is solution oriented, but slightly behind the curve.

And what has Brad McGehee to do with this?

I could go on, but why bother.

Ned Ludd Lives

The sarcasm, the jejune neo-luddite sniggering and appalling ignorance displayed in many of the comments posted here is discouraging and predictable. The spirit that accepts technical challenges and wins through with brilliance and audacity is evidently dead in the UK and withering in America. Many of the criticisms offered are so technically boneheaded one wonders why anyone would dare expose his ignorance to the world at large so casually.

Let us imagine it’s 1940 and the challenge is an vastly complex encryption system used to direct u-boats to their prey in the North Atlantic. The well-informed and mature readers of The Register offer their sage advice: “Don’t even try, you hopeless sods, ENIGMA is unbreakable! Every transmission has billions of solutions and even if you could print them all out, a task that would consume most of the paper in Britain, it would take man-centuries to read them all. And even if you manage by some miracle manage to break the current code system, the Germans can very easily and cheaply complicate the cipher by many orders of magnitude.”

Bullets and bombs are ancient technology. The future will be dominated by directed energy weapons. The situation reminds me of 15th century archers when they heard of another new-fangled contraption.

“Here, Ned, did ya know those bleedin’ Venetians have traded their crossbows for an iron tube what shoots metal balls with fire and smoke!”

“Don’t worry none, Bert. Them harquebuses aren’t any kind of threat to us yeomen. We’re invincible. We can shoot two hundred paces as fast as we can draw. But the gunner, he shoots barely fifty and damned slowly. By the time he reloads me granny could saunter up and cut out his liver, pretty as you please.”

“I reckon you’re right there, Ned. We can be thankful none of our tax money’s spent on any of this black powder foolishness. “

RPG: 200 m/sec

Mortar: 240 m/sec

Artillery: 1600 m/sec

Laser: 299792458 m/sec

‘nuff said.