Warfare at the Speed of Light

unassimilatible writes "From the They Said It Couldn't Be Done Dept., the Oakland Tribune reports that the Lawrence Livermore Labratory is ensuring that the Pentagon, inside of a decade, could be armed with a beam weapon that is near-instantaneous, gravity-free and truly surgical, focusing to such hair-splitting accuracy that it could avoid civilians while predetonating munitions miles away - perhaps someday even being mounted on Humvees."

Say again?

[Lord Grey]

... experts say the Defense Department has no coherent plan for speed-of-light weapons research ...

"No coherent plan" to use lasers in warfare? Did anyone else find this quote amazingly funny?

Repeat after Dr. Evil:

[niko9]

Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaser

--

God says...

[Bakobull]

Kent, Stop playing with yourself.

Re:Say again?

[jat850]

Haha. I guess the DoD is keeping their incoherent plans to use lasers in warfare under tight wraps.

"Uhh ... yeah, we're going to use the ... lasers ... and the DOLPHINS. To invade the moons of Jupiter! For the King!"

Friendly Fire at the Speed Of Light!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hold Your Fire!

Too Late!

You Vaporized Kenny! You Bastard!

one question

[circletimessquare]

can you point it at a mildly victorian house from on board a jet fighter and fill the house with popcorn?

Thinkgeek

[mgcsinc]

The evoloution of Thinkgeek's line of optical toys: 1. Red Lasar 2. Green Lasar 3. Lasar capable of pre-detonating munitions from miles away. (But no one will buy it because it is neither green nor capable of being seen in the air.)

Oh great

[MagicM]

"We're anxious to get out there and do something."

Always reassuring when someone in the US Army makes such a statement...

Wow that was fast

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

A laser arms race already is under way, chiefly in California.

Wow, Goverminator hasn't been elected for 2 weeks and Skynet is already flexing its muscles ...

In other news ...

[tessaiga]

Conspiracy theorests trade tin-foil hats for head-mounted mirrors.

Re:Say again?

[Davak]

"We've made a quantum leap here," said Randy Buff, solid-state laser program manager for the U.S. Army's Space and Missile Defense Command. "We're anxious to get out there and do something."

Translation: We are anxious to get out there and blast somebody.

Humvees?

[JaredOfEuropa]

someday even being mounted on Humvees."

Forget humvees! I want friggin' sharks with friggin' lasers mounted on their heads!

Surgical?

[GlassHeart]

...truly surgical, focusing to such hair-splitting accuracy that it could avoid civilians while predetonating munitions miles away

But would the detonating munitions know to avoid civilians as well?

Quantum Leap

[henrygb]

Is a quantum leap the smallest possible discrete change?

Would a gravity-free weapon (even with light) defy General Relativity?

Will the enemy start using mirrors?

ok, Grammar Nazi...

[donutz]

"... it could avoid civilians while predetonating munitions miles away..."

So it can avoid civilians who are miles away from the munitions? Even the few dumb bombs dropped on Iraq avoided most citizens in Kuwait...

I think (that you know) that it means munitions miles away from the LASER could be predetonated (pre- as in before the enemy sends them our way).

But the real question here is how whether they're implying that the civilians could be detonated too, separately without the munitions, now that we'll have got a big friggin' laser gun...

Re:Say again?

[Davak]

Moreover, all laser guns will, for the forseeable future, remain fair-weather weapons. Airborne particles and vapor diffuse the beam and cut its range enormously. Smart adversaries will attack under cover of smoke or inclement weather.

"In the first order, lasers are not going to work on bad days," Campbell said. "They're just not."


Dear Mr. Rumsfield:

Please schedule all future wars in excellent weather. It's great for the morale of our troops and we get to use our new laser toys.

Thanks.

G.W. Bush

Re:In other news ...

[halftrack]

Tin-foil reflects ... we're not stupid.

War in 2080

[hengist]

"There goes the supertechnological soldier, staggering forward to wreak destruction on anyone he can entice within range. Meanwhile, the despicable enemy has opened fire with an old-fashioned but extremely efficient sub-machine gun."

Wish I could remember who wrote that book.

Re:Say again?

[cK-Gunslinger]

Work great in the middle east, though.

Yep. No small particles of anything in the air during those frequent sandstorms. =P

But what if the enemy....

[vor]

Holds up a mirror?

Re:Say again?

[Some Bitch]

Old laser scientists never die, they just become incoherent :)

Re:BZZT! ANNT! WRONG!

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh yeah, if you are shooting at something in the horsehead nebula that might be an issue, you tart! Unless some fuckhead coughs up a black hole in Bagdhad (in which case it really wouldn't matter if the weapon shot blue bananna peels and laughing Barneys for all of the few nanoseconds Earth manages to survive), I don't think there is going to be any problem pointing the weapon at a large object and hitting it. The amount of deviation might be a problem if they were trying to score hits against the tachyonic particles in Saddam's mustache, maybe.

And bullets don't reflect?

[zCyl]

you are constantly at risk of the laser beam bouncing back and obliterating you.

If you stand next to a solid surface, like a tank, and fire a conventional automatic weapon at it, you had better be wearing some serious bullet proof armor.

The main problem is that any reflecting surface can act as a mirror

Mirrors do a great job of reflecting low power light. Put a sufficiently high powered pulse laser on the scene, and the behavior of reflective surfaces becomes "non-linear" in the sense that it will simply burn through them.

and turned the h20 into h202 which is deadly hydrogen peroxide

Which is regularly used as a mouth wash, and easily noticeable because it tastes like crap and fizzes in your mouth.

Re:We'd Throw Rocks, If Necessary

[MulluskO]

War won't diappear if we're afraid to use new tools. People will throw rocks at each other if they have nothing else.

In other news, Darpa Presents New Asteroid Redirection Technology.

Re:This laser is capable of emmitting a beam

[Simple-Simmian]

That actually should be: This laser is capable of emmitting a beam of pure vaporware