DARPA Developing Defensive Plasma Shield 318
galactic_grub writes "According to an article at New Scientist, DARPA is developing a plasma shield that would allow troops to stun and disorientate enemies. The system will use a technology known as dynamic pulse detonation (DPD), which involves producing a ball of plasma with an intense laser pulse, and then a supersonic shockwave within the plasma using another pulse. The result is a gigantic flash and a loud bang in a the air. 'The company has also pitched a portable laser rifle, which would be lethal, to the US Army. It would weigh about fifteen kilograms, would have a range of more than a mile, and could have numerous advantages over existing rifles - better accuracy and the ability to hit a moving target at the speed of light.'"
Laser rifle (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'll wait for the next model (Score:2, Insightful)
Why the toys??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Please ignore all that folks. Don't worry, in the future we'll have a bunch of new toys for you...
Suggestion to the brass: before you play with the high tech stuff, get the low tech stuff right first.
Good priorities (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why the toys??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, if the adminstration would handle the war properly, those issues could be resolved. Until that is done, those troops are fucked. I know a lot of high ranking people have quit because they can't get what they want for the troops.
You want to help? keep writing your reps, the paper, orginize a protest to get the troops what they need.
The best way to do that is with oversight committees.
I didn't want to invade Iraq, and I think we were wrong in doing so, but I sure as hell don't want our troops unprepared.
Re:Why the toys??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Insightful would have done some real research and found the "scrounged" armor was a very short term issue and there have been 8+ major uparmoring mods and more than 70,000 fully armored vehicles in Iraq/Afghanistan now.
Insightful would have known the "underarmored" vehicles were HUMMVs which were replacements for Jeeps. You know, Jeeps, those open-sided and open-topped vehicles.
Insightful would know the true status of the M-16. Same story, bud. The first ones, 40 years ago, were rushed into use and there have been a huge number of modifications. The AK-47 isn't that great. It's not good at a distance, there's less control of the bullet's destination and the vast majority of them were made very, very sloppily which means they spray bullets almost randomly. Read your own link, it says some American troops are using captured AK-47s because the ammunition is so available. Why might that be? Do a little research on calibre and interoperability of ammunition. Just because ammunition is available doesn't mean it's more useful than an M-16 nor does it mean it's preferred over the M-16. Gad, your comment shows you don't really know much about the weapons or tactics.
Excellent... (Score:3, Insightful)
Disorientating (Score:3, Insightful)
Sometimes, it's obvious why a crowd needs controlling or a hostage-taker is taking hostages. What would you have the military do in cases where we know what the hostage-taker wants but do not want to give it to him? Hostages make great shields.
In those cases where it's not made obvious, by the time you figure out why it's being done, it's often too late to do anything. The crowd has dismantled the city; the hostage-taker is already killing hostages, and will finish with himself or the entire building he's in.
Re:Laser rifle (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'll wait for the next model (Score:2, Insightful)
support the troops! (Score:2, Insightful)
Next, put the troops (Active still with time to serve, not the guard or reserves, let them GO HOME RIGHT NOW) on the southern border where they can TRULY defend the nation and stop the REAL invasion and outright REAL terrorism that has hit the US, part of the war against the productive and legal and lawabiding US middle class by the rich transnational loyal to nothing but money jerks and their failed and *outright treasonous* economic policies. Use the troops to get them to stop this invasion, using full military might if that is what it takes to get the point across,to stop the globalist's importation of thousands and thousands of heinous criminal gang members who really are a serious physical threat and prove it daily, and to get them to stop the invasion of millions of wage lowering community busting non-assimilating job-jackers on behalf of the aforementioned treasonous globalist fiends.
That's how to support the troops. You don't keep pumping air into a flat tire, dammit! You have to fix the thing first!
Throwing good money after bad and spilling more blood,both US troops and tons of completely innocent foreigners, after failed policies based on outright lies, is quite insane. Learn from history, or fail it, those are your choices.
Re:"Money well spent" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"Money well spent" (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a more common phrasing of this argument: "Your money or your life."
The idea that we have to fix all the problems of people who are busy killing each other when they aren't trying to kill us, so that they won't try to kill us, is stupid, immoral, and ineffective.
Re:Disorientating (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's not clear what a group is protesting, it probably isn't a protest--it's just a riot.
US journalists get targeted because that's sometimes the only way to catch the attention of other US journalists. US journalists rarely go deep into international affairs even when it involves very important or very helpless foreigners, and rarely print it where everyone can see; but when it involves one of their own, they consider it big news and treat it accordingly. We are talking about a school of journalism that routinely writes articles about how the media is handling things--when they are the media.
Re:support the troops! (Score:2, Insightful)