Posted on 12/19/2012 8:22:50 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Success? Hmmmmmmmmm. Better kill that project.
Super! Turn it on incoming troops. Melt a few and the rest will get the message.
We already had this in 1975 tested in Nevada against aircraft.duhhhh.
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Why is BI the business propaganda arm for the administration comming up with this now ?
Practical battlefield laser weapons are still some years away from production and deployment. Aside from the limited case of population and area defense for the Israel, the energy and equipment requirements for high energy lasers make defensive naval use the most likely venue for large scale use.
This is about 1/4 the size.
Yeah, with a max range of 2 klicks, you're going to need a lot of small white trailers for coverage - PROFIT!
Iron Dome, already 70km. interception range.
They didn’t cancel it because it was successful. They cancelled it because it was only marginally successful, with big cost overruns, and other technologies proved cheaper and more effective. We don’t have to rely on the speed of lasers to intercept projectiles anymore, because we have better targeting and guidance systems, so we can hit a missile with a much cheaper and more reliable weapon than a laser.
And uses a $50,000 missile to kill a $500 rocket.
Profit!
Yep.
It could only kill missiles in the boost phase, when they’re the most vulnerable. That required the modified 747 to run a very predicatable racetrack pattern along the FEBA or hostile border.
Although, the variable cost of a laser firing (especially a solid-state laser) is signicicantly less than a guided missile. So, you might have a higher fixed cost and overhead, but much smaller variable costs per kill.
Between 1996 and 2004, the Army’s Theater High Energy laser (THEL) project out of Huntsville Alabama was shooting down inbound rockets with a liquid-fueled high energy laser.
The THEL looked much like a 30 inch diameter searchlight, also mounted on top of a “trailer-like” portable shipping container. The laser liquid fuel was in pressurized H2O2 and other tanks, also containerized.
So, of course, if I were opposing this system, first thing I’d do would be dropping a couple of dozen “dumb” mortar rounds .... on top of the radar. 8<)
You could do the same thing against a missile-based system.
Force protection is already a strategy for ADA sites.
It was still good that we developed the weapons, even if they didn’t prove practical. We came up with some innovations that we can use in astronomy and other applications, which we might not have discovered without all that fat federal funding chasing a weapons system :)
Agreed.
R&D is fine as long as you don’t rush into production.
ping
Well, save lives, except for the bad guys. Bada ping!
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