Posted on 09/26/2020 4:47:45 AM PDT by marktwain
Image by Northrup Grumman, from military.com, scaled and cropped by Dean Weingarten
In my 30+ year career in Army Research, Development, Testing and Evaluation, (RDT&E), there was some exposure and support of laser weapons. A principle concern with lasers is how the interact with the atmosphere. That is where my old outfit came in.
Lasers have been used in weapons systems since shortly after their development, for ranging and sensing, and information technology.
I am writing about weapons that burn, shoot down, and blow things up.
My team supported a laser weapons test about 1975 as I recall. This correspondent was not an eye witness. Reliable scuttlebutt had told of a helicopter that was shot down with a laser, in a carefully controlled, proof of concept test.
We have been developing laser weapons for over 45 years. In the late 1980s with President Reagan's leadership, we were working on lasers to shoot down incoming InterContinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs). My colleagues at White Sands Missile Range had a much greater direct involvement. I was peripherally involved. They did splendid work. They solved problems in very clever ways.
By 2010, the AirBorne Laser (ABL) system had been developed, tested, and was ready to be funded and fielded. It was shot down by the Obama administration, with lack of funds, in 2011. The ability to shoot down incoming ICBMs from tens or hundreds of miles away, at the edge of space, was impressive.
The requirement of 10 to 20 modified Boeing 747s, at $1.5bn apiece, and $100m investment a year had made the maintenance of the ABL YAL 1A not operationally viable, forcing the US Air Force to stop raising funds for the laser. The US Government had spent approximately $5.2bn on the ABL YAL 1A project by.
(Excerpt) Read more at ammoland.com ...
There are ways to forge the signature.
And there are ways to change it to something unknown.
A two-bit terror operation will not currently do this, but a state actor can easily hide their tracks. And nothing prevents a state actor from supplying a "special" device to a terror group.
M.A.S.K. was fun but absurd in so many ways.
I despised the kid and even dumber bot.
In the field in actual battle conditions , lasers have been shown to be effective rioting terrorist weapons against cops
I want one for my Jeep
They aren’t able to steal everything, and some of what they steal is not actually genuine. That’s why they have such a difficult time reverse engineering what they steal, like stealth technology they cannot make it work nearly as well as ours because the secret stuff that really makes our stealth tech extraordinary is compartmented and most likely the files about that stuff have never been exposed to the internet and very few people have actual knowledge of it because the info is so tightly compartmented.
It was the Air Borne Laser (ABL) it is mentioned in the article.
Shall not be infringed :)
Want.
We Build
MONSTER TRUCKS for Fun!
.
Piss Us off and See
What Happens.
sometime in the early 2000’s, I read a story about a tank mounted laser. It looked like a searchlight was mounted on the turret of a M1A1. They lit off a 155 about 23 miles away. This thing tracked and shot down the projectile, IN FLIGHT. It did it 3 times in a row.
Then the article and all references to it just disappeared.
Moreover, there was no nuclear war even when the US and Russia had only a relative few such weapons and there was no MAD doctrine. Major powers simply built up larger conventional forces. Again, the advantage goes to the US.
I remember somebody goofed back in the 1970s or 80s and released a picture of a vehicle-mounted laser and some major news publication ran it. Can’t find that now, either.
Agree! Would be great for duck and goose hunting, as they fall from the sky already cooked! ;-)
It will help a lot, if they can get the cost down. Nobody wants to lose a cutting-edge, high-dollar weapon system, to a swarm of cheap, 'dumb' weapons. That's the same threat the Navy faces, every time they deploy a CVN in the Persian Gulf...
Iran professes to not share those assumptions and claims to seek an Armageddon that destroys all.
I’d love to take the EM-50 on a trip to Portland.
The Israelis are developing laser for incoming projectiles.
It seems a low powered version might be handy for riot control. A little hole the size of a pencil lead in the shoe might change their plans.
Me too! (Snicker, snicker
Yes, but will Commander Straker let us borrow it?
And do you have to have blue hair to use it?
That was a GREAT show.
IU think it is on one of the retro networks like Ovation or H&I.
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