Combat lasers becoming a reality, as America and Israel join forces

WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, N.M. (UPI) -- Futuristic laser weapons under development by the U.S. military are making the transition from fodder for science fiction to reality and could soon be ready to play a major role in protecting troops on the battlefields of the 21st century.

Successful test firings have become routine for the Zeus, which zaps unexploded mines and bombs, and the Mobil Tactical High-Energy Laser, MTHEL, a joint American-Israeli weapon designed to swat down small short-range rockets and even artillery shells in mid-air.

"We could study these forever, but that's not what we are paid for," said Maj. Gen. John M. Urias, deputy commander of the U.S. Space & Missile Defense Command. "We are here to get these (systems) into the hands of soldiers."

Working quietly in the sprawling and secretive desert of the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, lasers have been under development since the 1970s and now appear tantalizingly close to being ready for service in the field.

A group of 15 select reporters from around the United States boarded a small convoy of military vans in El Paso's early-morning chill for the two-hour drive to White Sands where they were given a closer look at the laser projects being carried out in a small cluster of single-story buildings surrounded by scrub brush, roadrunners and the occasional oryx, an African game animal imported years ago by New Mexico wildlife officials in a failed scheme to improve the area's hunting.

Urias told reporters who toured the High Energy Laser Test Facility at White Sands on Tuesday that the MTHEL project would be making a step up in the often-convoluted weapons development system in the coming fiscal quarter by being assigned to a Program Executive Officer within the Army's air defense command. Moving ahead with MTHEL means that Israel's nearly $50 million investment could pay off in a few years in the form of a mobile system capable of picking off the Katyusha rockets that were once the bane of Jewish settlements in the north of the country.

Although the Katyusha currently appears to have been largely abandoned by Arab guerrillas in favor of suicide bombs, Israel is still anxious to see the MTHEL become a reality and also supplied fire-control radar to the project as well as an aging Katyusha launcher captured from Hezbollah.

The latest test of the MTHEL came when it intercepted both a Katyusha and a 152-mm artillery shell in the bone-dry air over White Sands with a bevy of U.S. generals looking on.

MTHEL has proven to be incredibly accurate and is able to identify a threatening device hurtling through the sky within milliseconds, but it is not quite to the point where it is mobile enough to be packed up and sent to Israel. Program officials also conceded that its development probably could not be speeded up much despite the simmering prospect of a war between the United States and Iraq.

"We would like to accelerate this, but it depends on funding," explained Gerald Wilson, the head of the MTHEL program at White Sands. "There is a certain amount of acceleration you can have with any development program, so the question is also whether or not there would be adequate payback."

"You can only accelerate something so fast before you start having a diminishing return on your efforts, but yes, they (Israel) would like to have this as soon as possible," Wilson said.

The beauty of the MTHEL is that it conceivably could provide a defense against artillery and rockets that have sent infantrymen diving for the dirt since the Civil War.

"The only thing you can do today is hunker down," Urias said. "You dig a foxhole and you hope."

With lasers, the battlefield of the future is envisioned as one on which U.S. mechanized forces charge forward virtually unopposed while vehicle-mounted lasers protect them against incoming enemy shells and missiles. At the same time, Zeus would be in the vanguard, clearing away cluster bombs, unexploded shells and even mines in a fraction of the time it currently takes ordnance explosive experts to gingerly perform the dangerous task by hand.

Like its mythical namesake god, Zeus uses a laser thunderbolt to heat up the casing of the target until it goes off with a weak bang.

In exchange for U.S. taxpayers buying Israel and Egypt military equipment Jimmy Carter gets a Nobel Peace prize and thousands of Americans get killed.

That's quite a leap in illogic, as well there, Slinger.

Exactly how many terrorist attack were there against the U.S. by Middle Eastern terrorists before Jimmy Carter bought 'peace' between Egypt and Israel with a yearly contribution of U.S. taxpayer dollars?

Last time I checked Japan hasn't provided money and arms to both sides of this war in the Middle East, and oddly they don't worry about radical Muslims blowing up their citizens. Why is that? What could it possibly be...

I'm guessing you didn't support Lend Lease or D-Day either because those weren't our fights, either?

I didn't have an opportunity to oppose King FDR's attempts to get this nation into war and distracted from his disasterous economic policies. Why is it that people think socialism Nazi style had anymore longtime prospect for success than socialism Soviet style?

If the Israeli's are helping in the development (for example, not the least of which providing a test launcher captured with Israeli soldier's blood from Hizbollah) then I welcome their contributuion rather than going it alone.

Wow, they gave us a Katyusha to test our laser against? No doubt we couldn't have mimicked the Soviet's WW2 technology of mating essentially a 1930's Ford truck chassis to a metal frame designed to hold unguided, oversized bottle rockets. We can hit an artillery shell with a laser, but Stalin's Organs - too high tech.

Their 'contribution' is sucking away billions from taxpayers each year, and now we get to be in a war. With friends like these...

Oh, I get it. You convinced me it's all Israel's fault.

You miss the point. Imagine two people are brawling. You step in the middle of the brawl and get hit. You can blame the guy that hit you, but you can't act shocked at the results of choosing to be in the middle of a fight.

It's not in the best interest of the US to have a democratic ally in a sea of facist, religiously insane nation-states.

How has it served our interest? It has cost us billions of dollars, thousands of American lives to date. Tell me, what is the interest we've paid for with all this money and blood?

My apologies, Osama. Just keep your head buried in the sand. Everything will be OK.

Just name call and fer chrissakes don't question anything that's happening. Just stick your head up your ass and dream about 'payback' for all our dead - not that they get to cash in on it. Everything will be OK once we trade in neutrality, peace and freedom for allies, war and police state. Once they get a wall in place on our border, and a policeman checking our papers at every corner, then we'll be safe. Almost as safe as the people wise enough not to involve themselves in this mess...

Slinger, the myth of America's historical neutrality has been disproved over and over.

Besides, historically, neutrality does not protect one from aggression. What about the Barbary Pirates? They seized our merchant vessels and captured our sailors. Our provocation? Commerce with Europe.

Or Pancho Villa and his attacks across the border into the US? President Wilson had simply allowed a convoy of Carrancistas move through US territory to resupply an outpost.

America has always stood as an exporter of democracy. We have been conducting interventions throughout the world, for over 200 years, in an attempt to promote democracy, and of course, American interests. In the 19th century alone, US Marines landed over 110 times in various countries in the western hemisphere, to promote American ideals and American interests.

And I, for one, can think of no better mission for America. America was founded with this mission: protecting republican ideals in the United States, and exporting these ideals to the world.

This does not mean the US should go crusading, toppling every non-democratic government in the world. What does mean it? Two points:

1) America should encourage the development of liberal democracies through-out the world

2) America should support and protect those democracies and nations whose ideals mirror our own

I believe that Israel is one of the few countries that warrant this protection from the United States. If America, the first bastion of freedom, and now the strongest power in this world, does not defend freedom and democracy worldwide - who will?

Slinger, the myth of America's historical neutrality has been disproved over and over.

John Quincy Adams's Warning Against the Search for "Monsters to Destroy," 1821

"And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and Shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind? Let our answer be this: America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....

[America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.

Besides, historically, neutrality does not protect one from aggression. What about the Barbary Pirates?

Neutrality does not guarantee peace, but joining a side in a war guarantees war. The United States formally declared war on the States that were attempting to extort us for safe passage on the open sea.

Or Pancho Villa and his attacks across the border into the US?

An actual instance of the U.S. government using the military to enforce justice. How is analogous or pertinent to the U.S. decision to thrust itself in the midst of millenia old, regional conflict?

I believe that Israel is one of the few countries that warrant this protection from the United States. If America, the first bastion of freedom, and now the strongest power in this world, does not defend freedom and democracy worldwide - who will?

Those who want freedom will. It's ridiculous to think they need our 'protection'. Why does anyone think Israel, with the most powerful conventional military in the region, and the only nuclear power in the region, can't defend herself? It's the U.S. that has been holding them back. They are trying to elect a leader that will do what they think needs to be done to ensure their peace and safety, but while America fights terrorists we ask Israel to "show restraint". How's 'bout we bug out of that hell-hole and let the Israeli's handle their problem the way they'd like to. If that means shipping the Palestinians to Olkahomistan, so be it. Making targets out of Americans isn't improving this situation, especially for the aforementioned Americans...

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.