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U.S. successfully tests airborne laser on missile

MSgt said:
It's like I always state..."they may as well start a Light Saber program."
Click to expand...

If you, and only you, had the responsibility to spend the Defense/Military budget for 2010 how would you spend it?


Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I believe the $$ put in the FA-22 was less about internal profit, and more about international profit. Shock and Awe was like the Military-Industrial complex's version of the Apple Keynote session with Steve Jobs, or the E3 summit for Electronic Arts.
 
I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade but remember when the Patriot system was said to be so very effective and it turned out that they fudged all the data to make it look better than it was until they worked out the kinks?

Did any of you notice that the story said :"Instruments on the missile verified the system had hit its mark, Boeing said."

It did not say they effectively shot the target out of the sky. I think it's great that they can get the beam on target but until it actually shoots a missile down I'm not going be dancing in the streets over it.
 
MetalGear said:
Is that not a small cost in comparison to the life saving potential this technology has? Points for believing its being funded at the wrong time, though. It seems far more accurate and capable than previous missile defence mechanisms. I wouldnt say it "wont do much".



Wait wait, who says it has to be boost phase? Is that true for all ICBM systems, and does this not work for after boost phase?
Click to expand...

I dont know the specifics, but I think ICBM under boost phase are going to be easier to hit ( much larger radar and heat signature) and most likely far more vunerable. ( all that fuel aboard).

But if it can be used against warheads under reentry I can not say, the article only mention that it was tested agaist a boost phase missile
 
Anti ballistic missile systems should be built but NO ONE should think they are protection against Russian or Chinese missiles. And a system intended to protect against those two should never be built.

States like Russia and China have too many missiles, decoys and evasion systems for one of our defensive systems to work, its just going to increase the proliferation. They can build more weapons to overwhelm a defensive system faster than we can build defensive systems to counter it. Not to mention the cost ratio between build new missiles and building defensive systems.

But a defensive system to shoot down a couple is needed in case one of the smaller nuclear states or god forbid some time in the future a non-state player goes bonkers and shoots one or two at us.
 
Wiseone said:
Anti ballistic missile systems should be built but NO ONE should think they are protection against Russian or Chinese missiles. And a system intended to protect against those two should never be built.

States like Russia and China have too many missiles, decoys and evasion systems for one of our defensive systems to work, its just going to increase the proliferation. They can build more weapons to overwhelm a defensive system faster than we can build defensive systems to counter it. Not to mention the cost ratio between build new missiles and building defensive systems.

But a defensive system to shoot down a couple is needed in case one of the smaller nuclear states or god forbid some time in the future a non-state player goes bonkers and shoots one or two at us.
Click to expand...

Against Russia or China they are usefull after a suprise first strike by the US that knocks out the majority of Chinese or Russian nukes
 
And of course they would consider that possibility and build more nukes to compensate if they ever felt their deterrent was being undermined.
 
Lord Tammerlain said:
I dont know the specifics, but I think ICBM under boost phase are going to be easier to hit ( much larger radar and heat signature) and most likely far more vunerable. ( all that fuel aboard).

But if it can be used against warheads under reentry I can not say, the article only mention that it was tested agaist a boost phase missile
Click to expand...

In the boost phase they are also going far, far slower. Terminal speed is like 4km/second on the big intercontinental rockets. Smaller missiles are slower, but they all go really, really fast. Tracking gets harder as speed increases, because the laser has to stay right on the same spot for heat buildup to destroy the rocket.

And once the rocket is out of fuel, it's not nearly as explosive, especially in the case of a nuclear weapon. A conventional weapon you could theoretically overheat the payload and detonate the weapon, but that's impossible with a nuke.

Wiseone said:
Anti ballistic missile systems should be built but NO ONE should think they are protection against Russian or Chinese missiles. And a system intended to protect against those two should never be built.

States like Russia and China have too many missiles, decoys and evasion systems for one of our defensive systems to work, its just going to increase the proliferation. They can build more weapons to overwhelm a defensive system faster than we can build defensive systems to counter it. Not to mention the cost ratio between build new missiles and building defensive systems.

But a defensive system to shoot down a couple is needed in case one of the smaller nuclear states or god forbid some time in the future a non-state player goes bonkers and shoots one or two at us.
Click to expand...

This is very true. Russia can make any defensive system statistically irrelevant. Defenses have to be 100% when up against nukes, and 100% just isn't possible against that sort of volume.
 
Lord Tammerlain said:
I dont know the specifics, but I think ICBM under boost phase are going to be easier to hit ( much larger radar and heat signature) and most likely far more vunerable. ( all that fuel aboard).

But if it can be used against warheads under reentry I can not say, the article only mention that it was tested agaist a boost phase missile
Click to expand...

Considering the technology implemented which highly increases its accuracy, i think its a possibility, but as you said the article says nothing on the matter.
 
MetalGear said:
Considering the technology implemented which highly increases its accuracy, i think its a possibility, but as you said the article says nothing on the matter.
Click to expand...

We can hit them on re-entry, but it may not do any good. Fuel is spent by then, and nuclear payloads don't detonate via heat of any magnitude. Theoretically enough heat could warp the nose cone causing structural failure via aerodynamic forces or maybe disable the trigger mechanism, but remember that these weapons are designed to enter the atmosphere at a couple thousand miles per hour. They aren't going to melt very easily.

Fuel explodes. Hit them when they still have fuel :)
 
Deuce said:
We can hit them on re-entry, but it may not do any good. Fuel is spent by then, and nuclear payloads don't detonate via heat of any magnitude. Theoretically enough heat could warp the nose cone causing structural failure via aerodynamic forces or maybe disable the trigger mechanism, but remember that these weapons are designed to enter the atmosphere at a couple thousand miles per hour. They aren't going to melt very easily.

Fuel explodes. Hit them when they still have fuel :)
Click to expand...

Cant you just use this thing to hit the nuclear warhead and explode it on impact in the air?
ICBM's don't have to knock out a warhead on boost phase to work, but it certainly increases the chances of it working as you said. Technically this would render the entire Northern American defence shield pointless if the case was it only worked on boost phase of a nuclear warhead.
 
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MetalGear said:
Cant you just use this thing to hit the nuclear warhead and explode it on impact in the air?
ICBM's don't have to knock out a warhead on boost phase to work, but it certainly increases the chances of it working as you said. Technically this would render the entire Northern American defence shield pointless if the case was it only worked on boost phase of a nuclear warhead.
Click to expand...

Kinetic impact weapons or those that explode in the area of the warhead if they hit could destroy the warhead, by destroying the electronics and containment fields

That is the point of the missile shields generally trying to use missiles to take out the warheads. The station in Alaska would be to hit the warheads long after the boost phase, same with the potential station in Bulgaria
 
Councilman said:
I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade but remember when the Patriot system was said to be so very effective and it turned out that they fudged all the data to make it look better than it was until they worked out the kinks?

Did any of you notice that the story said :"Instruments on the missile verified the system had hit its mark, Boeing said."

It did not say they effectively shot the target out of the sky. I think it's great that they can get the beam on target but until it actually shoots a missile down I'm not going be dancing in the streets over it.
Click to expand...

Invention and technology is a process. We are leaps and bounds from the Patriot system of the Gulf War. Even after it shoots a missile down there will be imperfections to be continually corrected. We have gone from creating nuclear bombs of devistation to attempting to perfect systems meant to attack the bombs.

Some would argue that we are walking in the right direction in terms of true "peace."
 
MetalGear said:
Cant you just use this thing to hit the nuclear warhead and explode it on impact in the air?
ICBM's don't have to knock out a warhead on boost phase to work, but it certainly increases the chances of it working as you said. Technically this would render the entire Northern American defence shield pointless if the case was it only worked on boost phase of a nuclear warhead.
Click to expand...

Lasers destroy their target by applying heat. There isn't any "impact." The fissile material in a thermonuclear weapon isn't flammable.

Our current missile defense system is a kinetic weapon, we shoot a big ass rocket and try to hit another big ass rocket mid-flight. It's a pretty futile exercise, the closure rate of an incoming ICBM and its interceptor can be as high as 8km/sec, and you pretty much have to hit it directly. (at that speed the target can literally outrun an explosion)
 
MSgt said:
Invention and technology is a process. We are leaps and bounds from the Patriot system of the Gulf War. Even after it shoots a missile down there will be imperfections to be continually corrected. We have gone from creating nuclear bombs of devistation to attempting to perfect systems meant to attack the bombs.

Some would argue that we are walking in the right direction in terms of true "peace."
Click to expand...

Some would argue that this sort of thing is destabilizing and threatens the balance of mutually assured destruction, which actually increases the likelihood of these weapons being used.
 
Arch Enemy said:
If you, and only you, had the responsibility to spend the Defense/Military budget for 2010 how would you spend it?
Click to expand...

Oh I don't know nearly enough about budgetting or planning to assume wisdom here. I would however point out the BS and redirect the funds towards the troop and small unit effectiveness. The Air Force got caught trying to scam a multi-billion dollar plan for new refeulers they didn't need in 2004. Thanks to a few Senators, who understood the military, jail sentences were handed out. Instead the money was sent to the Navy for upgraded nuclear submarines (you know...just in case the Middle East got into the nuclear sub business or in case China's vast naval fleet threatens the oceans). The Air Force's F/A-22 is more than good enough to face off with any foe in the world and then some, yet it took President Obama to pull the reigns in on the dreamers who think our foes are going to be flying Tie Fighters.

Despite my complaining about it, they have done an excellent job in supplying the troop equipment recently considering the history of neglect. We have gotten new gun and rifle upgrades. New aiming systms (ACOG) for the M16s. A new pistol is on the way. A new grenade launcher is being issued. A new helmet meant to ricochet better has been issued. New camouflage technology has been appied to our uniforms. Body armor (which stops 7.62 before a plate cracks) has replaced our fragmentation vests (which merely protected against fragments from explosions). New boots.

* But just a portion of those billions of dollars towards systems we do not need could have been applied towards personal radio systems for the troops. Hand and arm signals only work if you can see your team members and the urban environment of today's conflicts are not too friendly to this. The demand for greater personal communications forced the PRR (Personal Role Radio), but there wasn't enough and it was extremely limited to range. Further, they were too weak to pass comms through walls (concrete kills frequencies from weak sources).

* Democrats complaining about body armor in 2002 (as if we had it in Somalia and Bosnia under Clinton or in the Gulf War under Bush.....etc.) got us new vests, but it exposed our kidneys (which our fragmentation vests of old did not). The fix was some attachments that are cumbersome and awkward but forever in development.

* The demand for a better pack system has seen a few different designs and systems come through our supply since the late 90s. All of which have been great pains in the asses and weak, which is why they continually force something new upon us.

* The road trip to Baghdad in 2003 proved two things to us. One, our new SMART-T system allowed us to move faster and further than ever before, but two, our maintenace and supply systems could not keep us with the maneuvering forces. because we got bogged down into camps shortly after and the need to update these systems were not demanded, little has been done. The next "invasion" will show the same problems.

* The Blue Force Tracker (BFT) proved to save lives in 2003 in regards to fratricide, but to this day it has not seen a single significant upgrade. In a world of twitter, e-mails, and webcam, the 13 year old teenager has better contact with a guy in Cambodia than a MSgt has with a Colonel 10 miles away.

* IEDs were kicking our asses at one point. The Democratic complaint for protection brought us the UpArmor system, which totally screwed up our vehicles. because it made it difficult for the troop to get in and out of the vehicle and to effectively aim his weapon around it was common to see UpArmor stacked on the side of the road instead of on the vehicles. The fix to this was the MRAP. While the MRAP saved lives, it causes long term damage to the troop inside. Imagine being thrown around a metal can while bleeding from your ears because the explosive sound gets contained within. It's greatest danger is its potential for roll over. It is far too heavy and hardly expeditious.


These are just off the top of my head. But notice the trend? No matter the subject, it is always in need of improvement? One of the reasons we have had upgrades at all since this whole desert effort began was because politicians decided to use us as a tool. But the reason we have gone through so many trials in our upgrades at the troop level (body armor, helmets, BFT, UpArmor,packs, etc.) is because there is no return in it. And since there is no return in it, the bare minimum suffices. Nobody makes money by producing a final good body armor product or a final good pack product. How much money would it actually take to actually develop a good body armor system or pack for the lowly troop? I guarantee that civilian campers or civilian police departments have better equipment than the military. More focus is given to toys like the F/A-22 or a nuclear submarine that seem to forever need more money shoveled towards it and in the end they has no support value to the guy actually facing the enemy. While contractors receive checks for billions of dollars just to keep working on the next toy, the troop gets shotty equipment meant to appease the public, but not too invested.


Arch Enemy said:
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I believe the $$ put in the FA-22 was less about internal profit, and more about international profit. Shock and Awe was like the Military-Industrial complex's version of the Apple Keynote session with Steve Jobs, or the E3 summit for Electronic Arts.
Click to expand...

Well, it is a fact that most of the society changing technology has come from military investment. Even the Bronze Age saw invention come out of the need to supply weapons to warriors. Medicines and pesticides came out of the experimentation of military biological weapons. The Jet engine. Computers. Synthetic materials. Etc. In a globalizing world, the profit is becoming an international thing.
 
Councilman said:
I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade but remember when the Patriot system was said to be so very effective and it turned out that they fudged all the data to make it look better than it was until they worked out the kinks?

Did any of you notice that the story said :"Instruments on the missile verified the system had hit its mark, Boeing said."

It did not say they effectively shot the target out of the sky. I think it's great that they can get the beam on target but until it actually shoots a missile down I'm not going be dancing in the streets over it.
Click to expand...

It did destroy the missile.

"A laser weapon mounted on a Boeing jumbo jet tracked the missile as it accelerated over the ocean off the Point Mugu Naval Warfare Center Thursday night, then fired an energy beam that heated the missile until it cracked and broke up, according to statements from the Air Force and two aerospace companies involved in the program."
FOXNews.com - Laser Destroys Target Missile in Flight off California Coast
 
Deuce said:
Some would argue that this sort of thing is destabilizing and threatens the balance of mutually assured destruction, which actually increases the likelihood of these weapons being used.
Click to expand...

Some would argue that everything is destabilizing. Some argue that the shield merely encourages the sword, but these arguments are a matter of academia and foolishness. The idea that if everybody has a loaded gun and points it directly at each other's head means that we are all safe and sound is absolute stupidity.

One should not deny himself technology simply because it makes another feel inadequate. The trick to power is to keep moving forward and advancing. If others feel left behind then they should keep up. If they cannot, then they should re-evaluate their culture. If the other's reaction is to attack because of the success of another then they were always in need of destruction to begin with.
 
Last edited:
Deuce said:
Our current missile defense system is a kinetic weapon, we shoot a big ass rocket and try to hit another big ass rocket mid-flight. It's a pretty futile exercise, the closure rate of an incoming ICBM and its interceptor can be as high as 8km/sec, and you pretty much have to hit it directly. (at that speed the target can literally outrun an explosion)
Click to expand...

People stated as much about space travel and moon landings. The goal of any advancing civilization is to conquer the impossible so that it is probable. As has been proven over and over, the American culture is one of ingenuity and creativity. This has been the the reward of our brand of personal freedom and liberty. We don't believe that anything in regards to technology is "futile." The moment we do is the moment our prosperity ends.

Other cultures have completely cut their own balls off because of "futile" attitudes. One day, this "futile" endeavor will be second nature and it will be because we continually worked to achieve it. We accept that we can go into space and land on the moon.....but label the shooting down of missiles as "futile?"
 
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MSgt said:
Oh I don't know nearly enough about budgetting or planning to assume wisdom here. I would however point out the BS and redirect the funds towards the troop and small unit effectiveness. The Air Force got caught trying to scam a multi-billion dollar plan for new refeulers they didn't need in 2004. Thanks to a few Senators, who understood the military, jail sentences were handed out. Instead the money was sent to the Navy for upgraded nuclear submarines (you know...just in case the Middle East got into the nuclear sub business or in case China's vast naval fleet threatens the oceans). The Air Force's F/A-22 is more than good enough to face off with any foe in the world and then some, yet it took President Obama to pull the reigns in on the dreamers who think our foes are going to be flying Tie Fighters.

Despite my complaining about it, they have done an excellent job in supplying the troop equipment recently considering the history of neglect. We have gotten new gun and rifle upgrades. New aiming systms (ACOG) for the M16s. A new pistol is on the way. A new grenade launcher is being issued. A new helmet meant to ricochet better has been issued. New camouflage technology has been appied to our uniforms. Body armor (which stops 7.62 before a plate cracks) has replaced our fragmentation vests (which merely protected against fragments from explosions). New boots.

* But just a portion of those billions of dollars towards systems we do not need could have been applied towards personal radio systems for the troops. Hand and arm signals only work if you can see your team members and the urban environment of today's conflicts are not too friendly to this. The demand for greater personal communications forced the PRR (Personal Role Radio), but there wasn't enough and it was extremely limited to range. Further, they were too weak to pass comms through walls (concrete kills frequencies from weak sources).

* Democrats complaining about body armor in 2002 (as if we had it in Somalia and Bosnia under Clinton or in the Gulf War under Bush.....etc.) got us new vests, but it exposed our kidneys (which our fragmentation vests of old did not). The fix was some attachments that are cumbersome and awkward but forever in development.

* The demand for a better pack system has seen a few different designs and systems come through our supply since the late 90s. All of which have been great pains in the asses and weak, which is why they continually force something new upon us.

* The road trip to Baghdad in 2003 proved two things to us. One, our new SMART-T system allowed us to move faster and further than ever before, but two, our maintenace and supply systems could not keep us with the maneuvering forces. because we got bogged down into camps shortly after and the need to update these systems were not demanded, little has been done. The next "invasion" will show the same problems.

* The Blue Force Tracker (BFT) proved to save lives in 2003 in regards to fratricide, but to this day it has not seen a single significant upgrade. In a world of twitter, e-mails, and webcam, the 13 year old teenager has better contact with a guy in Cambodia than a MSgt has with a Colonel 10 miles away.

* IEDs were kicking our asses at one point. The Democratic complaint for protection brought us the UpArmor system, which totally screwed up our vehicles. because it made it difficult for the troop to get in and out of the vehicle and to effectively aim his weapon around it was common to see UpArmor stacked on the side of the road instead of on the vehicles. The fix to this was the MRAP. While the MRAP saved lives, it causes long term damage to the troop inside. Imagine being thrown around a metal can while bleeding from your ears because the explosive sound gets contained within. It's greatest danger is its potential for roll over. It is far too heavy and hardly expeditious.


These are just off the top of my head. But notice the trend? No matter the subject, it is always in need of improvement? One of the reasons we have had upgrades at all since this whole desert effort began was because politicians decided to use us as a tool. But the reason we have gone through so many trials in our upgrades at the troop level (body armor, helmets, BFT, UpArmor,packs, etc.) is because there is no return in it. And since there is no return in it, the bare minimum suffices. Nobody makes money by producing a final good body armor product or a final good pack product. How much money would it actually take to actually develop a good body armor system or pack for the lowly troop? I guarantee that civilian campers or civilian police departments have better equipment than the military. More focus is given to toys like the F/A-22 or a nuclear submarine that seem to forever need more money shoveled towards it and in the end they has no support value to the guy actually facing the enemy. While contractors receive checks for billions of dollars just to keep working on the next toy, the troop gets shotty equipment meant to appease the public, but not too invested.




Well, it is a fact that most of the society changing technology has come from military investment. Even the Bronze Age saw invention come out of the need to supply weapons to warriors. Medicines and pesticides came out of the experimentation of military biological weapons. The Jet engine. Computers. Synthetic materials. Etc. In a globalizing world, the profit is becoming an international thing.
Click to expand...

I agree everything you mentioned needs funding and upgrades. Although, I think in addition to all that, the F-22 is still an important weapon system. The F-22 will have a much higher survivability rate when it comes to being shot at by surface to air missiles. Also, it can engage enemy jet fighters from a lot farther out. And as I am sure you already know, attaining air superiority in a war will save lives. For example, the air campaign in 1991 against Iraq greatly reduced the length of the ground war. Imagine going into Kuwait and Iraq back then if Iraq was able to attack ground forces from the air.

Additionally, this Airborne Laser has had some spin-off projects that are going to be used by ground forces. There is an Army project to build a truck-mounted laser system to shoot down rockets, artillery and mortar projectiles.
FOXNews.com - Ray Guns Real: Army Betting Big on Laser Weapons

[By the way, I thought the Blue Force Tracker, also known as Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below (FBCB2), was getting an upgrade soon?]
 
MSgt said:
Other cultures have completely cut their own balls off because of "futile" attitudes. One day, this "futile" endeavor will be second nature and it will be because we continually worked to achieve it. We accept that we can go into space and land on the moon.....but label the shooting down of missiles as "futile?"
Click to expand...

Shooting down a 4km/sec rocket forty miles above the earth with direct kinetic impact of a similar rocket traveling at similar speeds guided by radar with silicon microchips doing the guidance, when failure is catastrophic and there will likely be many targets to hit is indeed futile.

We're trying to get to the moon with an unpressurized cockpit. Couple things to take care of before we give it a serious attempt.

1) Faster microchips. There's a reason chips are all dual or quad core these days - we've come up against the physical limitations of silicon. If we oscillate it any faster it starts to melt. Given the incredible speeds involved, just the delay of your chip's clock cycles is a margin of error that is too high

2) Faster radar cycling. The guidance system can only update as fast as the radar dish can pulse-and-receive.

3) More accurate physical guidance. At 4km/second, aerodynamic forces are enormous and getting your control fins to move accurately enough is difficult

4) Luck. We can't fix this one. Firing two things at eachother over those distances, sometimes you will just miss. Rockets can't turn around and try again.

So, rather than try to figure all this out, we just need to be able to squeeze another megawatt or two out of our lasers.
 
MSgt said:
Oh I don't know nearly enough about budgetting or planning to assume wisdom here. I would however point out the BS and redirect the funds towards the troop and small unit effectiveness. The Air Force got caught trying to scam a multi-billion dollar plan for new refeulers they didn't need in 2004. Thanks to a few Senators, who understood the military, jail sentences were handed out. Instead the money was sent to the Navy for upgraded nuclear submarines (you know...just in case the Middle East got into the nuclear sub business or in case China's vast naval fleet threatens the oceans). The Air Force's F/A-22 is more than good enough to face off with any foe in the world and then some, yet it took President Obama to pull the reigns in on the dreamers who think our foes are going to be flying Tie Fighters.

Despite my complaining about it, they have done an excellent job in supplying the troop equipment recently considering the history of neglect. We have gotten new gun and rifle upgrades. New aiming systms (ACOG) for the M16s. A new pistol is on the way. A new grenade launcher is being issued. A new helmet meant to ricochet better has been issued. New camouflage technology has been appied to our uniforms. Body armor (which stops 7.62 before a plate cracks) has replaced our fragmentation vests (which merely protected against fragments from explosions). New boots.

* But just a portion of those billions of dollars towards systems we do not need could have been applied towards personal radio systems for the troops. Hand and arm signals only work if you can see your team members and the urban environment of today's conflicts are not too friendly to this. The demand for greater personal communications forced the PRR (Personal Role Radio), but there wasn't enough and it was extremely limited to range. Further, they were too weak to pass comms through walls (concrete kills frequencies from weak sources).

* Democrats complaining about body armor in 2002 (as if we had it in Somalia and Bosnia under Clinton or in the Gulf War under Bush.....etc.) got us new vests, but it exposed our kidneys (which our fragmentation vests of old did not). The fix was some attachments that are cumbersome and awkward but forever in development.

* The demand for a better pack system has seen a few different designs and systems come through our supply since the late 90s. All of which have been great pains in the asses and weak, which is why they continually force something new upon us.

* The road trip to Baghdad in 2003 proved two things to us. One, our new SMART-T system allowed us to move faster and further than ever before, but two, our maintenace and supply systems could not keep us with the maneuvering forces. because we got bogged down into camps shortly after and the need to update these systems were not demanded, little has been done. The next "invasion" will show the same problems.

* The Blue Force Tracker (BFT) proved to save lives in 2003 in regards to fratricide, but to this day it has not seen a single significant upgrade. In a world of twitter, e-mails, and webcam, the 13 year old teenager has better contact with a guy in Cambodia than a MSgt has with a Colonel 10 miles away.

* IEDs were kicking our asses at one point. The Democratic complaint for protection brought us the UpArmor system, which totally screwed up our vehicles. because it made it difficult for the troop to get in and out of the vehicle and to effectively aim his weapon around it was common to see UpArmor stacked on the side of the road instead of on the vehicles. The fix to this was the MRAP. While the MRAP saved lives, it causes long term damage to the troop inside. Imagine being thrown around a metal can while bleeding from your ears because the explosive sound gets contained within. It's greatest danger is its potential for roll over. It is far too heavy and hardly expeditious.


These are just off the top of my head. But notice the trend? No matter the subject, it is always in need of improvement? One of the reasons we have had upgrades at all since this whole desert effort began was because politicians decided to use us as a tool. But the reason we have gone through so many trials in our upgrades at the troop level (body armor, helmets, BFT, UpArmor,packs, etc.) is because there is no return in it. And since there is no return in it, the bare minimum suffices. Nobody makes money by producing a final good body armor product or a final good pack product. How much money would it actually take to actually develop a good body armor system or pack for the lowly troop? I guarantee that civilian campers or civilian police departments have better equipment than the military. More focus is given to toys like the F/A-22 or a nuclear submarine that seem to forever need more money shoveled towards it and in the end they has no support value to the guy actually facing the enemy. While contractors receive checks for billions of dollars just to keep working on the next toy, the troop gets shotty equipment meant to appease the public, but not too invested.




Well, it is a fact that most of the society changing technology has come from military investment. Even the Bronze Age saw invention come out of the need to supply weapons to warriors. Medicines and pesticides came out of the experimentation of military biological weapons. The Jet engine. Computers. Synthetic materials. Etc. In a globalizing world, the profit is becoming an international thing.
Click to expand...
The problem really comes down to the fact that the US had to start fighting a war just after the military drawdown during the Clinton years. The research budget was hit in a major way, and therefore the technology that you needed wasn't ready. It wasn't till the mid-2000's that researched dollars started flowing again, and still not to the leve during the 1980's. Developing new technology takes time, and PM's have short term thinking and priorities.
 
Porchev said:
Although, I think in addition to all that, the F-22 is still an important weapon system.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. It has its use. But we are stupid. Let's not forget why it exists. The program was the answer to Soviet dogfighting against MIGs. After the Cold War ended, the makes added a bombing feature in order to portray it as supportive to troops on the battle field. The F-22 was re-designated the F/A-22 over night. Politicians bought into it and the Program was breathed new life. In the end, our older perfectly fine aircrafts (such as the A-10) are cheaper to make and upgrade, offer far more air support than the F/A-22, and carry more fuel.

In 2005, we had an exercise with Indians which involved air power. It was embarrassing. They killed us because we denied our pilots the ability to use all the fancy gadgets and toys inside the F/A-22 (Because of its Classified nature). This should have taught us that we need to place more emphasis on our pilot's abilities like we used to instead of relying on techonology to win. After all, the Indians didn't have anything fancy. But the Air Force's answer to this problem was to "prove" to politicians that more money is needed for the develpment of the F/A-22.

Our existing F/A-22 system offers us air superiority everywhere as much as we have ocean superiority. There is no contest out there. We don't need to keep pouring money into it.

This "technology will win the day" or "turn war humane" attitude was shared between Cliton and Rumsfeld. This brand of stupidity is celebrated on both sides of the idiocy.


Porchev said:
The F-22 will have a much higher survivability rate when it comes to being shot at by surface to air missiles. Also, it can engage enemy jet fighters from a lot farther out. And as I am sure you already know, attaining air superiority in a war will save lives. For example, the air campaign in 1991 against Iraq greatly reduced the length of the ground war. Imagine going into Kuwait and Iraq back then if Iraq was able to attack ground forces from the air.
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And this is my point about it entirely. The "ifs" are unnecessary. Unless we go to war with China, the dog fights are over. And even if we do, what we have surpasses what they have by a long shot. Our troops need air support now. At a time when our military needs more pickups, we insist on supplying useless Ferraris.

Porchev said:
Additionally, this Airborne Laser has had some spin-off projects that are going to be used by ground forces. There is an Army project to build a truck-mounted laser system to shoot down rockets, artillery and mortar projectiles.
FOXNews.com - Ray Guns Real: Army Betting Big on Laser Weapons

[By the way, I thought the Blue Force Tracker, also known as Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below (FBCB2), was getting an upgrade soon?]
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The first I saw it was in 2002. It is 2010. A lot of war has been happening in between. Because of this lack of attention into systems at the troop and commander level the military has been flooded with civilian equipment of all types. Units have been paying for ruggedized civilian equipment for years. Because of these "Urgent UNS" (Universal Need Statement), our systems are as confusing as they are conflicting.

More focus on military needs at the government level rather than such an intense focus on Defense Contract toy building would go a long way to ensuring our nation's security than any F/A-22 has proven to do thus far.
 
Deuce said:
Shooting down a 4km/sec rocket forty miles above the earth with direct kinetic impact of a similar rocket traveling at similar speeds guided by radar with silicon microchips doing the guidance, when failure is catastrophic and there will likely be many targets to hit is indeed futile.
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So was going to the moon. The reason we have such a technological advantage over the entire world is because we refuse to think of things as "futile." And just think about all those little things throughout civilization that have come from trying to prove the impossible probable over the centuries. Why....once the world was even flat. I'm sure to many, Columbus' attempts were futile.

With every great leap we are exponentially advancing technology. The introduction of computers has allowed us to grow faster and leap further quicker than ever before. How much closer to perfection will we be in a decade? How less so if we simply consider it "futile" now?
 
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MSgt said:
So was going to the moon. The reason we have such a technological advantage over the entire world is because we refuse to think of things as "futile." And just think about all those little things throughout civilization that have come from trying to prove the impossible probable over the centuries. Why....once the world was even flat. I'm sure to many, Columbus' attempts were futile.

With every great leap we are exponentially advancing technology. The introduction of computers has allowed us to grow faster and leap further quicker than ever before. How much closer to perfection will we be in a decade? How less so if we simply consider it "futile" now?
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We didn't go to the moon with an unpressurized vehicle.

We aren't going to stop a Russian ICBM barrage with interceptor rockets using current technology. It doesn't make sense to build more of the current interceptors because they're useless. A technological exercise, it's not a product for deployment.

There's also the question to pose: do we want to develop a 100% effective counter to nuclear weapons?
 
Deuce said:
We didn't go to the moon with an unpressurized vehicle.
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Well, that is very true. But this is why we continued to develop and create.

Deuce said:
We aren't going to stop a Russian ICBM barrage with interceptor rockets using current technology. It doesn't make sense to build more of the current interceptors because they're useless. A technological exercise, it's not a product for deployment.
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Again...very true. Mass producing what technology has to offer today in this regard is a waste of money. This would be a variation of what I have argued against in this very thread. However, there will come a day when we will be able to knock out whatever we like because we will have worked towards that end. This is not an effort to be shelved. We laugh at the "Star Wars" of the 80s, but today's technology exist because it had a ludicrous base to begin with.

Deuce said:
There's also the question to pose: do we want to develop a 100% effective counter to nuclear weapons?
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You're considering what our enemies will be able to do because of our developments? We develop the nuke so our enemies get the nuke...we develop an effective shield so our enemies get a shield making the use of nuclear arms negated?

Perhaps that is the practical and truest form of nuclear denial. Right now, we are playing with dice. And what if we use this developing technology to merely knock out HE rockets heading towards our troops? In the end, I'd bet my life that the next nuclear attack will not come from a launch anyway.
 
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