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Sen. John McCain pens an opinion piece on Wired:
America's military technological advantage is eroding—and fast.
For the past decade, our adversaries have invested heavily in rapidly improving their militaries to counter our unique advantages. At the same time, the speed of globalization and commercialization means that advanced disruptive technologies are now—and increasingly will be—available to less sophisticated militaries, terrorist groups, and other non-state actors.
Maintaining our military technological advantage is about much more than a larger defense budget or a better fighter or submarine. These things are important, but to give our military the capabilities it needs to defend the nation, the Department of Defense must be able to access innovation in areas such as cyber, robotics, data analytics, miniaturization, and autonomy, innovation that is much more likely to come from Silicon Valley, Austin, or Mesa than Washington.
[...] There are those who say that even with changes like these, our nation's innovators simply aren't interested in doing business with the Pentagon. And after spending much of my career in Washington scrutinizing Pentagon business practices, I am not exactly surprised to hear such sentiments. But in the final analysis, I believe the brightest minds will always be driven to solve the world's toughest problems. These are the problems our military confronts every day. And these are the problems we can solve if we create an acquisition system that enables the Department of Defense to take advantage of the best minds, firms, and technologies that America and the world have to offer.
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday June 11 2015, @03:12PM
What makes you think that lasers won't work and that they are a waste of money?
Some part of the military-industrial complex gets enriched by the spending, so it's not a waste for them.
The lasers do work and will be mounted on U.S. warships [wired.com]:
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday June 11 2015, @03:32PM
Do lasers work as well against kinetic weapons? Railguns have an advantage in that they can be fired over the horizon. Those seem cheap per shot, too.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday June 11 2015, @03:37PM
The real question is who is the Navy preparing to fight? China? Pirates? Both?
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(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Friday June 12 2015, @02:10AM
That's the real question. Wankers like McCain spout off about "America losing it's advantage" without ever specifying who they're supposed to be losing this advantage to.
Russia? They used to be the bogey man, but are no credible threat to America any more.
China? They're only a threat to the US if the US expand their presence in China's sphere of influence.
Pirates? If it is pirates the Strait of Malacca and the East Coast of Africa would be the focus.
(Score: 1) by penguinoid on Thursday June 11 2015, @05:05PM
Lasers are much faster and quicker to aim as well. With a powerful enough laser you could destroy or deflect a solid kinetic round, though not as easily as if it were hollow. Railguns seem to suffer from much wear and tear, and I don't think that can be avoided too easily. Odds are, you want a railgun for power and a laser for accuracy.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Thursday June 11 2015, @03:34PM
Atmospheric dispersal? Yes, they might work, in perfectly clear conditions.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday June 11 2015, @03:51PM
http://aviationweek.com/technology/general-atomics-third-gen-electric-laser-weapon-now-ready [aviationweek.com]
http://optics.org/news/5/3/13 [optics.org]
Also, these lasers will be scaled up in power in order to do more:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4MJFb8l7xKk/VGjqXfQZbHI/AAAAAAAA4So/uk01ssa9Wuk/s1600/screenshot-fas.org%2B2014-11-16%2B10-17-16.png [blogspot.com]
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-adFrG4eZwMY/VGjp1HclnII/AAAAAAAA4Sg/qa0GK6oK_xA/s1600/screenshot-fas.org%2B2014-11-16%2B10-15-16.png [blogspot.com]
30-150 kW lasers have already been built. 300 kW should be available (as a prototype) by 2018. Eventually ships will have megawatt lasers.
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(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday June 11 2015, @11:51PM
An interesting question is how well do the lasers work in rain or fog?
Correcting for atmospheric distortions - adaptive optics - is fine for telescopes, but how do you compensate for thousands to millions of random lenses in your target path dispersing the beam energy?
If all the "bad guys" need to do is wait for the right weather, then the ship is going to need a pretty good backup defence.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2015, @05:39AM
> An interesting question is how well do the lasers work in rain or fog?
They burn it out nearly instantly, creating an effective vacuum. The amount of energy that fog and rain-droplets can absorb is practically nil. It is the same reason a mirror is no defense against these lasers either, the amount of energy just overwhelms any distorting/reflecting ability and vaporizes it instead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @02:13AM
What if you build a shield for your missile out of the same material as the adaptive optics?
(Score: 2) by AnonTechie on Friday June 12 2015, @10:07AM
In the future, USA shall ordain that wars shall only be fought under clear skies only !!
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."