From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Jun 23 2003 - 11:31:14 MDT
--- Phil Osborn <philosborn2001@yahoo.com> wrote:
> This is only first gen. What kind of defenses will
> evolve? Photoelectric fog? Like a smoke screen but
> able to adsorb laser or even perhaps EMP? But then
> the offense could use a frequency tuned to the fog to
> vaporize a JIT path.
Are you assuming that there will be some nation capable of catching up
with US military technological progress? This flies in the face of
Moore's Law and what we know about technological singularities. It is
known that several nations are desperate to do so (witness the Chinese
looting of a US electronics surveillance plane a couple years ago), but
without our culture of liberty, free enterprise, and intellectual
freedom, they just don't have the mental infrastructure to do so.
>
> How to target over the horizon, which is easy enough
> with radar and projectiles? For lasers, you would
> have to position a reflector high enough to get the
> beam to where you wanted. Then the reflector becomes
> a target, of course. I'm reminded of that old SF
> movie that was shown once per month on late night TV,
> it seemed, through the '60's. The one in which
> dastardly aliens holed up (literally) in some
> hillside, are using beam weapons against scientists,
> who build a targeting reflector array that returns the
> energy to its source.
Targeting over the horizon would be via orbiting mirrors. You'd likely
get greater range that way as well, since you'd be shooting through far
less atmosphere to do so, so less beam dispersion. In which case, the
enemy would have to develop anti-satellite capabilities far greater
than just a small bullet-to-bullet technology. You'd have to take out
an entire mirror array, which would require a rather large explosion,
perhaps a nuke in space. How many nations are going to be capable of
this in the next several decades? A handfull. The only ones to be truly
concerned about are North Korea and China.
Note the real reason for ship-based laser battlestations is to forward
deploy anti-ICBM capabilities to tactical areas under the boost-phase
loci of nations hostile to the US. A laser capable of reaching an LEO
orbital mirror is also capable of taking out an ICBM in boost phase.
When this happens, rogue nations like North Korea cannot threaten the
US or its allies any longer.
=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
- Gen. John Stark
Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com
Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/
Pro-tech freedom discussion:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Jun 23 2003 - 11:42:21 MDT