SCI/TECH: Solid Success in Speed-of-Light Weaponry

Originally posted by XL5
Matching a laser to an owner would be harder then doing the same for a drill bit and the hole it made. Photons spread out depending on air quality and the heat of the laser at the time, you might have 10 different patterns to use untill they all look the same.

What if the identification is built in to the gun itself? Say every time a gun is fired the gun logs the data and the user. As the User has to hold hte device it could just conduct a biometric identification of the user.
This data of when the gun was fired and by whom could then be transmitted via cell networks to the authorities to log and that inturn could be used to identify all weapon discharges and all the people who do so. Much more effective than the present form I would think?
(Okay, I ripped it off Judge Dread! )

Currently a back pack powered laser can not "pop" through a person but it can blind them and make marks in/on the skin. Used in war, a Q-switched 27KW laser could blind 1000 troops or more in 1-5 seconds and in effect make them easy targets.

Can these blinding lasers be reflected or incapacitated by some sort of reflective goggles ? I've heard that some Tanks have special scopes for their drivers to prevent bliding from Laser weapons could this be incorporated into more mobile forms ?

All the protection circuit could be taken out of the laser if the person had the smarts or the right connections. It would be like what would happen if they did it to hand guns. It could tell the where it was fired if it had a camera, but some black paper and tape would solve that.

Yeah, the troops could wear laser goggles but they would need to be coated for multiple wavelenghts (colors). The troops would not see "some" greens, deep reds and violets.

27KW

Amps * Volts = Watts
9 Volt Batteries typically put out around 3 watts of power
To power this laser on batteries would take :
(27KW*1000) / 3W = 9000 9Volt batteries
Ok scale it down some

A 1KW laser would burn you and may set things on fire as well as cause blindness.
this is a guess based a 100mW laser being able to pop balloons and some warnings I found via a google search.
9000KW / 27KW = 334 9volt batteries, thats still alot of batteries

I don't ever see this coming down to civilian level.

As for powering space craft, yes I believe this is possible
Sad that it was built for war first, though i suppose niclear power was too initially.

Anyone remember SimCity2000?
The Microwave powerplant worked via a satillite solar collector that beamed power back to the collector dish on earth via laser and occasionally misfired and burned your city down.

Any sort of new tech and we always ask "can it be used as a weapon."

We aint got a chance in hell of surviving lol, all these kill frenzy freaks need to pull their finger out.

Ive had enuff, p*ss off with ur new weapons, all ur gonna do is kill

Now the news story is saying that the Lazer weaponary will be for larger targets right. Well, think about this.
If we had this technology right now for the US military it would make soliders less likely to go into battle in larger groups. I know that sounds crazy but think about it.

If you have a lazer in every soliders hands; and it can shoot down plains, missles. Then it can shoot through tanks, bunkers, hummers, light armor or even heavy armor. Truely war will be no more if this power is provided to the US military. Now picture this.

You have a squad of 10 soliders with these "lazer rifles" (phazers for all you Trekies) Okay you drop them in the middle of a war zone. Will the capablity of having that power in hands of trained individuals it would be a very power military. Now, with your squad in the drop zone. What would stop the US military using "lazer satalites" for percision firing from space. (think akria) NO enemy would be safe.

Heck next thing you know someone is going to invent AI so advanced that it creates cyborgs with lazers and they start to kill us because we are the problem............... what that is a movie. .....................right?!

[edit on 15-11-2005 by texmiller]

Originally posted by Jamuhn
I think you are missing the important question here Grady...and that question is...When will this be available at Walmart?

A week after China starts mass-producing them!

Being for real now, we're living in an age where science-fiction is becoming reality.

It's really neat to be alive in these days.

Originally posted by mrjones
27KW

Amps * Volts = Watts
9 Volt Batteries typically put out around 3 watts of power
To power this laser on batteries would take :
(27KW*1000) / 3W = 9000 9Volt batteries
Ok scale it down some

A 1KW laser would burn you and may set things on fire as well as cause blindness.
this is a guess based a 100mW laser being able to pop balloons and some warnings I found via a google search.
9000KW / 27KW = 334 9volt batteries, thats still alot of batteries

I don't ever see this coming down to civilian level.

Yeah, god forbid they use a power source other than 9-volt batteries!

You are right about this never coming to the civilian level though, heck I wouldn't be surprised to see regular handguns illegal in my lifetime.

GP said:

The US is virtually the only nation in the world to follow the Geneva Conventions * * *

This is a fascinating thread. But, sorry, I could not let that irresponsibly false statement pass. Grady, don't you watch, listen to, or read the news?!?! It's laughable that you would post such a statement given that its utter falsity is so widely known.

I watch the news and I know whats going on. You name me one enemy combatant nation in the history of the Conventions who has even attempted to follow the Geneva Conventions. When any US combatant is found to have violated the Conventions, they are prosecuted. There is nothing at all irresponisible about my statement.


[edit on 2005/11/15 by GradyPhilpott]

Originally posted by woodsyboy
Any sort of new tech and we always ask "can it be used as a weapon."

Historicaly weapons research has driven technilogical advancement. its a fact of life. For all of the grief Reagan got for his visionary Star Wars system, the effects of the research trikkle down to the average citizen in the forms of MRI Scanners, lasers and the like.

[edit on 11/15/05 by FredT]

Originally posted by GradyPhilpott
You name me one enemy combatant nation in the history of the Conventions who has even attempted to follow the Geneva Conventions.

Nazi Germany, at least concerning western (non soviet etcetera) troops.

[edit on 15-11-2005 by Simon666]

Originally posted by Simon666
Nazi Germany, at least concerning western (non soviet etcetera) troops.

Surely, you jest. Here's but one account.

This may sound like a familiar survivor's story, but it's not. This one has a different twist. Brooks is an American and was an Army infantryman who was captured by the Germans.

"Of course it violated the Geneva Convention," said Brooks, discussing the conditions of his imprisonment during a phone interview. "But when we brought it up, we were just laughed at."

Brooks, who lives in Florida, is now talking about his wartime experience. Last month, he spoke at the Contra Costa Jewish Community Center in Walnut Creek. He also has been interviewed by Charles Guggenheim for a PBS documentary on the subject.

That American military men and women were placed in concentration camps, fed starvation diets and forced into slave labor, is a little-known chapter of World War II history. And those POWs like Brooks who were Jewish -- religious affiliation was designated on military personnel's dog tags -- were singled out by the Nazis for harsher treatment than their non-Jewish counterparts.

"The information was never publicized," said Brooks, 76. "All the fellows I knew didn't talk about it. When we first came out most of us were in pretty rough shape. We weren't encouraged to talk about it and didn't want to share a miserable experience."

But that is changing. In 1994 Mitchell Bard published "Forgotten Victims: The Abandonment of Americans in Hitler's Camps." Since then, American World War II POWs began meeting to talk about their experiences in the camps. Out of that grew a speaker's bureau. Brooks, along with others who had similar experiences, started going to schools and other organizations to tell their stories.

www.jewishsf.com...

Gee...now we can kill people at the speed of light.

Originally posted by GradyPhilpott
Surely, you jest. Here's but one account.

Those are exceptions, the death rate of US POWs in german hands is comparable to the German POW death rate in US hands:

The German annual death rates in US hands (1%?) p-2 and French hands (2.6%) p-3 were a whole order of magnitude less than for US PoWs in Japanese hands (27%) p-4, German PoWs in Soviet hands (35-50%) p-5, or, worst of all, Soviet PoWs in German hands (60-80%). They were comparable to, but probably higher than, the annual death rate of US PoWs in German hands (1%).

Source: edited by Günter Bischof and Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower and the German PoWs: Facts Against Falsehood, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge and London, 1992; cloth, 258 pp.

You might try reading this:

btobsearch.barnesandnoble.com...

The number of US POWs who returned alive is not a measure of the overall treatment of POWs or of the Nazis adherence to the Geneva Convention. I have known men who survived the POWs camps of Germany and they were given just enough sustenance to keep most of them alive. Also, the fact that the Germans had different standards for different prisoners depending on the Nazi model of humanity does not make them followers of the Geneva Convention.

Originally posted by GradyPhilpott
That's an absurd statement. The US is virtually the only nation in the world to follow the Geneva Conventions

That statement is itself also absurd. But your statement above is different from the one below, Grady.

Originally posted by GradyPhilpott
You name me one enemy combatant nation in the history of the Conventions who has even attempted to follow the Geneva Conventions.

Now, just quickly, you seem to have had to subtly adapt your statement in an attempt to prove your point.

Your first statement is also, as I said, absurd. Britain, Spain, Italy, Poland.... all members of the Coalition (though not anymore for Spain), and all appearing to follow the Conventions. More nations outside of the Coalition 'follow' the Conventions, too.

But the point here is that though on the surface many nations appear to follow the Conventions, none of them do. The US doesn't, Britain doesn't, noone follows it unless it suits them. Its a sad fact. You can't honestly believe that Guantanemo Bay is all ok by the Conventions?

Let's not get on our high horse over who has the better war-morales, because at present, the USA looks less than innocent in this.

Originally posted by GradyPhilpott
I have known men who survived the POWs camps of Germany and they were given just enough sustenance to keep most of them alive.

They were allowed to be fed by the Red Cross, as specified by the Geneva Conventions. Blame the Red Cross if they didn't get enough. Furthermore, the civilian German populace during the war also had to withstand hardship, it's not reasonable to expect them to be treated much better than they could provide for their own civilian populace. If the Nazis were so horrible towards US POws as you seem to claim, there would have been no way in hell that 99% of the American Prisoners of War in the German POW camps returned home after the war.

Originally posted by GradyPhilpott
Also, the fact that the Germans had different standards for different prisoners depending on the Nazi model of humanity does not make them followers of the Geneva Convention.

Says someone from a nation using the creative labelling of enemy combattants. Do you think the Soviets applied the Geneva Conventions to Nazi prisoners? I don't think so.

So, the fact remains that regardless of how US POWs were treated, the Nazis did not follow the Geneva Convention, even by your own statistics.