The Military Thread

[shorebird]

how could a military thread not get political.

You have your politcal threads, ones that I'm trying to stary out of. But thats alright, everybody get on your soapbox.

[shorebird]

By the way...how is that thing controlled? Satellite? AWACS?

Well....for those who didn't click on part 2 at the end of part one, I posted it. It explains that the X-47B will operate from a 'mission control', and be controlled by a 'mission operator' for take offs. Flight plans are reprogrammed into the planes computer and it flies to it's destination by itself. After the mission, as it approaches the carrier, commands are sent out to it from the carriers mission control and received by digital communications. All the while the plane is monitoring wind speed and the pitch and roll of the carriers deck. On paper, the plane should be able to land more precisely than any manned aircraft can.

[Eagaholic]

By the way...how is that thing controlled? Satellite? AWACS?

iPhone. Those things are great

[Sgt PSN]

being a serviceman myself, i'm obviously amazed by the technology used in modern/futuristic weaponry and the role it could play in combat and the lives it could save.  being a dude, that ish gives me a stiffy. 

but being a person who thinks that war is almost a completely unnecessary waste of life and serves almost no substantial purpose other than to leave millions of families sonless, fatherless, brotherless and husbandless, it's kind of sickening how much money we spend on things designed to take lives rather than invest some of it in things to preserve it. 

I'm of the opinion that investing in technology of this kind does preserve lives and help keep the peace.

can't really reply to that without turning this into a political discussion.  instead i defer to my penis for his commentary:

i like big guns make boom. 

[Sgt PSN]

By the way...how is that thing controlled? Satellite? AWACS?

Well....for those who didn't click on part 2 at the end of part one, I posted it. It explains that the X-47B will operate from a 'mission control', and be controlled by a 'mission operator' for take offs. Flight plans are reprogrammed into the planes computer and it flies to it's destination by itself. After the mission, as it approaches the carrier, commands are sent out to it from the carriers mission control and received by digital communications. All the while the plane is monitoring wind speed and the pitch and roll of the carriers deck. On paper, the plane should be able to land more precisely than any manned aircraft can.

and yet i still have to manually drive myself to work everyday. 

[Father Demon]

being a serviceman myself, i'm obviously amazed by the technology used in modern/futuristic weaponry and the role it could play in combat and the lives it could save.  being a dude, that ish gives me a stiffy. 

but being a person who thinks that war is almost a completely unnecessary waste of life and serves almost no substantial purpose other than to leave millions of families sonless, fatherless, brotherless and husbandless, it's kind of sickening how much money we spend on things designed to take lives rather than invest some of it in things to preserve it. 

I'm of the opinion that investing in technology of this kind does preserve lives and help keep the peace.

BOOM muthafargin BOOM.

And that's the goal of what we do.

[Drunkmasterflex]

had to

That might be the funniest thing I have ever seen.  Priests.   

[LBIggle]

http://doctorbulldog.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/iraqi-terrorists-hack-drones-with-26-off-the-shelf-software/

lol

[shorebird]

That's not as big a deal as it's being made out to be. The feeds can be viewed, that's it. They can't take control of the drones. Basically, it has allowed terrorist to have knowledge of what sites are under surveillance. That's it. If anything, it proves Iran's supplying the terrorists, because were else would they get the software? It's common practice to try and intercept enemy communications, and has been going on forever.

[shorebird]

Laser Jet Blasts Ballistic Missle in Landmark Test

Link with Video

The American military has been working since 1996 on a tricked-out 747 that could blast ballistic missiles out of the sky with a ultra-powerful laser. After 14 years of promising "the American people their first light saber," the Missile Defense Agency finally pulled it off Thursday night at 8:44 p.m

It's one of a number of steps forward for real-life ray guns in the past year or so. "Solid state" electric lasers finally hit what's commonly considered battlefield strength. A laser-equipped Air Force gunship disabled a truck with its energy beam. A ground-mounted ray gun blasted drones out of the sky. But all of those energy weapons were weak — and the engineering challenges limited — compared to last night's shoot-down.

A short-range, Scud-like ballistic missile was launched from an at-sea mobile launch platform near the Point Mugu Naval Air Warfare Center, off of the central California coast. "Within seconds, the Airborne Laser Test Bed [ALTB] used on-board sensors to detect the boosting missile and used a low-energy laser to track the target. The ALTB then fired a second low-energy laser to measure and compensate for atmospheric disturbance. Finally, the ALTB fired its megawatt-class High Energy Laser, heating the boosting ballistic missile to critical structural failure. The entire engagement occurred within two minutes of the target missile launch, while its rocket motors were still thrusting," according to a statement from the Missile Defense Agency. [Update: That's the video of Thursday night's test, above.]

This is a test the MDA was hoping to conduct in 2002, after spending about a billion dollars. But the Airborne Laser ran into all kinds of problems along the way. The chemicals the jet depended on to generate its high-strength laser weighed down the 747. Getting the laser to accurately zap through the atmosphere proved tougher than anticipated. The Airborne Laser eventually ballooned into a $7.3 billion project. Finally, Defense Secretary Robert Gates got so fed up, he told the MDA to end the Airborne Laser program after a single jet.

"I don't know anybody at the Department of Defense who thinks that this program should, or would, ever be operationally deployed," Gates told Congress last year. "The reality is that you would need a laser something like 20 to 30 times more powerful than the chemical laser in the plane right now to be able to get any distance from the launch site to fire."

So, right now the [jet] would have to orbit inside the borders of Iran in order to be able to try and use its laser to shoot down that missile in the boost phase. And if you were to operationalize this you would be looking at 10 to 20 747s, at a billion-and-a-half dollars apiece, and $100 million a year to operate. And there's nobody in uniform that I know who believes that this is a workable concept.

But Gates did add that the concept of using laser and other speed-of-light "directed energy" weapons to knock down missiles still had promise. It might be the only way to stop missiles in "boost phase" — when they were just getting off of the ground.

That's why many in the military will be excited about Thursday night's test. As the MDA notes, it's the first time a laser in the sky has successfully downed a missile. And even if this particular weapon doesn't work out, the technology developed can be used for later systems. "The revolutionary use of directed energy is very attractive for missile defense, with the potential to attack multiple targets at the speed of light, at a range of hundreds of kilometers, and at a low cost per intercept attempt compared to current technologies," the agency notes.

"Less than one hour later," there was a second test, with another missile. The Airborne Laser lit it up. But didn't destroy the thing. That test was for another day.

[Rome]

that will totally work with thousands of warheads raining down on us.

[Sgt PSN]

that jet was either developed on edwards afb (where i'm currently stationed) or was sent here for final touch up work and testing.  regardless, i've seen it rolling up and down the flight line a couple of times in recent weeks.

[shorebird]

U.S. Navy in serious decline.Another reason to get out of the Middle East.

Declining U.S. Navy facing Chinese challenge
Fleet's status creates door of vulnerability to other powers, terrorists

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: February 13, 2010
10:30 pm Eastern

© 2010 WorldNetDaily

Editor's Note: The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, the premium online newsletter published by the founder of WND. Subscriptions are $99 a year or, for monthly trials, just $9.95 per month for credit card users, and provide instant access for the complete reports.


U.S. Navy

A growing Chinese fleet could keep the declining U.S. Navy out of the Western Pacific, according to an expert cited in a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

The U.S. also could be faced with new military challenges around the globe because of the projection of power a growing Chinese navy would present.

Yet, the U.S. Navy has cut back the number and type of ships to the level it was prior to the Reagan administration. Indeed, the Navy hasn't been as small since the administration of William Howard Taft, according to naval expert Seth CropseyThe dire development leaves the U.S. vulnerable to "proliferation, resource scarcity, environmental change, the emergence of new international power centers including non-state actors, significant changes in relative U.S. power, failed states and demographic change ... (in) an increasingly unstable future and a challenging international strategic environment," Cropsey said.

Keep in touch with the most important breaking news stories about critical developments around the globe with Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, the premium, online intelligence news source edited and published by the founder of WND.

Cropsey, who served during the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations as a principal deputy under the secretary of the Navy, said the U.S. Navy is "in distress."

He said the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have "sucked the oxygen" out of any effort to understand the connection between the large changes strategic planners see in the future or the ability to wield global influence through U.S. naval power.

"The size, shape and strategy of the U.S. Navy are a critical element of America's position as the world's great power," Cropsey said. "Our ability to protect or rend asunder the globe's ocean-going lines of communication is inseparable from our position as the world's great power.

"But very few outside a small community of naval officers and selected military and foreign policy analysts appreciate the strategic results of American sea power's slow but steady diminution," he added.

Globally, Cropsey said, the U.S. Navy's continued attrition also means a serious threat to the security of the world's sea lines of communication and the choke points such as the Straits of Hormuz near Iran through which some 40 percent of the world's energy and other trade pass.

"The consequences of a much-diminished U.S. fleet are complemented by the American public's ignorance of them, the slow yet steady pace of naval deterioration, and the increasing time and dismayingly large resources needed to recoup sea power surrendered slowly over decades," Cropsey said.

The gradual decline in the U.S. Navy comes hardly as a surprise to Congress. Last May, Adm. Gary Roughhead, chief of naval operations, told the House Armed Services Committee the Navy was stretched in its ability to modernize and "procure the Navy for tomorrow."

He said the Navy would reduce its carrier fleet from 11 to 10 for at least three years, which would increase the interval between a departing carrier and its replacement's arrival "along with the associated risk of absence during a crisis."

A separate Congressional Research Service report by naval analyst Ronald O'Rourke told Congress that China has built or is in the process of building four new classes of nuclear and conventional-powered attack and ballistic-missile submarines.

[shorebird]

that will totally work with thousands of warheads raining down on us.

The missle was taken out 3 minutes after it was launched. The laser will be able to track multiple targets and destroy them. So the idea is that they will work in order to not have multi warheads raining down on us as you so elequently put it.

[Sgt PSN]

the navy, as a battle fleet, is probably only going to continue becoming more and more obsolete since the days of ship to ship combat are an extinct practice.  seriously, when's the last time 2 ships have fired back and forth at each other? 

as technology continues to improve, the need for a battle ready fleet of destroyers does become less relevant.  this is not to say that the navy itself is obsolete because if you get rid of the squids, then who is going to take the marines on a tour of luxurious medeterranian ports?