Official Footage Shows US Navy Ship Use a Laser Weapon to Destroy a Flying Drone

Discussion in 'Warfare / Military' started by wgabrie, May 25, 2020.

  1. wgabrie

    wgabrie Well-Known Member Donor

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    Official Footage Shows US Navy Ship Use a Laser Weapon to Destroy a Flying Drone
    https://www.sciencealert.com/watch-this-us-navy-ship-destroy-a-flying-drone-with-a-laser-weapon
    Ok, well it looks like laser-weapons are the future. This is going to make our rivals, like China, and Russia, and even North Korea and Iran, reevaluate their plans on using missiles and drones to threaten us and our allies. If we are sending a fleet of warships into an area the navy vessels can counter missiles and drones.

    By the way, I know that the air force has also tested their planes with laser weapons a few years ago. Thing is this latest navy weapon that is even more powerful than the one they tested a few years ago in 2014. This weapon is really taking advantage of the R&D put into making it stronger.


    So what do you guys think about this???
     
  2. Farnsworth

    Farnsworth Well-Known Member

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    It's just a matter of other technologies catching up to lasers, or vice versa. It took vacuum technology some170 years to get to this point of development, from the early oil refinery tech, to light bulbs, and to micro-electronics and optics manufacturing. If we had taken proper cares to keep technology from being stolen, or openly sold by corporations, to our enemies, we would be much better off and have more time between advances. One of the reasons Red China now owns some of our latest military satellite systems is because American companies can sell it to them via Hong Kong, under loopholes in trade agreements.
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2020
  3. Grey Matter

    Grey Matter Well-Known Member Donor

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    Very Sexy and Hot.... Wonderful what $30T in debt gets US.
     
  4. Farnsworth

    Farnsworth Well-Known Member

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    What debt? Most of our debt is for welfare for rich people, we don't spend much relative to the size of our economy on military stuff; in fact, if we demanded all our companies pay royalties for what the government researches and develops that leads to products and added productivity to the economy, our taxes would be next to nothing, for all programs and then some. If we had been collecting royalties on mineral rights for our entire history, the dividends on the Cripple Creek gold mines alone invested at 5% would not only pay for our entire government spending, the other half would give every family in the country a sizable income to boot. We're 'in debt' because right wingers like socialized all the costs of their welfare and legal protections while privatizing all the profits.

    Now, after decades of boom and busts, they're complaining about how the 'rich are paying most of the taxes n stuff', as if that's a big mystery, never mind they now have most of the income funneled to the top and aren't paying their fair share even now. They off-shore, run labor rackets in Red China, and still demand more and more 'breaks', while whining about minimum wage increases and making it hard for small businesses to compete.

    So, yes, we're in some trouble, but it's not critical yet, and if the trends continue we'll see a definite collapse as fewer and fewer people have any vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Both the 'Left' and the 'Right' are working together on screwing the pouch, they just use different rhetoric and lies. But if you're one of those who want to turn the U.S. into a failed state like Venezuela or Zimbabwe in 20 years, then of course we're on the right track now, so still no problem..
     
    Last edited: May 27, 2020
  5. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Well, not quite true.

    I am old enough to remember my first calculator. Around $75 (in 1972 money), fixed 2 decimal point, only the absolute basic capabilities. I can but even the most basic electronic toy today that has a more powerful processor than even the 4004 processor that was in that. Hell, the processor in a Furby is more impressive than anything we had prior to 1975.

    Today, the real battle is not in the hardware, it is in the software. With multi-gigahertz 12 core processors being easy to purchase, the hardware side of a "smarter weapon" is nothing. It is the software to actually make it work that is the real work. That is what I find impressive about PATRIOT. Little more than a software patch allowed a 1970's era system built for taking out aircraft hit ballistic missiles in their terminal phase. It took a future hardware development with a new missile to make it a real system, but the real trick was the software.

    And as good as say China is in copying our hardware, they are nowhere near as good as the US is in "thinking outside the box" software. And while even conventional deployed ABM systems the US uses tend to get smaller with each generation, both the Chinese and Russians have gotten even bigger and more complex with each generation.

    Hence, the S-400 has 4 missiles on each launcher. Meanwhile the comparable THAAD has 8 missiles per launcher. And the Navy still uses the SM series missiles and launchers, now almost 40 years old. With updated interceptors capable of striking ICBM missiles in flight.

    Of course, we also tend to be rather quiet about our systems, and only sell them to select nations. Unlike Russia and China, which will sell to almost anybody and almost sound like snake oil salesmen when going on about their capabilities.
     
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  6. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Not really. I remember 20+ years ago when we were urged to "Go Global", and outsource as much of our low end labor as possible overseas, and to participate more and more into the "Global Economy". President Clinton was a huge believer in that, trying hard to push companies to invest in countries like Mexico.

    The problem is that once they did that, when Mexico destabilized they went looking elsewhere, and many jumped to China. But do not forget, it was that era which pretty much saw the end of the US textiles industry, and we were being told it was our "duty" to help out the economies of less fortunate nations.

    But by the same token, most of the large amounts of money are still trapped overseas. Much like the Japanese car companies that started manufacturing here. There is an "Apple China", just as their is a "Honda USA". The taxes for removing the money from here and taking it home are so high, those companies just leave the money there. And if China was ever to have another Tiananmen Square incident, or destabilize most of that money will evaporate.

    Quote literally, Apple China makes things for Apple USA, and sells it to them. Apple USA gets a discount, but the actual huge profits rest with their China arm. We saw that in the US in the 1980s, where the US branch of a great many Japanese companies went on "buying sprees", buying everything from Universal Studios to major NY buildings, because they had huge amounts of cash they had to spend somewhere, they could not take it home.

    Kellogg's lost tens of millions a few years back when they gave up and walked away from their Venezuela operations. Of course by that time the money was so low that they lost almost nothing, their profits in the past had been destroyed by their runaway inflation.

    Myself, I would love to see a "Repatriation Amnesty" put into place, where countries can avoid the huge tax bringing the money back to the US, so long as they invest 80% or more of those overseas profits right back into rebuilding manufacturing here in the US. I remember seeing "Look for the Union Label" on TV commercials all the time, now I wonder if the Textiles Union is even in operation anymore in the US.

    I even had to chuckle a few years ago while I explained what that was when my son and I were watching the "Star Wars Christmas Special", he had never seen those commercials. By the time he was aware of such things, both Levi's as well as Fruit of the Loom and Hanes had left the US years before. We do not even have any US TV companies anymore, the last of them died 30 years ago.\

    And the sad thing is, most people never even noticed.
     
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