Apart from being a bit dated, the concern is genuine. The proponents suggest that antimatter weapons are extremely explosive- more so than thermonuclear weapons- but leave no radioactive fallout (other than the initial intense gamma burst which they don't call fallout anyway) and therefore more likely to be used.
One problem: you have to store antimatter in a vacuum suspended in a magnetic field. It's not like you can keep a microgram of anti-hydrogen on the shelf. There are massive technical difficulties that will keep this (thankfully) from being deployed.
As an aside: it amazes me that Generals who think the world was created in 6 days 5000 years ago and condemn evolutionary and physical theory on how the universe works as "Godless" will blythely consider using thermonuclear, or as here, antimatter weapons. Weapons that work on principles they actively deny. But then again, failure to understand redox chemistry never stopped a dedicated fundamentalist from shooting at anyone, so perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised.
On the other hand, David Hambling at Defense Tech talks about a real horror coming soon to a police action near you.
The Active Denial System:
As described previously, the beam is at least two meters in diameter, and the smallest skin exposure is enough to cause intolerable pain. A red hot poker does not need to be in touch with much skin to make you pull away, and the ADS causes as much pain on your nerve endings. A shield will not work unless it covers your whole body and them some, because the ADS beam diffracts. According to an article in Aviation Week & Space Technology last July -
…actual tests show that the beams penetrate even minute openings or cracks, for example, and sometimes appear almost to wrap around corners to affect fingers and feet of those trying to hide behind or hold up protective devices.
"The radio frequency is hard to block," Booen says. "Some of the people tested against tried to hide by laying down behind some concrete traffic barriers and the beam went underneath [where there was uneven contact with the ground]."
What about that tinfoil? It will have to cover every square inch and any rips or tears will make it useless. Joints may be tricky; if you flex foil too many times holes start appearing. For vision you will need a metal mesh visor, like the kind they use on microwave oven doors. The problem is, the size of the mesh depends on the wavelength of the radiation - so short-wavelength ADS beam requires something much finer than normal microwave mesh. You also need to think about the effect on your breathing, body temperature and communication...
It turns out they've managed to leak that small hand-held lasers are now a possibility too and likely to be coupled with the microwave weapon:
The Pulsed Energy Projectile (PEP)... is a non-lethal weapon which fires an extremely short laser pulse, producing a plasma flash-bang at the target. This could be deployed on the same platform as the ADS, using the same power source. “Many of the countermeasures that can be envisioned against the ADS” could be nullified by the PEP by “ablation of the defence” according to a Navy study [.pdf] on the effects of plasmas. Such a laser could chew through a layer of foil with a few pulses.
A PEP might also negate foil without having to blast it away. Ultra-short pulses have recently been demonstrated that can turn metals pitch black , so that the surface absorbs incoming radiation and reflective foil is made useless. This technology was developed at Rochester's High Intensity Femtosecond Laser Laboratory ; they are funded by (among others) DARPA and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research...
You have to love that term, non-lethal weapon. Spitballs, none of this stuff is. Non-lethal, unless, of course they accidently kill you with it due to some unfortunate set of circumstances.
This means they've solved the problem of high energy lasers in weapons form: the more energy you pump into a laser, the hotter it gets. A year or so back they wanted to put one of their new x-ray lasers on an airplane, because it had enough juice to blow a hole in 6 inch steel plating from 100 miles away. The only problem was the coolant system took up the greater part of a 747 jumbo jet. The test was eventually scrapped.
But it seems some D.o'D. scientific sociopath has figured out that a high intensity laser doesn't have to be continuous; on for, say, a millisecond/ off for 100 milliseconds gives it plenty of time to cool off the lasing compound. This makes it much easier to use and delivers the same kind of bang. Or blast.
Once again, people with a profound ignorance of the world they live in seem more than ready to use principles they don't understand to an effect they are incapable of appreciating in any more than a brutish, violent way.
1 comment:
having lived right at the throbbing heart of scientifico-technocratic sociopathy for much of my life, and with more on the horizon, permit to congratulate you on your conclusion. I had that discussion once with a science ed. prof. when I was teachin' at OU. He said my antipathy to science merely for its own sake, but especially at the behest of power, without any self-reflective, reflexive analysis amounted precisely to a kind of dangerous sociopathy. The guys who built the a-bomb, oppenheimer especially, proves the difficulty of going public with scruples in national security science.
That's a nice essay, brother...
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