- U.S. weapons manufacturers are hard at work developing
futuristic precision weapons that promise to keep Americans even further
out of harm's way: lasers.
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- Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, who together had $20.3
billion in Pentagon contracts in 2001, are collaborating on development
of "directed energy weapons"-powerful 100-kilowatt infrared lasers
for use on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
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- The JSF program, worth an estimated $200 billion, is
Lockheed Martin's crowning accomplishment. If all goes well, the Pentagon
will soon order as many as 3,000 F-35s, making it the largest acquisition
program in history. This $40 million fighter plane will be ubiquitous in
the U.S. military and throughout the world. England, Norway, Italy, Singapore,
Turkey, Israel and others have already expressed serious interest as well.
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- The JSF laser system could be used to destroy communication
lines, power grids, or fuel dumps, or to zero in on part of a vehicle,
like the engine. The weapons, which are scheduled to be ready for testing
in 2010, would be covert, powerful and untraceable. "There's no huge
explosion associated with its employment, there are no pieces and parts
left behind that someone can analyze to say, 'this came from the United
States,' " explains an unnamed Lockheed Martin official quoted in
Aviation Week and Space Technology in July. "The damage is localized,
and it is hard to tell where it came from and when it happened. It is all
pretty mysterious."
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- So mysterious, in fact, that engineers are only beginning
to consider what the lasers will do to people. According to Aviation Week
and Space Technology, military planners in Israel are not pursuing directed-energy
weapons because of concerns they "might result in new, unanticipated
types of collateral damage." For example, the weapons could disrupt
electricity at civilian sites or affect pacemakers.
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- They could also blind and injure people in the vicinity.
As Gordon Hengst of the Air Force Research Laboratory in New Mexico, where
the research on the lasers is being conducted, points out: "The reflected
energy typically will cover large amounts of real estate and space, since
the energy is spreading in many directions."
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- He adds that if the target is moving, the possibility
of refraction is greater. According to New Scientist magazine, the human
eye is very vulnerable to light from lasers: "Safety guidelines warn
against staring into beams of only a few milliwatts. The unpredictable
reflections scattered from a 100-kilowatt laser could be devastating."
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- Weapons manufacturers concede that blinding and other
injuries could occur, but say the benefits outweigh the concerns. "As
with all weapons, there is potential for inflicting collateral damage,"
says Tom Burris, a Lockheed scientist.
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- And surprisingly enough, despite the fact that the United
States signed the Geneva Convention's Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons
in 1991, these weapons are exempt. The convention prohibits "laser
weapons specifically designed, as their sole combat function or as one
of their combat functions, to cause permanent blindness to unenhanced vision."
[Emphasis added.] But a small phrase is a loophole big enough for a fighter
plane to fly through. Stephen Goose of Human Rights Watch explains, "That
protocol was purposely drafted to avoid capturing other types of laser
weapons systems."
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- Laser weapons blind, whether or not they are "specifically
designed" to do so as their "sole combat function." They
are also the wave of the future, says Mike Booen of Raytheon: "We
want to replace high explosives [like bombs and missiles] with directed
energy weapons." The Pentagon has been investing accordingly.
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- Laser weapons seem like the answer to Washington's prayers
for an antiseptic warfare that plays well on television and will not offend
the American public with civilian deaths or U.S. casualties. But that's
easier said than done. The Afghan war, which is costing U.S. taxpayers
$2.5 billion a month and relies on high-tech weapons and sophisticated
communications equipment, has produced deadly errors with macabre regularity.
With laser weapons, we can only expect more of the same.
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- http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/26/24/news1.shtml
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