"Military readies directed-energy weapons"

[GreenPartyVoter]

AP) -- A few months from now, Peter Anthony Schlesinger hopes to zap a laser beam at a couple of chickens or other animals in a cage a few dozen yards away.

If all goes as planned, the chickens will be frozen in mid-cluck, their leg and wing muscles paralyzed by an electrical charge created by the beam, even as their heart and lungs function normally.

Among those most interested in the outcome will be officials at the Pentagon, who helped fund Schlesinger's work and are looking at this type of device to do a lot more than just zap a chicken.

Devices like these, known as directed-energy weapons, could be used to fight wars in coming years.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/08/02/directedenergyweapons.ap/index.html

[Occulus]

1. Could a good sized EMP disable these?

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. I am sure there will be a counter-measure of some kind

Otherwise our own guys will have to do deal with this kind of technology from other militaries.

[DrWeird]

3. lasers set to stun?

The science in this article is so bad it could have been written by a creationist.

[Speck Tater]

4. I's the writing that's bad, not the science...

In the "chicken ray", for example, the laser beam ionizes a channel of air which then serves as a least-resistence conduction path for an ordinary high-voltage spark. The the laser serves only to carve the low-resistence path which the spark then tends to follow.

Think of it as a wireless taser.

The explanation in the article was horrible, and if I wasn't already familiar with the technology I'd think they were talking nonsense.

(ed sp)

[DrWeird]

5. Oh, I'm pretty sure the science is bad too.

Using a laser to ionize air? That's x-ray, or at least vacuum UV. And the thing about vacuum UV is that you kind of need to have a vacuum if you want it to go anywhere. So in order to hit a chicken at any appreciable range, you'll need one hell of an intense laser, which will probably fry the chicken before it generates some kind of current which is supposed to magically shock the chicken in just the right fashion to stun it.

And what's with this "chicken or some other kind of caged animals" nonsense?

The use of animals for scientific research is a highly regulated and bureaucratic process. You don't just throw any animal you happen to find and shoot at it with a magic laser.

Several years ago the Army had a rather auspicous idea. They were going to use lasers from satellites to ionize the atmosphere to project an enormous illusion of the face of God over the middle east, or other places where we were fighting religious fanatics. Using a seperate laser, the satellite would stimulate the ear bones of the terrorists, causing them to hear the voice of God. Mind you, this face of God is eighty miles up in the atmosphere, and being viewed, supposedly, by millions. The voice of the laser God was supposed to instruct the believers to lay down their weapons and surrender to the Americans, and according to theory, the unwashed, swarthy, thoroughly stupid homicide bombers were supposed to fall for it. At least that's according to the report from the Army.

And this looks like it's more of the same.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

6. They already have them...

Airborne, armor-mounted and man-pack. They have already taken warshots, ie: been used in action.

I got this from someone who worked on them. Sandia.

[Jack_DeLeon]

7. The F-35...

is supposed to be equiped with a laser.

[Massacure]

8. I'm sure electronics can be hardened against these

I'm not sure if it is possible to protect a human though.