US Weapons Just when you think weapons can’t get any worse we find out there is a force which if put into weaponized form would be ten times more powerful than a hydrogen bomb. Headlines about this have been appearing all over the internet, but we are being told this is all theoretical. A subatomic particle known as a Quark if fused, will make hydrogen bombs obsolete. One has to wonder how much more powerful a weapon has to be, before it is too powerful to blow up on this planet. It seems we are getting there. Since we have found Quarks can contain so much power, I have to wonder if there are even other particles which are still more powerful. Will we be launching black holes against each other someday? If we do it will have to be in space or our planet might get devoured. Oh, if we only would put this effort into something peaceful I wonder where we could be. What is very disturbing is the fact scientists knew about this years ago so perhaps we already have Quark bombs despite the denials. Years ago, Iran announced they had a new super stealth fighter plane which was superior to anything we had. As experts looked at the photos of the plane they claimed it was nonsense and the plane wouldn’t be capable of doing anything which was claimed. The Iranian authorities claimed the plane, the Qaher F-313 was already flying and ready for mass production. Roll forward a few years later and what do we know about the plane? We know it seems to have been a hoax and we hear nothing about it anymore. Experts thought it was far too small to be a serious project and if it was a serious attempt the Iranians would have needed a tiny engine to fit into the plane. The cockpit seemed too small for a pilot unless he was very tiny. The conclusion reached was it was not a real plane. Drones are appearing everywhere and they are quite maneuverable. The civilian drones can be quite handy and lend themselves to many different jobs, besides being a lot of fun to fly. News services and police are just two of the agencies which find many uses for drones. The problem is there is another use for a drone and that is as a weapon, a weapon which is hard to kill as it dodges and weaves through the sky heading toward its target. The drone might carry bombs or be an observation drone. It could also carry sophisticated jamming equipment, so what is one to do? Boeing thinks they have the answer to this problem and it is a drone killing laser cannon. Boeing is not the only one developing drone killing weapons and not everyone developing these weapons agrees on the best way to knock down a drone. One company is developing a way to jam the drone and block communications, while another company is developing a shell for a shotgun which would be more efficient in killing drones. Boeing’s laser doesn’t put out a visible beam and is small enough to fit inside a suitcase. It can be set up in a few minutes by only two soldiers and takes about two seconds to burn through a drone. In 2014 the US Navy deployed the first laser weapon to ever be used in combat in the Persian Gulf. The laser was designed to not only down drones, but to knock out speed boats and swarm boats as well as other targets. The laser was deployed on the USS Ponce. One of the things the navy considered was the fact the laser only costs pennies on the dollar to use when you compare the price of firing it against the price of firing missiles and shells against a target. It is interesting to note the weapon uses six lasers to create the one powerful laser weapon. The US Navy claims the beam from the laser can fire at the speed of light which is far faster than anything we have previously fired, making it almost impossible for a target to escape the beam. The weapon’s system bears a striking resemblance to a telescope tube mounted on a platform with other devices on both sides. It must have been relatively cheap to make, because the lasers it uses were six commercial welding lasers. The navy hasn’t released the range of the weapon, but it is believed to be a relatively short-range weapon. The price for one shot is about one dollar. Privately purchasing one 50 cal. Machine gun shell would cost about $3.60. Cannon shells can range up to hundreds of thousands of dollars each, so you can see what a bargain the laser is to fire. The US Navy needs new submarines, because our force is aging and our numbers shrinking. One of the major problems today is submarines all over the world have gotten a lot quieter and even conventional submarines can now stay submerged for weeks at a time. The US faces a dilemma, should we start to build conventional subs which are much cheaper and yet are far more advanced than conventional subs of old or should we go with the extremely expensive nuclear subs? Conventional subs are one way to increase the number of our subs without spending more money. A Virginia class nuclear submarine is currently priced at approximately 2.7 billion dollars and with this amount of money we could build six or seven really good conventional submarines. There is a place in our service for these new conventional submarines and we need them now. Technology is a double-edged sword. The US is having a problem trying to stay ahead of other nations in every weapons category. It is not a case of a country beating us at the technology game, it is more like death by a thousand slices. While one country might develop something superior to us in one or two areas, other countries might also do this in a different weapon’s category. When you add up all the countries doing this you can see the problem we have. Another problem for us is we certainly don’t always get the best weapons, we get weapons which are manufactured by a company in the home state of the most powerful senator. It is a case of doing what is best for the senator to gain votes, not the best for our country. Naval officers have complained we are not modernizing the navy fast enough and half of our combat forces may be below par as far as preparedness is concerned. |
