Navy Deploying Laser Weapon Prototype Near Iran

*Source: The New York Times



WASHINGTON — The Navy is going to sea for the first time with a laser attack weapon that has been shown in tests to disable patrol boats and blind or destroy surveillance drones.

A prototype shipboard laser will be deployed on a converted amphibious transport and docking ship in the Persian Gulf, where Iranian fast-attack boats have harassed American warships and where the government in Tehran is building remotely piloted aircraft carrying surveillance pods and, someday potentially, rockets. 

The laser will not be operational until next year, but the announcement on Monday by Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert, the chief of naval operations, seemed meant as a warning to Iran not to step up activity in the gulf in the next few months if tensions increase because of sanctions and the impasse in negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program. The Navy released video and still images of the laser weapon burning through a drone during a test firing. 

The laser is designed to carry out a graduated scale of missions, from burning through a fast-attack boat or a drone to producing a nonlethal burst to “dazzle” an adversary’s sensors and render them useless without causing any other physical damage. 

The Pentagon has a long history of grossly inflating claims for its experimental weapons, but a nonpartisan study for Congress said the weapon offered the Navy historic opportunities. 

“Equipping Navy surface ships with lasers could lead to changes in naval tactics, ship design and procurement plans for ship-based weapons, bringing about a technological shift for the Navy — a ‘game changer’ — comparable to the advent of shipboard missiles in the 1950s,” said the assessment, by the Congressional Research Service, a branch of the Library of Congress. 

The study found that the new high-energy laser “could provide Navy surface ships with a more cost-effective means of countering certain surface, air and ballistic missile targets.” 

Among the limitations, according to the research service, is that lasers are not effective in bad weather because the beam can be disturbed or scattered by water vapor, as well as by smoke, sand and dust. It is also a “line of sight” weapon, meaning that the target has to be visible, so it cannot handle threats over the horizon. And enemies can take countermeasures like coating vessels and drones with reflective surfaces. 

Navy officials acknowledge that the first prototype weapon to be deployed is not powerful enough to take on jet fighters or missiles on their approach. That capability is a goal of researchers. 

Among the advantages cited in the study for Congress was the low cost — less than $1 per sustained pulse — of using a high-energy laser against certain targets. By comparison, current short-range air-defense interceptor missiles cost up to $1.4 million each. 

The laser weapon also has a limitless supply of ammunition — pulses of high energy — so long as the ship can generate electricity. The beam can reach its target at the speed of light and can track fast-moving targets.

Rear Adm. Matthew L. Klunder, the chief of naval research, said the high-energy laser system was developed as part of the Navy’s search for “new, innovative, disruptive technologies.” In essence, the Navy is trying to harness technological advances in battling adversaries that are thinking of inventive ways to counter American power. 

Admiral Klunder said the weapon had destroyed targets in all 12 of its field tests.

The laser prototype cost just under $32 million, officials said. But if the weapon proves itself during its sea trials, and the order is given to buy the laser system for service across the fleet, the price per unit is expected to drop. 

Rear Adm. Thomas J. Eccles, the deputy commander for naval systems engineering, said the first laser device would be deployed on the Ponce, which serves as a floating base for military operations and humanitarian assistance in the waters of the Middle East and southwestern Asia. 

Iran has two navies: a traditional force of large older ships and a rival one run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that consists of fast-attack speedboats with high-powered machine guns and crews that employ guerrilla tactics, including swarming perilously close to American warships. 

A significant confrontation between the United States and the Revolutionary Guards occurred in 2008, when five of Iran’s armed speedboats made aggressive maneuvers as they approached three American warships in international waters in the Strait of Hormuz. Pentagon officials said the commander of a Navy destroyer was on the verge of issuing an order to fire when the speedboats pulled away; no shots were fired.

Speed kills! US Navy targets hypersonic, GPS-guided bullets (PHOTOS)

*Source: RT

Particle debris ignites as a test slug exits the Office of Naval Research (ONR) 32 MJ (megajoules) Electromagnetic Railgun (EMRG) laboratory launcher (AFP Photo / US Navy / John F. Williams)

Remember the old cartoons where a bullet could chase you around a corner? What if that bullet was fired at 5,600 mph from an Electromagnetic Rail Gun? If the US Navy has its way, these sci-fi,supersonic GPS-guided projectiles could soon be a reality.

The futuristic munitions come as part of the US Office of Naval Research’s (ONR) Hyper Velocity Projectile program, which was announced on July 19. The agency's researchers hope to develop equipment that would allow high-velocity weapons to accurately strike far-away targets – without having to depend on rocket propulsion, Military and Aerospace Electronics reports.

The Navy hopes the supersonic ammunition, with a potential “in-flight retargeting” capability, will be compatible with both its conventional guns, like the Mk 45 155-millimeter gun systems, as well as its experimental 20–32MJ railgun systems, which fire projectiles using electrical energy instead of chemical propellants.

The bullets are slated to be two feet long, weigh somewhere between 20 and 30 pounds, and have a range of 30 to even 200 miles depending on the system deploying them.

In order to bring this project to life, the Navy “will explore technologies related to extended-range guided projectiles for Naval Surface Fire Support and exploit recent advances in miniaturized electronics, guided projectiles and mortars, and warhead technology for small UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] launched munitions.”

The hi-tech munitions fit in with what Former Navy chief Adm. Gary Roughead described last year as the drive to end "the dominance of the missile,” Wired reports.

Once China’s DF-21D – the world’s first anti-ship ballistic missile – reached initial operational capability in 2010, the US has been scrambling to neutralize technology that could sink multi-billion dollar US carriers in the Pacific.

As the Navy works to circumvent China’s developing “carrier-killer” deterrent, it says the high-velocity projectiles will not need rocket motors, a change that would cut down on both collateral damage and munitions costs.

Although the ONR plans “a multi-stage program leading to full-up live-fire demonstrations of the technology” by the end of 2017, the Navy’s track record with such high-tech projects is less than stellar.

The Navy has already poured $240 million into its railgun project since 2005, but practical versions won’t be ready until 2017, and it might be years more before they are operational on the water.

So while the railguns and their GPS-guided bullets will fire at more than seven times the speed of sound, development of the game-changing technology necessary will likely crawl along at a snail’s pace.

A test slug impacts the target after being fired from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) 32 MJ (megajoule) Electromagnetic Railgun (EMRG) laboratory launcher (AFP Photo / US Navy / John F. Williams)

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High-speed camera image of the Office of Naval Research's Electromagnetic Railgun located at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division, firing a world-record setting 33 mega-joule shot (AFP Photo / US Navy / John F. Williams)

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Charlie Walton, inventor of RFID, passes away at 89.

*Source: VentureBeat



Charlie Walton, the inventor of an ubiquitous wireless technology known as RFID, has passed away at 89.

Walton, who lived in Los Gatos, died on Nov. 6, according to his wife Ann Walton. I once wrote an article about Walton while at the San Jose Mercury News and his efforts to proselytize RFID, known in long form as radio frequency identification.

These are the chips that go into the access control devices, so you can slap a badge across a reader to open the door to an office. They are also used in car locks and on shipping pallets so that companies can track expensive goods. Every time you use one of these chips, it would be nice if, once in a while, you thought about the man who invented them.

The passing of Steve Jobs recently gave Silicon Valley its first real experience with the mortality of the technology legends that we have all grown up with. But Walton’s passing reminds us that there are inventors who have toiled away in relative obscurity. Walton pioneered the technology as a lone inventor in the 1970s and 1980s, but it came into its own in the last decade as the cost of making the tiny chips came down to a matter of pennies. Walton made a few million dollars from the invention, enough to keep him inventing technology for the rest of his days.

“I feel good about it and gratified I could make a contribution,” Walton told me in 2004.

RFID is expected to generate $6 billion in worldwide revenue in 2011, according to ABI Research. The chips are used in access control, car immobilization, electronic toll collection, electronic document identification, dog tags, asset management, baggage handling, cargo tracking, contactless payments and ticketing, and supply chain management.

The chips transmit information about a product’s location and use over short-range radio waves to a computer, where the data can be cross-checked with a database. Libraries use RFID readers to track books, and hospitals use them to track drug bottles. In 2007, Walton wrote a book about the things around us that we cannot see entitled, “The Space Before Your Face.”

Back in the 1970s, bar codes were the main competition. At 25 cents each, they were hard to beat. Walton’s first RFID cards cost $1.75, and so bar codes beat out RFID for use in scanning grocery items at supermarket checkout scanners.

RFID had been around in different forms before Walton created a radio-operated door lock, but his design became popular. With his tags, a tiny electrical current from a radio transceiver, or RFID reader, wakes up a dormant card and gives it enough power via the wireless connection itself. That power gives the card enough power to generate a response. Walton’s first patent to mention RFID was filed in 1983, but the first patent that he got on the technology (No. 3752960) was granted in August 1973. That patent was later reference by dozens of later inventions.

The invention earned Walton some recognition. He appeared on the TV quiz show “What’s My Line? And his invention was mentioned in articles about electronic locks in Business Week and Popular Science in 1973.

Like many inventors of his era, Walton grew up as a ham radio enthusiast. He was raised in Maryland and New York and studied electrical engineering at Cornell University. He went to work at IBM’s research labs in 1960. there, he studied analog and digital computing. In 1970, he struck out on his own as an inventor with his own company, Proximity Devices, in Sunnyvale, Calif.

He showed his RFID technology to the board of General Motors, but they rejected it as “too Buck Rogers.” In his career, he collected more than 50 patents. He went for a year without a salary. Finally, he got lucky licensing it to lock maker Schlage, which used it to make electronic locks that can open by waving a key card near a reader (pictured in a San Jose Mercury News photo at top).

The first RFID card key was passive. It used no battery power itself and was awakened when it came within six inches of a reader. It was bulky at first, but then it was integrated into chips and miniaturized over time. In 1980, he also got a patent for a digital version of RFID, which could change data on the cards. The low-cost led to its widespread adoption in the past decade.

After about a decade, Walton said he began to make good money from the patent royalties. I visited his home on a two-acre lot in the hills of Los Gatos. I recall he had a toy train set on a big pool-table-size board with all of the accompanying scenery. Walton rigged it to a pulley that would raise the board and keep it out of sight when it wasn’t in use. It was clearly the creation of a natural tinkerer. As we walked the grounds, Walton pointed out that he invented a better gopher trap as well.

In some ways, Walton’s RFID patents were bittersweet. His last royalty-bearing patent expired in the mid-1990s. That meant that he wasn’t able to cash in on a giant windfall as big entities such as Wal-Mart and the Department of Defense began in the past decade to require supplies to put RFID tags on millions of warehouse goods. Patents, by law, run out after 17 years. The old bar code rivals are still around, but RFID is here to stay.

There will be a memorial service for Walton on Dec. 18 at 3 pm at the Los Gatos Unitarian Fellowship.

Dr. Nick Begich: HAARP, Secret Sciences & High Tech Mind Control.

Dr. Nick Begich has been pursuing independent research in science and politics for most of his adult life. Dr Begich received a doctorate in traditional medicine from the Open International University for Complimentary Medicines in November 2004. Dr. Begich the eldest son of US Congressman Nick Begich Sr. and political activist Pegge Begich.

During this interview conducted by prisonplanet.tv, Dr. Begich talks about many controversial science experiments, including HAARP, Mind Control technology, compartmentalization within the science community, and how these technologies, which might be used for the progress of all mankind, is currently controlled by secret military industrial complex interests putting all of humanity at risk.

Dr. Begich talks about Alaska as a strategic location that can be utilized by the United States as way to stimulate the economy and put America back on the map as the world's economic leader.

Finally, Dr. Begich spends some time telling us his perspective of the plane crash that killed his father, Congressman Nick Begich sr. and US House Majority leader, Hale Boggs. Dr. Begich recalls out the historical election that faced the U.S. immediately after this tragic plane crash. An almost forgotten event in American history, one that not only changed the course of U.S. history, but the history of the world as well.





*Alex Jones: http://www.infowars.com
http://www.prisonplanet.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAlexJonesChannel