Sure, until someone says "hey can we stick this on a truck and use it against cars?" "Hey can we stick this on the belly of a plane and use it on a building?" "Hey what happens if we do a flash of this at protestors?"
Won't work very well. Such things need great stability.
And it's not like there's any need of a fancy weapon to do that. This exists to engage high speed targets. Just because you can use a GBU-28 to kill a gopher doesn't mean anyone ever will.
It’s not going to do anything useful against cars, let alone buildings. It would blind people, and that would be bad, but it’s a very expensive way to hurt people. I think this one is for what it says it’s for.
Could definitely be used in an offensive capacity. I don't think it'll be a red alert 2 style prism cannon, but I do think it can be used to gain air superiority. With a long enough runtime, this thing could definitely take out a plane.
That said, it's pretty tame. We can already take out planes with flak cannons. This is just more efficient.
You might be tempted to say "what about a missile shield?" but such a thing allows the owner to act with impunity with levels of violence we arguably haven't seen since 1945.
As a real example of this, the only reason a deeper conflict didn't develop with Iran this year was because Iran demonstrated they could overwhelm the various layers of Israel's missile shield and Iran seriously depleted the various munitions used by those air defense systems (eg interceptors, THAAD) and those take a long time to replenish.
I agree if we reframe it as “purely defensive,” though there is a bit of tautology invoked with the “weapon” qualifier.
That said, there is legitimacy to developing defensive arms, even if one doesn’t like the ones doing it.
> the only reason a deeper conflict didn't develop with Iran this year was because Iran demonstrated they could overwhelm the various layers of Israel's missile shield
This hypothesis is not sustained by Iran’s reduced firing rate throughout the conflict. All evidence suggests Iran lost its war with Israel and would lose it again if they go for round 2.
If you want society to be more vulnerable to military action, then the biggest innovation is health care. Improved health care is what allowed nations to create and maintain larger military forces. Through out history, disease and malnourished caused more death by a large margin than actually violence in combat, and many war campaign stopped suddenly because one or both sides became unable to continue.
> You might be tempted to say "what about a missile shield?" but such a thing allows the owner to act with impunity with levels of violence we arguably haven't seen since 1945.
I would still say "what about a missile shield?".
If a missile shield is a weapon, because of its affordances, then any object is a weapon. And while that's marginally true I don't think we get anywhere by entertaining category errors.
If something enables aggression, because it makes counter attacks unreasonable, that seems like a fairly nice thing to have more of, in a world where destruction is far too easy and construction is fairly hard.
> If something enables aggression, because it makes counter attacks unreasonable, that seems like a fairly nice thing to have more of
You’re imagining a world where this kind of tech is equally distributed. It’s not. Israel spends something like $30b/year in defense (in part due to ~$7b/year from the US). Gaza has something like $0.3b to spend. The consequence of that asymmetry is one of them has a missile shield, the other has more than 80,000 dead citizens, famine, and virtually no infrastructure left standing.
> As a real example of this, the only reason a deeper conflict didn't develop with Iran this year was because Iran demonstrated they could overwhelm the various layers of Israel's missile shield and Iran seriously depleted the various munitions used by those air defense systems (eg interceptors, THAAD) and those take a long time to replenish.
Lol no, Iran was utterly humiliated in this conflict, and outed as a paper tiger.
That’s gross. You’re basically saying that hundreds of millions of people need to be held as hostages to ensure good behavior, and that trying to rescue those hostages is morally wrong.
Sure, until someone says "hey can we stick this on a truck and use it against cars?" "Hey can we stick this on the belly of a plane and use it on a building?" "Hey what happens if we do a flash of this at protestors?"
Those kinds of tests have been done with lasers already.
This is a defensive application of lasers, like CIWS is a defensive application of guns.
Won't work very well. Such things need great stability.
And it's not like there's any need of a fancy weapon to do that. This exists to engage high speed targets. Just because you can use a GBU-28 to kill a gopher doesn't mean anyone ever will.
Which will happen because it always happens
Then when that happens that might be morally objectionable. But probably like any other weapon that already exists, a rocket, missile or gun.
While not everyday a new defense systems is invented that is targeted at statistical weapon that terrorizes civilians.
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We already have very cheap and effective ways to kill people.
Not so much when it comes to drone swarms.
My understand is it would be useless against a building, but you make a good point
It’s not going to do anything useful against cars, let alone buildings. It would blind people, and that would be bad, but it’s a very expensive way to hurt people. I think this one is for what it says it’s for.
"It's a very expensive way to hurt people" has historically never been a real deterrent to motivated nation states to bring costs down
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Could definitely be used in an offensive capacity. I don't think it'll be a red alert 2 style prism cannon, but I do think it can be used to gain air superiority. With a long enough runtime, this thing could definitely take out a plane.
That said, it's pretty tame. We can already take out planes with flak cannons. This is just more efficient.
There is no such thing as a defensive weapon.
You might be tempted to say "what about a missile shield?" but such a thing allows the owner to act with impunity with levels of violence we arguably haven't seen since 1945.
As a real example of this, the only reason a deeper conflict didn't develop with Iran this year was because Iran demonstrated they could overwhelm the various layers of Israel's missile shield and Iran seriously depleted the various munitions used by those air defense systems (eg interceptors, THAAD) and those take a long time to replenish.
> There is no such thing as a defensive weapon
I agree if we reframe it as “purely defensive,” though there is a bit of tautology invoked with the “weapon” qualifier.
That said, there is legitimacy to developing defensive arms, even if one doesn’t like the ones doing it.
> the only reason a deeper conflict didn't develop with Iran this year was because Iran demonstrated they could overwhelm the various layers of Israel's missile shield
This hypothesis is not sustained by Iran’s reduced firing rate throughout the conflict. All evidence suggests Iran lost its war with Israel and would lose it again if they go for round 2.
If you want society to be more vulnerable to military action, then the biggest innovation is health care. Improved health care is what allowed nations to create and maintain larger military forces. Through out history, disease and malnourished caused more death by a large margin than actually violence in combat, and many war campaign stopped suddenly because one or both sides became unable to continue.
> Improved health care is what allowed nations to create and maintain larger military forces
Isn’t it the other way? With a lot of medicine’s modern advances being rooted in combat medicine?
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America's school lunch program was created so that it would have healthier soldiers. We better stop feeding children.
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_School_Lunch_Prog...
> You might be tempted to say "what about a missile shield?" but such a thing allows the owner to act with impunity with levels of violence we arguably haven't seen since 1945.
I would still say "what about a missile shield?".
If a missile shield is a weapon, because of its affordances, then any object is a weapon. And while that's marginally true I don't think we get anywhere by entertaining category errors.
If something enables aggression, because it makes counter attacks unreasonable, that seems like a fairly nice thing to have more of, in a world where destruction is far too easy and construction is fairly hard.
> If something enables aggression, because it makes counter attacks unreasonable, that seems like a fairly nice thing to have more of
You’re imagining a world where this kind of tech is equally distributed. It’s not. Israel spends something like $30b/year in defense (in part due to ~$7b/year from the US). Gaza has something like $0.3b to spend. The consequence of that asymmetry is one of them has a missile shield, the other has more than 80,000 dead citizens, famine, and virtually no infrastructure left standing.
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> then any object is a weapon. And while that's marginally true I don't think we get anywhere by entertaining category errors.
We get a really ripping novel from Iain M. Banks, at least.
> As a real example of this, the only reason a deeper conflict didn't develop with Iran this year was because Iran demonstrated they could overwhelm the various layers of Israel's missile shield and Iran seriously depleted the various munitions used by those air defense systems (eg interceptors, THAAD) and those take a long time to replenish.
Lol no, Iran was utterly humiliated in this conflict, and outed as a paper tiger.
That’s gross. You’re basically saying that hundreds of millions of people need to be held as hostages to ensure good behavior, and that trying to rescue those hostages is morally wrong.
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Settlements in West Bank are Israel’s great crime.
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