Star Wars has arrived

[Chris James]

Remember all those cool laser weapons in Star Wars? The US Army now has one.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/how-the-army-s-recent-successful-laser-test-could-change-the-future-of-warfare-005259265.html

Okay, a mortar shell has a low trajectory and doesn't move that fast compared to other things, but this is only a start. The old adage applies: the best defense is a good offense. When conventional weapons are overcome by this kind of technology they will become obsolete, and isn't that the best way to end conflicts?

In time, this technology will be able to shoot down artillery shells and rockets, bad news for Hezbollah. I can imagine a future design mounted on aircraft to shoot down anti-aircraft missiles. The Navy already has a laser weapon mounted on a ship. Star Wars indeed.

The cost of advanced weapons technology is what put the Soviet Union out of business. When war becomes too expensive perhaps diplomacy will have better success and give peace a chance.

[DesDownunder]

Looks like a video game.

i just wish these things weren't needed, but I suppose whilst we have extremists and despots we must adopt the risk of the insane horror of exterminating all of us.

[Merkin]

...When conventional weapons are overcome by this kind of technology they will become obsolete, and isn't that the best way to end conflicts?......When war becomes too expensive perhaps diplomacy will have better success and give peace a chance.

I am astonished by your optimism. It appears to me that, as weapons become more sophisticated, older conventional weapons are surplussed and find their way more easily into the hands of rag-tag armies, bandits, and bad people. And, as war becomes more expensive, the first thing to go are a nation's domestic spending priorities and social programs in order to provide increased funding for weapons.

[DesDownunder]

Until we learn that diversity of experience, of thought and above all, of love, are the true riches and beauty of life, then we will continue to insist our individual beliefs should be dominant over others.

Philosophically we have the knowledge to exercise peaceful co-existence, but psychologically we are in deep need of rational understanding of reality. In other words the whole human race has to work to overcome irrational fears; psychological aberrations of purpose, commonly referred to as religion, and as they are imposed, as a belief in a god, on others. Freedom to believe, does not mean freedom to insist that others believe the same.

As others have noted elsewhere, the reason we have not been visited by other inhabitants of the Cosmos, may well be because self-aware conscious life forms of technical ability may always end up destroying themselves. That's just sad...beyond imagination and surely not the object of evolution.