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Fuck man. This is the kind of shit that makes me feel guilty about paying taxes.
by jMyles 9y ago
Fuck man. This is the kind of shit that makes me feel guilty about paying taxes.
- melling 9y agoWell, the money is going to R&D so it will advance human knowledge. Are there non-military used for the research? It’s only $150 million. Peanuts. One F35 costs around $100 million. Didn’t I read somewhere that we spent $20 billion for air conditioning during the war in Afghanistan?
- thinkloop 9y ago$150m and completion within 1.5 years, seems like zeroes are missing from those numbers
- azernik 9y agoBecause this is a development of a production version of an already-existing and -tested prototype.
- fcarraldo 9y ago> Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. 150m could do a lot of good. 20B could do even more. Can’t we express a desire for our elected leaders to spend our tax money on good instead of perpetuating the military industrial complex?
- megaman22 9y agoDrop in the bucket of the defense budget... This only amounts to about two new F-18s. At least some basic research might come out of it. There's things my taxes go towards that I feel much more negatively about.
- ISL 9y agoIt is the kind of technology that might prevent drone incursions into crowded stadia. Countering large numbers of small drones will be a key defensive goal in the future.
- mycall 9y agoDrone could just take a flight path between a passenger airplane and the ground laser pods, such that shooting the laser would fry the airplane behind the drone. It isn't a great solution, when it ever works.
- grogenaut 9y agopassenger airplanes not known for going into war zones.
- nradov 9y agoNo that's not how lasers and flight paths work. It's impossible to line up aircraft so precisely.
- blhack 9y agoWhy? This doesn't make much sense to me.
- SamReidHughes 9y agoA small drone won't be able to go fast/far enough.
- rand_r 9y agoWhat I’ve come to understand by studying history is that countries without a superior military get subjugated by countries that have one. You can either play the game or lose without putting up a fight.
- ergothus 9y agoAnd yet, raising an army to be defensive just makes your neighbors arm faster to try prevent THEIR demise. I suspect the details end up having a lot more nuance than one or two sentences can describe.
- andromeduck 9y agoI mean diplomacy helps too but nobody is going to listen if you don't have a stick to back it up with. See Ukraine for example.
- zaphirplane 9y agoif True we would have 1 global empire.
- EggsOnToast 9y agoYouve got enough comments to reply to so Ill be concise. If this can be used against drone craft or reliably against missiles then I'm for it. If it's just a better gun Im against it.
- tbihl 9y agoIn all likelihood it's a pretty poor substitute for a gun. Consider that this weapon is suspected to cost around one dollar per shot (not including capital costs, I'm sure.) Figure that the navy generates energy pretty expensively and assume that means ~3kW*hr. Wikipedia says somewhere in the range 15-50kW. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Weapon_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Weapon_System). I'm not up-to-date on the latest and greatest in batteries, but I think a person would have a hard time carrying the energy supply for a laser weapon that is comparable in effectiveness to the many forms of relatively compact guns in their many forms, whether we're discussing anti-air, anti-tank, or anti-personnel. This is the navy trying to be able to deal with the asymmetry of a battle field in which the most credible threats are swarms of cheap drones. Consider that there are navy ships where the cheapest weapon on-board costs $0.75 million per shot, and it's not surprising that this would be exciting for them.
- grogenaut 9y agoIf you're on a ship with a reactor, it's more just about how you are using your energy than the cost of the energy. You're generating that power no matter what. However if you're on a conventional power then yes you would count it.
- ProAm 9y agoIf you live in the US about 1/3 of your taxes go to making sure we have the means to break things and kill people. It's been that way for a long long time. Whether that is good or bad is a whole different discussion, but throughout history having the biggest stick has proved to be beneficial at least for awhile.
- EggsOnToast 9y ago1/3 is a wildly inaccurate number that only comes close to holding true if you don't include our non-obligatory spending which is massive.
- ProAm 9y agoIts varied from year to year. I cant keep track what goes to medicaid (and as the baby boomers continue to age it will shift as time moves forward) and want not over the year, Id say the low estimate is 20% of your taxes (and the number are different when you look at mandatory vs discretionary spending) and the high is 36% either way its a lot of money.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ozzy6009 9y ago11.6% in 2017 https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/breakdown_2017USrt_19rs5n https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/breakdown_2017USrt_19rs...