From: terran@en.ecn.purdue.edu (me)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: Laser weapons
Date: 3 Sep 92 22:44:39 GMT
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network

In article <1992Sep3.184558.4898@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>In article <1992Sep1.213233.7293@spss.com> I write:
>>I'd like to throw some laser weapons into an sf story, but I find I don't
>>know enough about lasers.  
>
>Many thanks to all who responded, both by post and by e-mail.  It's been
>fascinating reading, even though now I have to rewrite my story.  :)
>
>Guns with bullets seem to be pretty energy-efficient, but they're not
>very futuristic, are they?  Can anyone think of anything that's likely
>to replace them?

_Likely?_  I don't know about that...  But how about smart bullets?  The
idea is take a gyrojet round, put a microchip, small power supply, and
some form of imaging system (the latter might be done with silicon
light receptors which I seem to remember could be made rather small) in
it and a rather more sophisticated computer & imaging system with a very
sophisticated piece of image recognition software on the gun itself.  The
idea is that the weapon is used to aquire the target and load course and
target info into the projectile, which is then fired and homes in on the
target.  Basically, a micromineturized, portable rocket launcher.  The
targeting system should be able to pick out individual people at a reasonable
distance and should probably function in IR as well as visible light.

The electronic technology for this is, I would estimate, no more than 10
years away (note: I did _not_ say fabrication technology -- getting the
electronics into the gyrojet rounds is a different matter).  The tricky
part as I see it is a really small guidance system for each projectile.
I have no idea if this can be done at anything approaching a reasonable price
(I suspect not) -- although how often does the military worry about reason
in pricing... ;-)

The basic idea is from _The Peace War_ by (I think) Vinge, but I have
elaborated somewhat.  I think that he really didn't exploit the idea the
way it should be (although I have only read that and one other book by him,
he might have used it in other places {BTW, did he write more than two books --
I only know of this & _Marooned in Realtime_}).  Consider the impact this
type of weapon could have on warefare -- like 80-90% kill ratios for common
soldfiers -- it wouldn't take real long to radically change tactics.  (I
am just reminded by a friend that this was done in the movie "Runaway"
too -- although they didn't look at implications for large scale warfare
there either...).

So, _likely_?  Probably not -- but a neat idea for speculation.

TDL

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