# Canadian Army buys armoured vehicles with lasers to fight IEDs



## 57Chevy (23 Feb 2013)

Article from Leader-Post is shared with provisions of The Copyright Act
Great idea  :camo:

Military eyes lasers on armoured vehicles to guard against roadside bombs
 The Canadian Press  22 Feb

OTTAWA - It may sound like something out of a futuristic movie, but the military is looking at mounting high-powered lasers on armoured vehicles to help protect troops from roadside bombs.

The Canadian Forces wants to put lasers on its fleet of Cougar armoured vehicles so soldiers can blast apart improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, from a safe distance.

"(High-energy laser) is considered as one of the most promising technologies to provide the Canadian Army with an unprecedented performance edge," says a contract notice posted Friday.

Improvised explosive devices evolved into the deadliest threat faced by soldiers over the course of Canada's 10-year combat mission in Afghanistan. Of the 158 Canadian soldiers killed, 93 died in IED attacks, according to the independent monitoring website icasualties.org.

Insurgents quickly realized roadside bombs were a far more effective tactic than engaging in face-to-face combat against their better-armed foes.

They littered the ditches, roads and fields of Afghanistan with makeshift bombs, which were detonated with a pressure switch or by remote control.

When the military added more armour to vehicles so they could better withstand the blasts, the insurgents responded by building even bigger, deadlier bombs, often by stacking explosives on top of each other.

Lasers could well be the key to defeating such threats, the military contract notice suggests.

The technology has come a long way in recent years, the document says, and lasers are now close to being used in the field.

"This rapid evolution is due to recent developments in the fibre laser technology which led to an abrupt availability of low cost and robust core laser systems readily available for defence applications," the notice says.

No one from the Canadian Forces was immediately available to comment.


----------



## GAP (23 Feb 2013)

posted here http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/109242/post-1210935.html#msg1210935


----------



## Kat Stevens (23 Feb 2013)

Wait, we're going to try to find all the Cougars again, refurb and upgun/armour them, just to bolt on a laser?  Sounds good to me, can the Lynx be far behind?


----------



## Fishbone Jones (23 Feb 2013)

Mounted on friggin' sharks!


----------



## McG (23 Feb 2013)

The Cougar mentioned is a new blast protected truck and not the AVGP variant.  We bought a few as an interim EOD Team vehicle for Afghanistan.  It was an adequate but far from ideal solution … but it was sexy and easy to get money for, and so we bought more and committed to the vehicle as a permanent platform.  In addition toe EOD Team and lazer variants, there are also a few ambulances.


----------



## Kat Stevens (23 Feb 2013)

MCG said:
			
		

> The Cougar mentioned is a new blast protected truck and not the AVGP variant.  We bought a few as an interim EOD Team vehicle for Afghanistan.  It was an adequate but far from ideal solution … but it was sexy and easy to get money for, and so we bought more and committed to the vehicle as a permanent platform.  In addition toe EOD Team and lazer variants, there are also a few ambulances.



Sorry, I'm old, guess I need to keep up.


----------



## Nfld Sapper (23 Feb 2013)

Looks like this Kat......


----------



## The Bread Guy (23 Feb 2013)

More here from the original MERX posting yesterday.....


			
				milnews.ca said:
			
		

> Wanted:  someone to look into mounting high-energy lasers on vehicles to deal with IEDs/UXO
> 
> 
> > .... DRDC Valcartier is studying emerging technologies for the protection of military vehicles and their occupants.  Specifically, DRDC Valcartier is looking at HEL technology for long standoff neutralization of exposed Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) and remote neutralization of unexploded Ordinances (UXO).
> ...





			
				recceguy said:
			
		

> Mounted on friggin' sharks!


GAP beat you to that one, too  ;D


----------



## Towards_the_gap (23 Feb 2013)

That's right, idiots at DRDC, spend billions on wonder technology whilst ignoring the fact that *YOU HAVE TO FIND THEM FIRST* before you blast them with lasers.

I could go on about how far behind we are in detection/training the force but I won't, cause quite frankly, nobody will care anyways.


----------



## dapaterson (23 Feb 2013)

Cougars with laser beams?  The bars in Fredericton will never be the same...


----------



## 57Chevy (23 Feb 2013)

Towards_the_gap said:
			
		

> That's right, idiots at DRDC, spend billions on wonder technology whilst ignoring the fact that *YOU HAVE TO FIND THEM FIRST* before you blast them with lasers.
> 
> I could go on about how far behind we are in detection/training the force but I won't, cause quite frankly, nobody will care anyways.



Agreed, finding them is the hard part.
I'm sure there are people out there that really do care about the process of detecting IEDs. 
It is so important that governments are investing a great deal in research on the subject. 

For one thing you have to be or become
I 4377 0V @ 600D 0853RV3R  8)

There must be persistant surveillance of a given area of responsibility using an array of the latest available equipment and/or gadgets
with a focus on changes in the normal routine of things. Everything outside of that is subjected to investigation.

Some methods are actually pretty novel and use a device we see all the time.

In a recent experiment utilizing a standard radar gun, similar to the ones used for catching speeders on America’s highways, Fox and UCSC researchers, Professor John Vesecky and Dr. Kip Laws, were able to detect members of a crowd wearing simulated IED vests 85 percent of the time.

 University Professor Explores New Methods of IED Detection   by MC1 Grant P. Ammon  (Naval Postgraduate School) which is shared with provisions of The Copyright Act


----------



## ArmyRick (23 Feb 2013)

Recce guy, 

That is beautiful picture of a shark with frickin' lazer! Points inbound!


----------



## brihard (23 Feb 2013)

So they're mounting them on RWS... About time to ask, then- from that distance could they incapacitate a person? Could they take out the drive of a suspected SVBIED? If we have this kind of technology coming soon, I'm curious about the comparative legal questions of, say, a very precise laser shot to neutralize a VBIED in comparison to a burst of C6 with a crowded downtown as backstop.


----------

