Except nothing. The Maui facility, as I stated, conducts research in ground-to-space atmospheric viewing---which is part of directed energy weapon research. But nothing to do with weapon system testing. They are probably exploiting "guidestar" lasers to develop adaptive optical systems for space viewing. There is no test range, and the atmospheric conditions are only favorable at the altitude where the base is located. Propagation at sea level is less desirable. And you cannot shoot a laser beam through an intervening hill or mountain.
That is not the only thing that the Maui facility does, by the way. It has a very large mission in the subject of telescopic observations of satellites.
I'm not impressed with second-hand commentary about this from those who are not in the field. I was in the field. The system-level development and testing is and has been conducted by the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque, New Mexico, from the beginning. They have access to instrumented test ranges and they do take pot shots there. They have also done air-to-air beam experiments over decades. But nobody has been seriously interested in using lasers to promote arson. We have incendiary artillery for that job. A laser weapon is a valuable piece of equipment reserved for special purposes that only it can perform. (The weapons being developed are for anti-aircraft applications. They lock the beam on moving targets and point upwards. There's no way anything like this could depress and engage stationary land targets that are not military systems, and shooting from AMOS is a non-starter.)
They are talking mostly about airborne targets, particularly air-to-air. I don't think a tank will be much vulnerable, nor will they have a fire control system that can pick targets out of a cluttered background. Air targets will have a sky background, which will be relatively "cool" by contrast.
You don't understand topography, do you? There IS a clearing at the mountain top. That's where the buildings are located. Clearing or not, there is no clear line of sight to Lahaina, because there is an intervening system of mountain ridges on the west lobe of the island and Lahaina is at sea level. That's a line-of-sight drop of 10,000 feet. Eyeballing it, at the ridgelines of the West Maui Forest Reserve, any such beam would be only at 2500 feet altitude. Lahaina is protected by shadowing.
You can be involved in technology research without being a mad scientist and destroying the local population. You are still grasping at straws. And you don't really understand what would be evidence, i.e., physical events or residue that would be possible ONLY from the use of a DEW. Heat is not one of them, in the context of a forest fire, and combustion that can melt metal and glass.
Maybe not, but I don't much believe in that, either. And I certainly don't believe it could happen with a laser. It could be the fact that the fence post wood was more resistant to the fire environment than the more-highly-conductive metal. It is a commonplace that wooden timbers can have more resistance to a dwelling fire than steel structure. Quite surprising, but true.
There are a lot of people with experience of wildfires, and I don't see them coming out en masse as being amazed by this fire. The only people who seem to be obsessively bewildered are those who are not firefighters.
I watched about 15 minutes of it (I don't have time to watch an hour of it) and it was authentically fascinating. But what it showed me was that this is some kind of widespread, commonplace phenomenon, as yet unexplained. I would be interested to hear what the professional firefighters would make of it.
I once watched the "Riviera" district of Santa Barbara burn to the ground in 1977 from an out-of-control brush fire. The city center is situated between two north-south running hills, and the Riviera was all across the western flank of the east hill. I viewed it from the opposing hill. It was---all I can say is "sobering." It put me in mind of Rome burning. Most of the 216 houses were ash afterward. I can't recall if there were any surviving trees. The fire did not start in a forested area and move into the city, so far as I remember.
In my neighborhood (down the street), a house was burnt to a total loss by an uncontrolled garage fire. The immediately adjacent houses (only feet away) were not touched. The house had to be razed and rebuilt.
The only thing I can think of to prompt investigation is the possibility that houses can create hotter fires, and that proliferation of fires from house to house may depend on fires being hot enough to have a significant component of thermal delivery from the heat radiation itself. That would bypass chemical effects and cook trees. I noticed in some of this fellow's photographs, the remains of basement walls. It crossed my mind that a basement could function like a woodstove, with the walls radiating heat back into the fire. (I have a cast iron stove insert, and the heat-ratiative environment within is a big part of how it works.) But I'm out of ideas. But this would be an indication that DEWs were not involved, because they would be certain to scorch any trees in the way of the beam. I will agree that something is "going on," but think it is a yet not-understood characteristic of fires in developed areas.
Except nothing. The Maui facility, as I stated, conducts research in ground-to-space atmospheric viewing---which is part of directed energy weapon research. But nothing to do with weapon system testing. They are probably exploiting "guidestar" lasers to develop adaptive optical systems for space viewing. There is no test range, and the atmospheric conditions are only favorable at the altitude where the base is located. Propagation at sea level is less desirable. And you cannot shoot a laser beam through an intervening hill or mountain.
That is not the only thing that the Maui facility does, by the way. It has a very large mission in the subject of telescopic observations of satellites.
I'm not impressed with second-hand commentary about this from those who are not in the field. I was in the field. The system-level development and testing is and has been conducted by the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque, New Mexico, from the beginning. They have access to instrumented test ranges and they do take pot shots there. They have also done air-to-air beam experiments over decades. But nobody has been seriously interested in using lasers to promote arson. We have incendiary artillery for that job. A laser weapon is a valuable piece of equipment reserved for special purposes that only it can perform. (The weapons being developed are for anti-aircraft applications. They lock the beam on moving targets and point upwards. There's no way anything like this could depress and engage stationary land targets that are not military systems, and shooting from AMOS is a non-starter.)
They are talking mostly about airborne targets, particularly air-to-air. I don't think a tank will be much vulnerable, nor will they have a fire control system that can pick targets out of a cluttered background. Air targets will have a sky background, which will be relatively "cool" by contrast.
You don't understand topography, do you? There IS a clearing at the mountain top. That's where the buildings are located. Clearing or not, there is no clear line of sight to Lahaina, because there is an intervening system of mountain ridges on the west lobe of the island and Lahaina is at sea level. That's a line-of-sight drop of 10,000 feet. Eyeballing it, at the ridgelines of the West Maui Forest Reserve, any such beam would be only at 2500 feet altitude. Lahaina is protected by shadowing.
You can be involved in technology research without being a mad scientist and destroying the local population. You are still grasping at straws. And you don't really understand what would be evidence, i.e., physical events or residue that would be possible ONLY from the use of a DEW. Heat is not one of them, in the context of a forest fire, and combustion that can melt metal and glass.
Maybe not, but I don't much believe in that, either. And I certainly don't believe it could happen with a laser. It could be the fact that the fence post wood was more resistant to the fire environment than the more-highly-conductive metal. It is a commonplace that wooden timbers can have more resistance to a dwelling fire than steel structure. Quite surprising, but true.
There are a lot of people with experience of wildfires, and I don't see them coming out en masse as being amazed by this fire. The only people who seem to be obsessively bewildered are those who are not firefighters.
I watched about 15 minutes of it (I don't have time to watch an hour of it) and it was authentically fascinating. But what it showed me was that this is some kind of widespread, commonplace phenomenon, as yet unexplained. I would be interested to hear what the professional firefighters would make of it.
I once watched the "Riviera" district of Santa Barbara burn to the ground in 1977 from an out-of-control brush fire. The city center is situated between two north-south running hills, and the Riviera was all across the western flank of the east hill. I viewed it from the opposing hill. It was---all I can say is "sobering." It put me in mind of Rome burning. Most of the 216 houses were ash afterward. I can't recall if there were any surviving trees. The fire did not start in a forested area and move into the city, so far as I remember.
In my neighborhood (down the street), a house was burnt to a total loss by an uncontrolled garage fire. The immediately adjacent houses (only feet away) were not touched. The house had to be razed and rebuilt.
The only thing I can think of to prompt investigation is the possibility that houses can create hotter fires, and that proliferation of fires from house to house may depend on fires being hot enough to have a significant component of thermal delivery from the heat radiation itself. That would bypass chemical effects and cook trees. I noticed in some of this fellow's photographs, the remains of basement walls. It crossed my mind that a basement could function like a woodstove, with the walls radiating heat back into the fire. (I have a cast iron stove insert, and the heat-ratiative environment within is a big part of how it works.) But I'm out of ideas. But this would be an indication that DEWs were not involved, because they would be certain to scorch any trees in the way of the beam. I will agree that something is "going on," but think it is a yet not-understood characteristic of fires in developed areas.