Thursday, March 19, 2009

Electric Lasers Arrive

clipped from blog.wired.com

Huge news for real-life ray guns: Electric lasers have hit battlefield strength for the first time -- paving the way for energy weapons to go to war.

In recent test-blasts, Pentagon-researchers at Northrop Grumman managed to get its 105
kilowatts of power out of their laser
-- past the "100kW threshold
[that] has been viewed traditionally as a proof of principle for 'weapons
grade' power levels for high-energy lasers," Northrop's vice president
of directed energy systems, Dan Wildt, said in a statement.

That much power won't get you a Star Wars-style blaster. But it should be more than enough to zap the mortars and rockets that insurgents have used to pound American bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.