U.S. Military Gets A New Laser Weapon – IOTW Report

U.S. Military Gets A New Laser Weapon

 

Lockheed Martin has turn its portal high energy laser over to the U.S. military to deploy as they desire.

“The Lockheed Martin team created a laser beam that was near “diffraction-limited,” meaning it was close to the physical limits for focusing energy toward a single, small spot. The laser system also proved to be highly efficient in testing, capable of translating more than 43 percent of the electricity that powered it directly into the actual laser beam it emitted.”

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How Lockheed envisions deployment of the new weapon system Watch

 

25 Comments on U.S. Military Gets A New Laser Weapon

  1. Ray guns are not just for scifi anymore like in Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon and E.E. “Doc” Smith space opera stories. The Norks and muzzies better watch their ass cause they’re about to see their missiles disappear right before their eyes. WOO HOO!

  2. @Corona – Did you know that Slim “Major Kong” Pickens actually said, “…a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas with all that stuff” and that it was dubbed to Vegas because JFK was assassinated after the movie was finished but before it was released?

  3. That’s a lot of killer watts but I’d like to see some actual real world tests. The big problem for energy weapons such as lasers is the time it takes to deliver a kill quantity of energy to a moving target of unknown mass and reflectivity. In other words, the more mirror-like the target it, the longer you have to hit it with the beam; the longer you have to hit it the harder it is to keep the beam on the same spot (think of a spinning missile countermeasure); and if the material is aluminum that burns through a lot faster than, say, titanium.

    On the other hand, if your target is an individual enemy soldier, his head would explode fairly quickly!

    Aside: I have a pet peeve that I don’t expect anybody to share, but anyway…that’s a nice colorful graphic with the beam hitting the glorified ultralight, but the artist got the quarter moon wrong. It is illuminated from the viewer’s right, and the sun is setting at the bottom center of the picture. Either the artist is lazy/ignorant or the scene isn’t Earth but a planet orbiting two suns (unlikely).

  4. “Uncle Al – Keeping ’em honest for IOTWR readers 24/7, all year long!”

    You rock, U.A.! Seriously.

    (P.S. – That picture actually was taken on Alderaan, before that whole Death Star unpleasantness, but good point anyway.)

    🙂

  5. We’ve had this since the early 90’s, but the problem was processor speed and targeting, now that we have all of this under control, the only thing missing is the need to dispatch.

  6. Why is it that every time we deploy a new weapons system, the contractor and/or the pentagon issue a press release? Have they not heard of the “element of surprise”?

  7. This Technology has been around since the early 60s, mostly as a guidance or messaging system. They have been burning holes in stuff for decades at close (10-25 feet) range. All lasers require a tremendous amount of power to effectively operate at long distances. There are land, sea, and air versions on the table. Evidently, a viable system is on-line and active. It can only get better with time and technological advances (like the elusive, yet to be invented, ambient temperature super-conductor). If this is real news, it is very cool indeedy do-do.

  8. I don’t know the physics or the math. All I know is that killing bad guys is cool and buying Lockheed stock is profitable. Same with Raytheon and ingalls Huntington. Up, up and and away on my beautiful baloooooooooon.

  9. If it is being revealed to the public now it has already been in the military’s hands for some time now. They just haven’t had a need to use it….or maybe they have already.

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