New Approach For Laser Weapons 188
An anonymous reader writes "Laser guns and other 'directed energy weapons' have remained in sci-fi lore because of their inefficiency, bulkiness, and poor beam quality. Now an MIT Lincoln Lab spinoff called TeraDiode is developing a diode laser that uses 'wavelength beam combining' to create what it calls the brightest and most powerful laser of its kind. The two-year-old company, backed by $3 million from the U.S. Department of Defense and $4 million from venture capitalists, is working on a compact airborne laser system for planes to shoot down heat-seeking missiles. Eventually, the lasers could be mounted on a tank or ship to destroy enemy UAVs or even incoming artillery shells. That's still at least three to five years away, but with advances in semiconductor lasers there seems to be quite a renewed interest in weaponry."
Re:Terrorists will love it. (Score:5, Insightful)
I expect that they will have about the same success with this as with all the other types of weapons they've used to shoot down commercial airliners.
Re:Oh thank goodness... (Score:4, Insightful)
Dude, we ARE the world's jerks.
Re:Oh thank goodness... (Score:3, Insightful)
Dude, we ARE the world's jerks.
I think that's overly simplistic. The U.S. does lots of jerky things. But I think there's no shortage of non-U.S. jerks who would take over any land that they felt they could successfully conquer. ( China/Tibet and Russia/Georgia are two recent examples. )
Re:Oh thank goodness... (Score:4, Insightful)
Right now an effective anti mortar and rocket system could be saving a LOT of lives in Misurata and the other cities Ghadafi has been sieging. Heck if we could effectively stop his offense it would even save lives on his side as we wouldn't have a reason to bomb his armor columns.
I don't doubt that. But I'm just guessing that if that $7M+ could have been spent on malaria research, cancer research, water purification systems, etc., there could have been more lives saved. If Libya was at peace, that is, which goes back to my main point.