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The toy-like drones destroyed during an Army field exercise at Fort Sill, Okla., last month weren't anything special; however, the way they were brought down -- zapped out of the sky by lasers mounted on a Stryker armored vehicle -- might grab people's attention.
The first soldier to try out the lasers was Spc. Brandon Sallaway, a forward observer with the 4th Infantry Division. He used a Mobile Expeditionary High Energy Laser to shoot down an 18-by-10-inch drone at 650 yards, an Army statement said.
"It's nothing too complicated but you have to learn how to operate each system and get used to the controls which is exactly like a video game controller," said Sallaway, who hadn't fired a laser before the exercise.
The drone-killing laser was relatively low energy -- only 5 kilowatts -- but the Army has tested much more powerful weapons. A 30-kilowatt truck-mounted High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator shot down dozens of mortar rounds and several drones in November 2013 at White Sands Missile Range, N.M.
Since then, researchers have made rapid advances in laser weapons, said Bob Ruszkowski, who works on air dominance projects and unmanned systems in Lockheed's secretive Skunk Works facility.
"We're really on the cusp of seeing the introduction of lasers in future systems," he said.
Which do you prefer, lasers or plasma weapons?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday May 31 2017, @04:41PM
Exponential growth in space is a delusion. At least if you're thinking of any very high exponent. Mere survival in space is going to be quite difficult. I will agree that it's highly worthwhile, and the only real future that isn't eventually disastrous, but it's not going to lead to a rapid population increase within the next few centuries.
I suppose it's technically correct to talk of population growth with a doubling time of a couple of centuries as exponential, but that's not how people normally understand the term. Resources in space while vast are rather sparsely distributed, and accelerated movement requires lots of energy. Various forms of ion-jet are a lot more efficient than chemical rockets, but they aren't fast, and they don't get away from the minimum energy cost. Solar sails also depend on the energy cost and are also slow, and can only move in limited directions, but they *do* get their energy directly from the sun without a lot of intermediate conversion as would be required to run an ion rocket. Somebody may someday come up with something better, but until they do that's not the way to bet.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.