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Officials from the armed forces and U.S. legislators expect wider use of directed energy weapons such as lasers and microwaves soon:
The officials described weapons that are in various stages of development and testing by the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Army, but said more work was needed to develop tactics for their use and to ensure sufficient funding. "Directed energy brings the dawn of an entirely new era in defense," Lieutenant General William Etter, Commander, Continental U.S. North American Aerospace Defense Command Region, told a conference hosted by Booz Allen Hamilton and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment in Washington.
Directed energy refers to weapons that emit focused energy in the form of lasers, microwaves, electromagnetic radiation, radio waves, sound or particle beams. Etter and other officials said such weapons could lower the cost of current weapons, speed up responses to enemy attacks and cut deaths of civilians in the battlefield, but tough policy questions remained about their deployment.
[Navy Secretary Ray] Mabus said the Navy was extending deployment of the laser on the Ponce, and using lessons learned to help produce a 100-150 kilowatt laser prototype for testing at sea in 2018 or sooner. He said a powerful new railgun that could hit targets 100 miles away would also be tested at sea next year. A railgun is an electrically powered electromagnetic projectile launcher. He said the Navy would release a comprehensive road map this fall for developing, acquiring and fielding high-power radio frequency weapons, lasers and directed energy countermeasures.
More info at NextBigFuture, including the laser power needed to affect various targets and a 2011 U.S. Navy roadmap for shipboard lasers.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday July 29 2015, @04:22PM
What is the real advantage of Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation (lasers) and Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation (masers) over traditional bullets? Is it the cost advantage per shot? Is it operational advantages like not having to correct for gravity or wind? Is it somehow avoiding collateral damage incurred when split-second decisions result in innocent men, women, and children being vaporized by over-pumped soldiers?
Let me ask a different question: do we really need to invent yet more ways to kill people when the United States can already afford to kill every human on Earth? It seems ridiculously gratuitous. Are American war planners really bored men whose emotional development never progressed beyond that of a 13 yr old? Are they merely trying to make real their fever dreams of robots stalking the landscape or lasers going "pew pew pew?"
I will suggest an entirely different premise, namely that the men (and a few women) who have been entrusted with our security are psychological basket cases who should in no wise be let anywhere near anything that could harm another human, and that the politicians and politicians' puppet masters who command them are a bunch of sick puppies that the human race has to divest itself of if it wishes to survive the next century.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday July 29 2015, @04:27PM
Cost potential per shot, possible ability to intercept drones and missiles, nonlethal mode (MASER = "pain ray"). While the laser faces atmospheric challenges, the railgun mentioned in the article could shoot a projectile hundreds of miles or into space.
We already started this discussion:
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=7882&cid=194985#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @05:26PM
The advantages of directed energy weapons typically cited include:
(1) speed of light engagement with the target
(2) unlimited magazines (i.e., ships, tanks, soldiers, etc. don't have to carry around a lot of ammo and/or highly explosive ordinance)
(3) new options on the battle field between shout and shoot
I believe that (3) is most apropos to your snide little questions regarding inventing "yet more ways to kill people". See, when the solider in battle has options beside shoot to kill or shouting at people to go away, that does mean less gratuitous killing. Of course, electing representatives to public office that are not prone to sabre rattling is the real answer to stop gratuitous killing. You did vote in the last election, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @10:03PM
Are you kidding me? He's clearly too cool to vote. It's today's intellectual hipster. More so back in the day, to be cool in art, you had to live the Bohemian lifestyle to show that you were cool enough to be a real artist. Same thing here, to show that you are a political erudite, you have to not only not vote, but proudly proclaim that you don't vote, but to a lesser extent it is also acceptable to loudly and proudly tell everyone you voted for some obscure candidate (who would fix everything, but he'll never get the chance because of the ignorance of the unwashed masses).
(Score: 2) by gidds on Thursday July 30 2015, @01:34PM
Have Tasers reduced gratuitous killing by law enforcement?
(Honest question. According to Wikipedia, Amnesty International claimed that police officers had caused 500 deaths by Taser in the US and Canada by 2012. But in 2011 the Taser CEO claimed that the device has saved 75,000 lives. However, the latter figure probably isn't comparable: it may be worldwide, and may take a much more optimistic approach to the figures.)
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