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: 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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