Free Republic

The price of wholesale electricity has a “futures” market. Companies are paying now to lock in their energy costs next winter. In the UK the cost for electricity in December 22 has risen to 1,000 British pounds per megawatt hour which is about $1.20 per kilowatt hour. This is 6 times the average price in the US.

Northrop Grumman has surpassed Phase I goals for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Revolution in Fiber Lasers (RIFL) program that seeks to mature fiber laser technology. As a result, the company has received a contract for Phase II. "This is an important step in the maturation of fiber laser technology," said Dan Wildt, vice president of Directed Energy Systems for Northrop Grumman's Aerospace Systems sector. "By surpassing Phase I goals, we are in an excellent position for success in Phase II. Success in Phase II will create a powerful springboard for scaling fiber lasers to weapons-class performance levels."...

Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), with support from Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Dahlgren, for the second time successfully tracked, engaged, and destroyed a threat representative Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) while in flight, May 24, at San Nicholas Island, Calif. This marks the first Detect-Thru-Engage laser shoot-down of a threat representative target in an over-the-water, combat representative scenario. A total of two UAV targets were engaged and destroyed in a maritime environment during the testing, the second series of successes for the U.S. Navy's Laser Weapon System (LaWS) Program. Members of NAVSEA's Directed Energy and Electric Weapon Systems (DE&EWS) Program...

After more than a century of popular sci-fi fantasies that feature deadly energy weapons, including War of the Worlds, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Star Trek and Star Wars, it looks like the ray gun has finally arrived in the real world. And even if the first ray guns out of the lab can barely fit on the bed of a 30-ton off-road truck rather than in a soldier’s palm, the novel, "speed-of-light" capabilities that lasers could bring to the battlefield has drawn the keen interest of the Pentagon brass, which spends about $400 million a year on directed-energy beam weapons....

More has emerged on the US Air Force Research Laboratory's Electric Laser on Large Aircraft (ELLA) program and, as anticipated, it's an effort to fit DARPA's Hellads laser into the weapons bay of a B-1B bomber to flight-test a high-power electric laser against tactical targets. General Atomics and Textron Systems are developing rival 150kW lasers under Hellads, with the goal of demonstrating a laser weapon system weighing less than 5kg/kW - substantially smaller and lighter than any previous airborne laser. Lockheed Martin is designing the laser weapon system module (LWSM), including power, cooling and beam director. Answers to bidder questions...

The solid-state laser system from Northrop Grumman, that produced the most powerful beam ever from a continuous wave electric laser last year, is joining other pioneering speed-of-light weapons demonstrators for field tests at the Army's High Energy Laser System Test Facility (HELSTF), N.M. In cooperation with the U.S. Army's Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command, which operates the test range at White Sands Missile Range in southeastern New Mexico, BAE Systems has contracted with Northrop Grumman to relocate the Joint High Power Solid State Laser (JHPSSL) Phase 3 system from the company's laser factory in Redondo Beach, Calif.,...

Star Wars-style laser weapons have taken another step closer to reality with Northrop Grumman reporting that it has produced a 105 kilowatt (kW) light ray from an electric laser in the final demonstration milestone of Phase 3 of the U.S. military's Joint High Power Solid State Laser (JHPSSL) program. At this energy level such a "weapons grade" laser would be capable of taking out cruise missiles, rockets and artillery from land, sea and airborne platforms, but Han Solo won't be slipping this still hefty device into his side holster anytime soon. Northrop Grumman's scalable modular system uses "laser amplifier chains"...