Great for takin’ out those stoopid Iranian boats!
Damn! I want one!!!
Read the article, too much info public. We told the world what type of laser, who makes it and extent of progress. Stupid thing to do. We live in precarious times, any advancement in technologies must be kept secret because our globalist corporations would teach it to our enemies and competitors for the mighty profit. China may not be able to make it immediately but she now knows which corporation to target for espionage and have her counter measure folks draw from the clue that the USN uses solid state lasers. Unlike the US, authoritarian gov can mass resources quickly to catch up while we languish in Congress to get the device into production at exorbitant prices. If the US wants to survive the challenges of the late 21st Century trade secrets and tech secrets well kept will insure her people will have good jobs (social stability) and more advanced (military and economics) then her allies and enemies. Ancient China rose above all Asian neighbors due to her ability to keep silk manufacturing secret until the late 1700’s. US may need to study that technology model in lieu of the suicidal free trade model.
Some things are just too cool.
Somali pirates best be loading up on mirrors and sunscreen.
The future ain't what it used to be.
I hope china was paying attention
Does that damn thing make popcorn too?
OK. Two ideas come to mind. One is put some of these on the Carrier USS Enterprise and every time they go to battle they can blast the old star trek theme song over loudspeakers before open up on them with phasers.
Next idea is to put some of these bad boys along the US/Mexico border and blast anyone who tries to come across illegally. No bodies and nobody missed. That’s a border fence that would work.
“To begin to address a cruise missile threat, we’d need to get up to hundreds of kilowatts,” Carr said.
The Navy is working on just such a gun of course.
Called the FEL — for free-electron laser, which doesn’t use a gain medium and is therefore more versatile — it was tested in February consuming a blistering 500 kilovolts of energy, producing a supercharged electron beam that can burn through 20 feet of steel per second.”
Wow.
