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The Air Force Research Laboratory announced that their Self-Protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator, or SHiELD program is advancing at a fast clip, with several major subsystems scheduled for delivery and assembly in the near future. The Air Force describes the SHiELD program as an initiative that is essentially a defensive armament, intended to give airframes that carry a version of the SHiELD laser pod the ability to shoot down air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles — a task that comes with a host of technical hurdles to overcome. Namely, shooting down missiles at supersonic speeds is incredibly difficult.

Researchers invent a novel vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser, the workhorses of datacenters and optical sensors.SummaryResearchers at the George Washington University have developed a new design of vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) that demonstrates record-fast temporal bandwidth. This was possible by combining multiple transverse coupled cavities, which enhances optical feedback of the laser. VCSELs have emerged as a vital approach for realizing energy-efficient and high-speed optical interconnects in data centers and supercomputers.The SituationVCSELs are a vital class of semiconductor laser diodes accompanying a monolithic laser resonator that emits light in a direction perpendicular to the chip surface. This class of lasers is gaining...

Over the last decade, two of the most significant topics in defense research and development have been directed energy systems and hypersonic weapons. The Department of Defense and its major contractors have been pushing the boundaries of what is possible with these technologies and those efforts could someday soon literally change the face of warfare forever. As it turns out, these two cutting edge areas of defense research are beginning to converge in laboratories with the goal of enabling unprecedented levels of speed for aerial weapons. By combining advanced directed energy technology with the latest in hypersonic vehicle design, researchers...

At least three federal officers in Portland may not recover their vision after earlier this week demonstrators, who have shown up in crowds of over 1,000 for more than 50 consecutive nights, shined lasers in their eyes and threw fireworks at a federal courthouse, officials said. During Monday night's confrontation, one person also threatened to cut off the water supply to federal officers inside the building. Federal Protective Service (FPS) Deputy Director of Operations Richard “Kriss” Cline said at a press conference on Tuesday that a crowd of more than 1,000 “rioters” surrounded the Hatfield Federal Courthouse and began removing...

Here’s one of the stranger stories to come out of the ongoing protests and riots, though it took place a week ago. During the June 3 protests in Detroit, a Customs and Border Protection helicopter was being used to monitor the activities in the southeastern portion of the city near the Canadian border. While the pilot was aloft and keeping an eye on things, someone on the other side of the border began repeatedly pointing a green laser into the cockpit. This continued even after the pilot took evasive action to avoid being blinded. Who would be targeting an...

BT has signed a deal with Australian company DroneShield, which has worked with the British Army. Its DroneGun Tactical weapon shoots rays to take down a target from more than a mile away. BT will also offer clients use of the DroneSentinel, which can track a pilot operating the drone up to three miles away. The tech could have avoided last year’s Gatwick drone saga which cost police up to £900,000 — with nobody brought to justice. Eco-activists were arrested last week amid fears of travel disruption at Heathrow.

The Air Force announced Friday it will soon deploy two ground-based laser weapons to an undisclosed location to test how they can be used against small drones, the service’s first “operational field test” of an experimental “directed energy” weapon. Because laser weapons could fire constantly without wasting ammunition, military technology experts have theorized they could one day be useful in combating the small, remotely operated quadcopter drones that ISIS has used. They are also expected to be an effective counter against swarming attack drones, a concept that a handful of countries are exploring.

The Chinese military is guilty of “irresponsible actions” toward American forces stationed at Djibouti’s Camp Lemonnier on the Horn of Africa, a senior U.S. military intelligence officer said. The home of U.S. military operations in the region and the biggest U.S. base on the continent, Camp Lemonnier is near the People’s Liberation Army’s first overseas military base, and the proximity has been a continuing source of tension. Rear Adm. Heidi Berg, director of intelligence at the U.S. Africa Command, told a small group of African-based journalists in a telephone media roundtable that China tried to “constrain international airspace” by barring...

The Pearl Harbor-based USS Preble will be the first destroyer to be equipped with a high-energy laser to counter surface craft and unmanned aerial systems, according to a published report, with the Navy planning to one day use the powerful light beams to defend against Chinese or Russian cruise missiles. Rear Adm. Ronald Boxall, the Navy's director of surface warfare, told Defense News that the Preble will be outfitted in 2021 with the High Energy Laser and Integrated Optical- dazzler With Surveillance system, or HELIOS. "We are making the decision to put the laser on our (destroyers)," Boxall said. "It's...

Australian military helicopters were targeted with lasers during operations in the South China Sea this month. "Some helicopter pilots had lasers pointed at them from passing fishing vessels," Euan Graham of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute wrote on The Strategist blog, who was aboard the warship from which the aircraft were operating. At sea, fishermen are known to use lasers to warn off other vessels that may be getting too close to them. "That makes sense for collision of vessels, but obviously there is no direct threat from aircraft to vessels in the South China Sea," Graham said. "The maritime...

May 1 (UPI) -- A U.S. Air Force exercise involving high-energy microwaves and guided lasers to shoot down drones was a success, contractor Raytheon announced. Dozens of unmanned aerial targets were defeated in the tests at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., a Raytheon statement released on Tuesday said. The event expanded on previous directed energy demonstrations, including a U.S. Army exercise in 2017 and a previous Air Force test in January. The high energy laser system uses invisible beams of light to shoot down aerial targets, and the high-powered microwave bursts disrupt drone guidance systems. Its primary advantages are speed...

Spacecraft already navigate our solar system using gravity wells as slingshots. The same basic principles operate in the intense gravity wells around black holes, which bend not only the paths of solid objects, but light itself. If a photon, or a light particle, enters a particular region in the vicinity of a black hole, it will do one partial circuit around the black hole and get flung back in exactly the same direction. Physicists call those regions "gravitational mirrors" and the photons they fling back "boomerang photons." Boomerang photons already move at the speed of light, so they don't pick...

A laser pulse bounced off a rubidium atom and entered the quantum world — taking on the weird physics of "Schrödinger's cat." Then another one did the same thing. Then another. The laser pulses didn't grow whiskers or paws. But they became like the famous quantum-physics thought experiment Schrödinger's cat in an important way: They were large objects that acted like the simultaneously dead-and-alive creatures of subatomic physics — existing in a limbo between two simultaneous, contradictory states. And the lab in Finland where they were born had no limit on how many they could make. Pulse after pulse turned...

Researchers at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, a United States Department of Defense research facility, developed laser systems that can "transmit various tones, music and recorded speech at a conversational volume" to specific people without the recipient wearing any special equipment. Basically, the operator points a laser at someone from a distance and that individual hears the transmitted audio even though others in the area don't. The new approaches are based on the photoacoustic effect, which occurs when a material forms sound waves after absorbing light. In this case, the researchers used water vapor in the air to absorb light and create...

The U.S. military has been working to develop laser weapon technology in earnest since the 1990s, initially as a missile defense technology. And while that application certainly remains an objective of laser weapon design, the Pentagon has begun exploring new uses for the technology as advances are made. Hypersonic technology is a game-changing technology for ballistic missiles, but speed-of-light laser weaponry would negate hypersonics. If U.S. Air Force developers can miniaturize power production to the point where lasers on fighter planes become lethal enough to use in combat, their potential is substantial. For one, fighters would never ‘run out of...

The United States has issued a formal warning to China after personnel at the Chinese military base in Djibouti used lasers to interfere with U.S. military aircraft, giving two pilots minor injuries, according to the Pentagon. Top Defense Department spokeswoman Dana White told reporters Thursday that the U.S. is confident the Chinese are behind the “very serious incidents,” which have increased in the past few weeks. “There have been two minor injuries. This activity poses a true threat to our airmen. We have formally demarched the Chinese government. And we’ve requested that the Chinese investigate these incidents,” White said during...

Chinese personnel at the country's first overseas military base in Djibouti have been using lasers to interfere with US military aircraft at a nearby American base, activity that has resulted in injuries to US pilots and prompted the US to launch a formal diplomatic protest with Beijing, two military officials told CNN. The US issued a notice to airmen "to exercise caution when flying in certain areas in Djibouti," which "was issued due to lasers being directed at US aircraft on a small number of separate occasions over the last few weeks," according to the notice obtained by CNN. "During...

Chinese personnel at the country's first overseas military base in Djibouti have been using lasers to interfere with US military aircraft at a nearby American base, activity that has resulted in injuries to US pilots and prompted the US to launch a formal diplomatic protest with Beijing, two military officials told CNN. The US issued a notice to airmen "to exercise caution when flying in certain areas in Djibouti," which "was issued due to lasers being directed at US aircraft on a small number of separate occasions over the last few weeks," according to the notice obtained by CNN. "During...

The Chinese are building a laser that is 10 trillion times more intense than the sun and could rip apart space. Physicists say that this laser could be operational as early as 2023. Physicist Ruxin Li and colleagues are breaking records with the most powerful pulses of light the world has ever seen. At the heart of their laser, called the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF), is a single cylinder of titanium-doped sapphire about the width of a Frisbee. After kindling the light in the crystal and shunting it through a system of lenses and mirrors, the SULF distills...

A laser powerful enough to tear apart the fabric of space could be built in Britain. The major scientific project will follow in the footsteps of the Large Hadron Collider and will answer questions about the universe. The laser will be capable of producing a beam of light so intense that it will be similar to the light the earth receives from the sun but focused on a speck smaller than a pin prick. Scientists say it will be so powerful they will be able to boil the very fabric of space and create a vacuum. A vacuum fizzles with...