In the early 1990s, the US Air Force was preparing tests at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, designed to lead to a ground-based plasma-weapon in the late 1990s capable of firing plasma bullets at incoming ballistic missile warheads. The enabling technology was a 'fast capacitor bank' called Shiva Star that could store 10 million joules of energy and release it instantaneously. Officials anticipated firing bullets at 3,000km/sec in 1995 and 10,000km/sec - 3% of the speed of light - by the turn of the century. The tests absorbed little more than a few million dollars of annual funding (Jane's Defence Weekly 29 July 1998).

Dumped into the 'soft' electronics of a re-entry vehicle, the bullets were envisaged as destroying multiple manoeuvring warheads at rapid reacquisition rates. By the second half of the last decade, the Shiva/plasma bullet programme was officially dropped. Observers have remarked on how its sudden disappearance at the time the firing tests were scheduled was redolent of a transition to the classified environment.

Originally posted by HVF
Listen, plasma weaponery is impossible unless ofcourse your talking about tazers. Plasma reqiures tons an tons of energy that a coil gun or a rail gun could not continuosly supply. For plasma to exist it needs lots and lots of energy and once that energy is gone, no more plasma. \[edit on 25-10-2005 by HVF]