US tests million-megwatt laser weapon

The catch is that the pulse is so short - a thousandth of a nanosecond - that it doesn't do all that much damage. Interesting idea though:

www.wired.com...

Yep thats what we need another freaken weapon.

Hilda

reply to post by hildar


Please don't participate in the 'Weaponry' forum if you're going to post one-liners about how weapons shouldn't exist or be developed in the first place.

Just a thought.

I'm sorry but ever since we humans could figure out how to benefit from something, we also have been thinking of how we can use that something against fellow man. Technologically speaking though, this is a marvelous achievement

The Pentagon's newest laser weapon has a peak power of more than a million megawatts, so intense that it warps the air around it. When the beam strikes the target it vaporises the impact site, producing a plasma fireball and a highly destructive shockwave.

!!!!! If this was sustainable it would be quite frightening, and doubt much would be able to protect against such a force. Do you think we understand all there is to know about such a high energy beam weapon? It seems that funny things start to happen when very high amoutns of energy are used in certain applications, and this is one of them that I could see somewhere along the line producing a spooky result. Well it would be neat if it happened