Northrop Grumman Announces the FIRESTRIKE(tm) Laser, World's First Weaponized Solid-State Laser for

With lasers like this in orbit, some positional mirror satellites to aim with and a spotter on the ground, you could call in Laser fire anywhere in the world.

Best defense, carry a mirror umbrella.

reply to post by wdkirk


Just a quick question...

do these use Eneloope Batteries?

A laser that can just heat a spot on a object to 1000 degrees would be good in Iraq right now.

With one you could heat a IED till it went off.

This would save a lot of time and danger to the EOD teams.


See a strange object along a road just cook it and see what happens.

Ethernet interfaces...
So does that mean I can run it from my home computer then?

My first question is how do they control the length of the beam so they don't shoot it through an enemy tank, the house behind it, the hospital behind that, the bus full of civilians behind that, and so on, and so on...

Originally posted by runetang
They'd be absolutely perfect for static position defense. Gotta camp near hostile territory for the night? Throw up like 7 of these 6-laser boxes surrounding your sleeping position and then wire them to all fire simultaineously upon the flip of a switch.

Actually, for a static location, you would only need one laser. For about $50K, you can buy a used 5kW laser that is about the size of a couple refrigerators (chiller not included). This would be plenty powerful to punch a hole through 1/3" inch armor in a second or so (assuming you could hold the beam focused on the same spot for that long). To weaponize it, you would need to figure out some way to automatically focus the beam quickly and track a fixed point on your target. A mirror could easily direct the beam anywhere you would want to place it. Such a device would work pretty good to fend off a nasty crowd, unless they came after you holding large mirrors in front of themselves, ha.

[edit on 19-1-2009 by Divinorumus]

Originally posted by defcon5
My first question is how do they control the length of the beam so they don't shoot it through an enemy tank, the house behind it, the hospital behind that, the bus full of civilians behind that, and so on, and so on...

The effectiveness of a laser beam to burn a hole through something depends upon the focus of the beam.

Lasers are light of a single wavelength.

OH, if only we had some kind of device that reflected light! Then you could reflect the laser back at the source. (/end sarcasm)

Please correct me if I 'm wrong but aren't these weaponized lasers powerful enough to burn through a mirror? I did a little reading and for a mirror to defeat something like this it would have to be perfect and reflect all the energy and even a speck of dust could cause it to fail. Another interesting point is just because a mirror reflects light in the visible spectrum doesn't mean it reflects stuff like infrared, ultraviolet etc

Originally posted by sir_chancealot
Lasers are light of a single wavelength.

OH, if only we had some kind of device that reflected light! Then you could reflect the laser back at the source. (/end sarcasm)

Yeah, and if you have a thick piece of metal, you can stop any bullet or shell too. (/end reciprocal sarcasm)

The laser people have done a lot of work on this, and while mirroring does have some delaying effect it's not going to save you - and it'll make you stand out like a beacon on the battlefield.

Originally posted by ANNED
A laser that can just heat a spot on a object to 1000 degrees would be good in Iraq right now.

With one you could heat a IED till it went off.

This would save a lot of time and danger to the EOD teams.

Perhaps something like this?

news.cnet.com...

Originally posted by mad scientist
Sorry but I have to shake me head at your comments. Whilst American companies actually produce the proof of working weapons, the Russians have yet to even show a glimpse of their supposed superior weapons. Simply because they don't have any. Of course if some no name Russian scientists makes some vague claims about them being superior to everyone else, it must be true

Dont be so quick to dismiss the Russian advanced weapon capability my friend.

Have you ever heard of their "Woodpecker" device? It is the predicessor of HAARP, and they had that back in the late 70's when we didnt have squat.

Also the scientists over there during the Soviet era were heavy into HD..or Hyperdimensional Physics, a very real and verifyable form of highly advanced physics.

As RussiaUSA pointed out...our advanced weaponry is just now catching up, but I would not be so unwise to dismiss the possibility that simply means we have caught up to something they have had for the last 20 or more years.

Never ever underestimate another's capabilities until you know for a fact that you have something ahead of them.

And just because they have not shown anything, does not prove they dont have it or something byond what we have.

Thinking like that is playing the fool's fool.




Cheers!!!!