The Navy’s New 100 KiloWatt Laser Weapons
June 15th, 2009Don’t miss the picture of the high voltage power supply. That reminds me of my favorite English-Russia post; satellite image, machine translation.
Bzzzzzt, bzzzzzt, ZAP!
Via: Popular Mechanics:
The Office of Naval Research has awarded Raytheon a year-long contract to develop the preliminary design of a 100 kilowatt experimental Free Electron Laser (FEL) for naval warships. A FEL uses superconducting electron accelerators to produce high-power laser beams that could target cruise missiles, airplanes or boats. FEL operators can adjust the laser’s wavelength by adjusting the energy of the electrons in the accelerator, something conventional lasers can’t do. This allows them to be used on ships without suffering disturbances from the water vapor-rich environment. Raytheon has 12 months to create a preliminary design, the first step in the $150 million, three-phase ONR program.
Research Credit: rmf
Gosh! It’s a good thing weapons like these have not been available on satellites in the past, ’cause then they maybe could have been aimed at tall buildings and conspiracy theorists would then….Uh, I’ll finish this thought after I do a little study-up on interferometry.
I’m speculating from ignorance here. Could lasers like this be used to project massive holographic images? Just wondering…