Laser Missile Destroyer
It’s unclear which is the bigger news coming out of the Office of Naval Research; the fact that the Navy’s Free Electron Laser (FEL) program has demonstrated an injector capable of producing the necessary electrons to fuel a megawatt-class laser beam, or the fact that a next-generation future weapon under development by the military is months ahead of schedule. Both are good news for the Navy, which might begin lasing threats out of the sky sooner than it anticipated.
Development of the FEL program has been a large undertaking for the Navy, which has invested at least $163 million in a new kind of variable-wavelength laser weapon that should be effective at sea, where moisture and aerosols in the air can severely limit the effectiveness at lasers at certain wavelengths.
It’s unclear which is the bigger news coming out of the Office of Naval Research; the fact that the Navy’s Free Electron Laser (FEL) program has demonstrated an injector capable of producing the necessary electrons to fuel a megawatt-class laser beam, or the fact that a next-generation future weapon under development by the military is months ahead of schedule. Both are good news for the Navy, which might begin lasing threats out of the sky sooner than it anticipated.
Development of the FEL program has been a large undertaking for the Navy, which has invested at least $163 million in a new kind of variable-wavelength laser weapon that should be effective at sea, where moisture and aerosols in the air can severely limit the effectiveness at lasers at certain wavelengths.
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