In 2015 The Engineer reported that Lockheed Martin was to manufacture high-powered laser weapons and today we bring you a video from the company highlighting its advances in this field.
According to the company, a range of threats – mortar and artillery shells, small UAVs, lightweight ground vehicles and small attack boats – can now be defeated from a range of around one mile away.
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The Laser Weapon System page of the company’s website states: “As fibre laser power levels increase, our systems will be able to disable larger threats and do so across greater distances. When operated in conjunction with kinetic energy systems, these systems can serve as a force multiplier.”
As the company says, ‘the time for laser weapons systems has come’. See for yourself in the video below.
What a totally corrupted use of technical ability and skills this is. We live in a world which desperately needs these skills to deal with the immediate problems faced by the entire planet, and instead we pour resources into new ways of killing each other. This type of enterprise should be condemned, not boasted about or praised.
Well laser weapons have been hyped since Reagan/SDI/StarWars, but now seem finally to become deployable. They will be defensive, at least to start, by knocking out missiles aimed at ships & aircraft.
Agreed, absolutely. it seems to be such a waste of effort.
About the only good thing likely to come out of this is the possibility of defending our planet from asteroid impacts. A massive array in orbit may just be able to prevent an impact, turning it into a near-miss. But knowing human nature, I have to agree with John Craig to a large degree. The human race is nowhere near mature enough to be trusted with more novel ways of destruction. What a pity we can’t unlearn and uninvent.
@John Craig
Disagree – Sadly we can’t uninvent weapons, nor change the fact that there is evil out there. Best we can do to protect ourselves and others is to have an efficient means of counteracting threats. The more precise and surgical those weapons, then the smaller the amount of collateral damage caused when they have to be used. So we should celebrate the engineering development of such technology and who knows it might lead to defending us against something the dinosaurs had no defence for!
Seems a perfectly sensible system to create with all the myriad ongoing troubles.
Amen Brian!!!
To those Brian had to address, think before you post!!!
Lets not forget what J Whitworth said when he improved the musket into a rifle. The words of a passifist “peace is worth preserving” or similar words. The same I belive of these latest developments we must be able to show we have the capability to preserve our way of life and not be run over. The Ukraine strike a chord – why speak peacfully when our neighbours can just walk in. Who knows what good developments might evlove from this technology. Microwave (magnetron) gave birth to Radar and made the bombing of areas during WW2 more accurate, now microwave units are used from medical to pie warming and police speed traps. Fear is a big driver of invention and the spin off could one day help all of mankind.
Still true today: Si vis pacem, para bellum.