The military wants to bring us one step closer to Star Wars.
The U.S. Army plans to increase the power of its laser weapons by ten-fold hoping to bring down manned aircraft and missiles. The futuristic weapon system is currently used to shoot down drones.
Previously the stuff of fiction, laser weapons are now used by the military to damage enemy equipment or blind their operators. Using a something that resembles a video game controller, soldiers fire bursts of focused energy at the speed of light from a vehicle-mounted system calledthe High Energy Laser Mobile Test Truck (HELMTT).
According to Popular Mechanics, the Army said Tuesday that it will increase the power of its current lasers from 10 kilowatts to 50 kilowatts by 2018 and deploy a new 100-kilowatt system by 2022. While the boost in power increases the range and damage caused, it may not have the desired effect.
The Army wants to shoot helicopters and low-flying aircraft with the 100-kilowatt lasers, but Popular Mechanics reports that even a 100-megawatt laser likely couldn’t do that—and it 1,000 times more powerful than the one planned for 2022. However, it would be useful in shooting down missiles.
This article was featured in the InsideHook newsletter. Sign up now.
