Military bigwig gathered in Orlando this week for the yearly AirWarfare Symposium to discuss big architectural plan for big weapons that do big harm . concord to a report card , the big unfunded project that U.S. Special Operations Command hopes to bear on through is a C-130 that ’s equipped with a power optical maser artillery .
https://gizmodo.com/watch-the-navys-new-laser-weapon-take-out-two-boats-and-1669547063
Lt . Gen. Brad Webb , the head of Air Force Special Operations Command assure Defense One that he ’s very affirmative about the projection . “ There are a lot of vendors that are really contributing to and go on to push that engineering along , ” he say .
The undertaking has beenfloating aroundas a potential R&D effort for years . Back in 2015,Lt . Gen. Brad Heithold , who was then head of Air Force Special Operations Command , toldBreaking Defensethat he believes “ we can put a high vigour optical maser — offensive and justificative — on an AC-130 by the finale of this decennary . ”
Webb says that theAirborne Laser programthat attempted to out a defensive optical maser on the nose of a 747 jetliner had change state defending team officials off of the engineering . It never made it past it to the stage of really producing an operable aircraft and it was scratch in 2012 .
https://jalopnik.com/the-airborne-laser-may-rise-again-but-it-will-look-very-1724892313
But accord to Webb , things have changed and as applied science has improved , the project could get off the ground soon . First , “ a relatively dispirited - kilowatt optical maser ” will need to be tested and the money isreportedlyalready in property for that .
Lasers have been demonstrated by Boeing to be capable ofburning a holein the hood of a truck and the U.S.S. Ponce was afford permit to use its Laser Weapon System ( LaWS ) prototype as a defensive weapon . Likewise , the plan is for C-130 airplane to use the artillery as anti - ballistic projectile defense that could be up to of queasy standard .
Webb also acknowledged that “ At some head … a policy discussion is hold up to have to be had on where and how can you use a laser where and how can you not . ”
With the White House call for anincrease of $ 54 billionto the defense budget , it ’s possible that the project could get the funding . But that budget will have to get past congress and everyone in government is reasonably tied up with investigatingendless scandalsright now .
[ Defense One ]
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