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Thursday, July 22, 2010

#Battlefield #Lasers Blast Airborne Drones in #Raytheon, #Navy Test

The original Star Wars is starting to look like Flash Gorden, namely a technology treasure trove doomed never to see the light of day--but Raytheon and the Navy think they can at least bring battlefield lasers into the realm of reality. Look for both sea- and land-based battlefield lasers within seven years. R.C.J.



Here is what EETimes says about battlefield lasers: Star Wars-era battlefield lasers successfully shot down unmanned areal vehicles (UAVs) during a simulated attack using the U.S. Navy's Laser Weapon System (LaWS) guided by Raytheon's Phalanx Close-in Weapon System (CIWS) sensor suite. LaWS combines six solid-state lasers that simultaneously focused on the moving targets in the test to destroy them in seconds, outperforming previous tests that focused on stationary targets, according to Raytheon...
Full Text: http://bit.ly/NextGenLog-di9T