Lockheed Martin is raising the bar on its 300-kW laser weapon system, announcing it is scaling it up to 500 kW under a new contract from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering (OUSD (R&E)).
With the ability to intercept targets at the speed of light and an operating cost of a dollar a shot, lasers have been very attractive in military circles for six decades. However, getting practical laser weapons to the battlefield has been a long time coming because of the need to make such systems light enough, compact enough, robust enough, and powerful enough for the job.
Have 46,000-year-old Nematodes in suspended animation really been resuscitated?
As part of the second phase of the High Energy Laser Scaling Initiative (HELSI), Lockheed is pushing to increase the output of its solid-state laser weapon to 500 kW, giving it the capacity to take on larger, harder, and more maneuverable threats.
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