

Israelis may be suing their government, to get a chemical laser cannon, ASAP. But the project that many observers believe offers the best hope of producing a working laser weapon is making steady progress. A battlefield-strength version of the system may be ready for testing by the end of the year, according to its maker, Northrop Grumman.

Chemical-powered lasers, like the one the Israelis are hoping to get, produce massively-powerful laser blasts. But the noxious stuff needed to produce all that power makes the weapons pretty much impractical in a war zone. So the Defense Department is pouring money into solid-state, electric lasers instead. In the past, these beams have been too weak to do soldiers much good. But Northrop appears to be getting close to hitting what's widely considered to be the threshold for military-grade beams: 100 kilowatts.

Northrop's system combines a bunch of smaller lasers into a bigger one – Death Star-style, sorta. The first of these eight "laser chains" is now done, the company says. The rest will be ready for 100 kilowatt testing before 2008 is over.

"That will be a significant milestone; but there will still be some way to go before Northrop's concepts of laser air-defense vehicles or fighter raygun pods reach service," Lew Page notes. "Such vehicles will need at least half a megawatt of electric power (the Northrop gear's electro-optical efficiency is quoted at 20 per cent), so they won't be small or lightweight: more like heavy battle tanks, nowadays rather out of fashion."

According to a new survey by the Center for Defense Information, the Pentagon is asking for $177 million in unclassified energy weapons research in 2009. The size of the classified budget is unknown.

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