popsci.com — Sounds too futuristic to be true? Check out the video of the Skyguard system taking out mortar rounds, artillery shells and rockets. Pretty cool and at $150 million a piece, Bill Gates might even pick one up for his place.
Dec 6, 2006 View in Crawl 4
foopirataDec 7, 2006
You mean, "goo"-fired by us-going in the right direction and "bad"-fired by them-coming in our direction?Sort of explains itself, no?
dracostimpyDec 7, 2006
Good point. Now we'll just have shiny missiles fired at us, and we'll only make things worse when the laser deflects back toward us or some stray group of mourning women and children since they're like a trailer park to our military tornado. Nudder point... developing such a powerful laser means that, before long, the technology will end up in enemy hands. So how do we stop enemies from using a similar technology as an offensive rather than defensive tool? Will we make a new missile that stops in midair to deflect the laser beam that the enemies are trying to use to shoot down our jets and missiles? Will all our airlines have to switch to shiny planes?
gregorypierceDec 7, 2006
This has actually been around for a while. The Israelis have deployed systems of this type around their nuclear facilities. THEL is one of the great things to come out of the WhiteSands tests, but the biggest problem for it is fuel consumption. While cost per shot is VERY reasonable, storage of fuel for the laser has made a truly mobile variant largely impractical. And no this isn't fake, THEL is quite real and has been around for quite some time. Using it at an airport is a great use case for it as its unlikely to encounter considerable volleys of missiles that could overwhelm the tracking and laser system.
darkamster07Dec 7, 2006
they had these like 5 years ago, they were so useless that even when they put tracking chips on the missiles themselves, they still could not be shot down by the lasers.
resplenceDec 8, 2006
At least the music in the video gets you pumped.
archimboldoDec 9, 2006
The networked software for SkyGuard is deployed worldwide and is called SkyNet. I understand they have been having virus problems with it lately.
dhughesDec 10, 2006
As these mobile combat lasers develop more and need more power I wonder if they will be nuclear powered like Submarines and Aircraft Carriers. I think it needs more power, it took a long time to burn those projectiles. I know the video was in slow motion but it still seemed to take a long time. Something that can zap very fast would be good then it can take out many projectiles.