The Jet Fighter Laser Cannon

fahrbot-bot sends in a Register piece about DARPA issuing the penultimate contract for what is intended to be a jet-mounted laser cannon. The Reg outdoes itself in a BOTEC involving downsizing to shark scale. "The US military will shortly issue a brace of contracts for 'refrigerator sized' laser blaster cannons. One of the deals will see a full-power ground prototype built which will be the final stage prior to America's first raygun-equipped jet fighter. ... If it scales down far enough, this would seem to put handheld HELL-guns within an order of magnitude of the striking power offered by conventional small-arms. A 9mm pistol bullet has about 750 joules muzzle energy: a 5kg portable HELL-ray weapon would put out this much energy in a blast less than a second long. ... A dolphin can carry a human being weighing up to 100kg along for a ride. A thoroughbred shark in good training can surely match this. Thus, we seem to be looking at practicable head-[laser] output in the 20-kilowatt range."

Comments

Dr. Evil

[hellercom]

I want those frickin Lasers on the sharks heads!

It is used correctly

[DragonWriter]

penultimate: last but one in a series of things; second to the last

[At risk of being modded redundant (but since none of the three posts I've seen making the same criticism of TFS have been yet, maybe not)]

This is exactly the sense in which it is used here, as is indicated by the language from TFA quoted in TFS: "the final stage prior to America's first raygun-equipped jet fighter."

So, in the series in which the last (or "ultimate") stage is the contract for a laser-armed jet fighter, the contract for the ground-based prototype is the second to last (or "penultimate") stage.

So, great job of knowing what "penultimate" means, but next time work on reading and understanding the post in which it is used before accusing someone of using it wrong.