Combat Lasers To Be Added To US Fighter Jets (nextbigfuture.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NextBigFuture: The US Air Force plans to arm its fleet of drones and fighter jets with high-tech laser weapons.... Ground testing of a laser weapon called the High Energy Laser, or HEL, was slated to take place last year at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, service officials said...

The Air Force plans to begin firing laser weapons from larger platforms such as C-17s and C-130s until the technological miniaturization efforts can configure the weapon to fire from fighter jets such as an F-15, F-16 or F-35. Instead of flying with six or seven missiles on an aircraft, a directed energy weapons system could fire thousands of shots using a single gallon of jet fuel.

Comments

Single gallon of jet fuel

[rmdingler]

Wiki: "A one megajoule laser pulse delivers roughly the same energy as 200 grams of high explosive, and has the same basic effect on a target."

Interesting stuff, and since we get a lot of our tech from gargantuan military budgets, it will be even more interesting to see what trickles down.

As opposed to weapons of destruction, lasers plausibly hold more promise disrupting communications in battle.

Re:And this isn't going to render random ...

[Pseudonymous Powers]

Yeah, I recognize that it's kind of the military's job to maximize their potential for destruction, but this definitely seems like one of those combat technologies that the whole world joins together to condemn after it's been in use for a couple of years, and the US is all like "you other countries are just jealous you don't have it", until one day they do have it, and then all of a sudden we're totally against it too, only we have to keep using it because now everybody's using it. Eventually everybody but Iran and North Korea signs a really unsatisfactory treaty and we all go home feeling bitter and aggrieved for generations to come.

I just hope the inevitable tribunal is available in audiobook format.