This system was originally designed several years back to be used to locate and destroy unexploded ordnance on Air Force runways. It worked by taking digital images of the area around the APC and performing pattern recognition searches against various types of ordnance, with the intent of locating partially buried or concealed ordnance so it could be destroyed. I've seen videotape of some bombs being destroyed with the system, rather cool, the mechanism of heating the bomb casing and the material underneath it makes it less likely that the ordnance will go high order, reducing the amount of damage it does when it detonates. Current mechanisms are to either use rifles or send some poor sap out there to place a small explosive charge next to the ordnance to detonate it, as a lot of air-delivered ordnance has anti-handling devices built in (not all unexploded ordnance is duds, the US has some cluster bomb units that have delayed detonation, or which function as land mines for a period of time after being deployed). Changes in laser type and battery capacity (as well as discovering that they overestimated how much laser was needed originally) allowed them to reduce the size to what could be mounted on a Humvee.
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This system was originally designed several years back to be used to locate and destroy unexploded ordnance on Air Force runways. It worked by taking digital images of the area around the APC and performing pattern recognition searches against various types of ordnance, with the intent of locating partially buried or concealed ordnance so it could be destroyed. I've seen videotape of some bombs being destroyed with the system, rather cool, the mechanism of heating the bomb casing and the material underneath it makes it less likely that the ordnance will go high order, reducing the amount of damage it does when it detonates. Current mechanisms are to either use rifles or send some poor sap out there to place a small explosive charge next to the ordnance to detonate it, as a lot of air-delivered ordnance has anti-handling devices built in (not all unexploded ordnance is duds, the US has some cluster bomb units that have delayed detonation, or which function as land mines for a period of time after being deployed). Changes in laser type and battery capacity (as well as discovering that they overestimated how much laser was needed originally) allowed them to reduce the size to what could be mounted on a Humvee.