The Naval Surface Warfare Center has proposed that the Navy use a battery of solid-state, one-shot-only lasers to zap enemy boats and defend against missile attacks. This Expendable Modular High Energy Laser (EMHEL), Jane's Defence Weekly reports, would use a brick of 120, meter-long laser modules that could fire individually or in one giant pulse."Each individual module would contain a single-shot laser capable of firing 10 kilojoules of energy at peak power in a single burst," Jane's notes. "With such a system, Wardlaw said, 'you can drill through 6in of steel in under a second.'"
Em Hell?
Navy plans disposable ray guns
Tags: doomed, robots
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8 Responses:
Perhaps it's meant to be used in the sentence "Give EMHEL."
Those wacky researchers and their acronyms.
And, after they abandon the system five years later, I'll buy some of those modules on the surplus market, undoubtedly.
Anyone want some extra-perforated Swiss cheese?
Looks at the facts: very high power, portable, limited firing time, unlimited range. All you'd need is a big spinning mirror and you could vaporize a human target from space.
What's ironic is we actually watched that on a whim over the long weekend. :)
Uh, to which of the three James Bond or (presumably many, though I can only think of Austin Powers at the moment) James Bond spoofs with orbital laser arrays are you referring?
;^>
What? You've never seen Real Genius?
I'm kinda sceptical about the whole "unlimited range" thing... I wonder at what range the beam will disperse to the point of only being useful to defrost bread.
This is not good.