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The Register (UK)Rayguns are, um, on fire lately, with the US Army dishing out early contracts in its monster truck laser cannon race, Boeing planning a rather unimpressive blaster-equipped Humvee and the famous American nuke-toasting jumbo jet continuing to make headlines. Now the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon war-nerd bureau which loves nothing better than a long shot, has joined in.
In a solicitation issued on Tuesday, the military boffins are looking for nothing less than "a Revolution in Fibre Lasers (RIFL)".
Fibre lasers are one of the types of solid-state laser, as opposed to chemically fuelled ones not usually seen as practical for mounting in anything but cargo planes. Fibre lasers generate a coherent beam using a specially made optical fibre, usually (in higher power applications) with cladding layers wrapped around the central core.
American arms giant Raytheon, working with the US forces and Sandia National Lab, told Wired magazine it has used a bundle of fibre lasers with a total strength of 20 kilowatts to explode mortar bombs very quickly in tests - so quickly that it might be possible to build a system that could shoot down enemy salvos in mid-air. Most raygun fanciers, though, reckon that 100kW is the minimum for a proper blaster cannon which would be fun to have.
Read more:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/23/darpa_laser_blast_cannon_plan/