News, Weren’t We Supposed to Have Laser Guns by Now? (power, electric)
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The Navy on Monday announced plans to defend its ships in the Persian Gulf by equipping one with a laser. We’ve been hearing about laser warfare for decades, but this is the first deployment of a solid-state laser weapon. Why has it taken so long to develop deployable laser weapons?
Because big guns make a more satisfying noise. Play a per-recorded howitzer soundtrack when you fire the laser for the military and they'll buy into it.
Because lasers strong enough to make messes take a lot of electricty while "old school" guns and bombs keep their energy for firing and blowing stuff up neatly stored in the shell/missle.
Laser sounds cool, but as the other poster mentioned, it has its drawbacks. The electrical power required to generate it is immense and the beam needs to stay on target for some time. It doesn't destroy things in a blast like a bomb or shell. The real adaptation was meant for anti missile defense, but the electrical requirements dictate a power station near the laser gun.
Handheld lasers would be useless unless the person had a massive source of power to provide the capacitors to charge fast enough to get a high powered shot off which is why it is on ships and was fitted to a 747 but took up most of the plane.
A hopped up microwave ADSII set to kill would be a better choice but then again cooking people with microwaves is brutal over a bullet or Air strike. Plus a rail gun make sense as a alternative to a missile strike when hyper-sonic speed is needed to take out a enemy target or plane and a giant metal rod shot at Mach 15 is pretty devastating and is just a large heavy magnetic steel projectile and works like a current projectile firing weapon and finally takes us beyond what was based on the Canon using a explosive to propel the projectile out of the barrel and is a step beyond gunpowder or HE used to propel the shell or projectile out of the barrel.
Lasers? Hell, the gun nuts aren't done find ways to throw lead rocks at each other.
The caveman would be proud!
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