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US military's RAY-GUN truck BLASTS DRONES, mortars OUT OF THE SKY
The Register ^ | 13th December 2013 | Iain Thomson

Posted on 12/14/2013 9:38:08 PM PST by pluvmantelo

In month-long tests at the White Sands missile range in new Mexico, the High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HELMD) blew up 90 mortar rounds and several aerial drones using a 10kW-class laser mounted on an armored vehicle.

"We had considerable success," Terry Bauer, Army program manager for HELMD told the Christian Science Monitor.

The HELMD system uses radar (or as the military calls it "Enhanced Multi Mode Radar") to track targets and focus the laser on them. Once locked, the laser raises the temperature of mortar shells to the point where the explosives they contain combust.

"It falls as a single piece of metal with a little bit of shrapnel. It basically falls where it was going to fall, but it doesn’t explode when it hits the ground," Bauer said. “We turn it into a rock, basically.”


TOPICS: Military/Veterans
KEYWORDS: laser; laserweapons
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To: volunbeer

And if you need optical imagery, weather may inhibit a satellite more than a drone...


21 posted on 12/15/2013 4:55:09 AM PST by Phinneous
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To: VerySadAmerican

The folks in Afghanistan have been doing OK since 1979.


22 posted on 12/15/2013 5:10:24 AM PST by Vermont Lt (If you want to keep your dignity, you can keep it. Period........ Just kidding, you can't keep it.)
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To: pluvmantelo

Well, they’ve got it. Now it starts the miniaturization process. In a few years they will be to CCW rules.


23 posted on 12/15/2013 5:16:33 AM PST by arthurus (Read Hazlitt's Economics In One Lesson ONLINEhttp://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/)
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To: pluvmantelo

I want one, don’t see it on Amazon or EBay yet.


24 posted on 12/15/2013 5:21:00 AM PST by ThePatriotsFlag (...and to the Republic for which it stood.)
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To: pluvmantelo
"A highly visible laser truck is going to be the first thing any enemy will want to take out."

The fix for that is, of course, decoys. If you can get the enemy to focus all of its resources on a few decoys, you find out where he is and what he's got with just a few cardboard boxes.

25 posted on 12/15/2013 5:54:45 AM PST by norwaypinesavage (Galileo: In science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of one individual)
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