{"id":420658,"date":"2021-10-30T08:45:11","date_gmt":"2021-10-30T06:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=420658"},"modified":"2021-10-30T08:46:36","modified_gmt":"2021-10-30T06:46:36","slug":"us-military-testing-powerful-new-lethal-laser-weapon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/420658-us-military-testing-powerful-new-lethal-laser-weapon.html","title":{"rendered":"US military testing powerful new lethal laser weapon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The United States government has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ga.com\/ga-ems-and-boeing-team-to-develop-300kw-class-helws-prototype-for-us-army\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>awarded a contract<\/strong><\/a> to General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) and Boeing to develop a powerful laser weapon for the US military.<\/p>\n<p>The Distributed Gain High Energy Laser Weapon System will deliver a 300kW-class distributed gain laser with an integrated Boeing beam director.<\/p>\n<p>GA-EMS president Scott Forney said the high-power, compact laser weapon prototype will produce a lethal output &#8220;greater than anything fielded to date&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This technology represents a leap-ahead capability for air and missile defence that is necessary to support the Army&#8217;s modernisation efforts and defeat next-generation threats in a multi-domain battlespace,&#8221; Forney said.<\/p>\n<p>The US Army plans to demonstrate the weapon&#8217;s capabilities sometime in 2022.<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2295435-us-army-will-test-its-most-powerful-laser-weapon-ever-next-year\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>The New Scientist<\/strong><\/a>, the new system would be a significant improvement over the lasers the military previously used.<\/p>\n<p>The experimental Laser Weapon System (LaWS) the US Navy deployed on the USS Ponce in 2014 reportedly outputs a 30kW beam,\u00a0powerful enough to shoot down drones and small aircraft.<\/p>\n<p>The New Scientist said that current laser weapons typically combined output from multiple industrial fibre lasers into one beam.<\/p>\n<p>The new weapon will use large slabs of glass connected in series instead of fibre lasers.<\/p>\n<p>Justin Bronk from the UK security think tank Royal United Services said this configuration would be able to shoot down bigger targets and take down multiple targets more quickly.<\/p>\n<p>That means it could defend against ballistic and cruise missiles, in addition to helicopters, aircraft, and drones.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Now read: <a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/418766-new-law-puts-restrictions-on-private-security-companies-in-south-africa-and-its-bad-news.html\" rel=\"bookmark\">New law puts restrictions on private security companies in South Africa \u2014 and it&#8217;s bad news<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The US Army will demonstrate a powerful new laser weapon system capable of shooting down missiles, aircraft, helicopters, and drones. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":420660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[8789,73902,73900,32720,5672],"class_list":["post-420658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-boeing","tag-general-atomics-electromagnetic-systems","tag-laser-weapon-system-laws","tag-us-army","tag-us-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420658"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}