Weapons-Grade Lasers By The End Of '08?

From Wired Magazine:

Defense contractor Northrop Grumman is promising the Pentagon that it'll have weapons-grade electric lasers by the end of 2008. Which means honest-to-goodness energy weapons might actually become a military reality, after decades of fruitless searching.

For the longest time, the military concentrated on developing chemical-powered lasers. They produced massively powerful laser blasts. But the noxious stuff needed to produce all that power makes the weapons all-but-impractical in a war zone. So the Defense Department shifted gears, and poured money into solid-state, electric lasers instead. Under its Joint High-Powered Solid State Laser (JHPSSL) project, these beams -- once considered too weak to do soldiers much good -- have made steady progress. Now Northrop is promising to hit what's widely considered to be the threshold for military-strength beams: 100 kilowatts. With that much energy, lasers should be able to knock mortars and rockets out of the sky.

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My Comment: We shall see .....