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See Energy Weapon for non-directional energy weapons. Some of these weapons are known as death rays or '''rayguns''' and are usually portrayed as projecting energy at a person or object in order to kill or destroy. Some lethal directed-energy weapons are under Active Research and development, but most examples of such weapons appear in Science Fiction . Types of directed-energy weapons are:- ORDINARY LIGHT
LASERS Lasers are very well known in Science Fiction as a type of raygun. In the real world, lasers are often used for sighting, ranging and targeting for guns; but the laser beam is not the source of the weapon's firepower. Laser weapons usually generate brief high-energy pulses. A million Joule s delivered as a laser pulse is roughly the same energy as 200g of high explosive, and has the same basic effect on a target. The primary damage mechanism is mechanical shear, caused by reaction (like a Rocket ) when the surface of the target is explosively evaporated. Most existing weaponized lasers are gas dynamic lasers. Fuel, or a powerful turbine, pushes the lasing media through a circuit or series of orifices. The high-pressures and heating cause the medium to form a plasma and lase. A big difficulty with these systems is preserving the high-precision mirrors and windows of the laser resonating cavity. Most systems use a low-powered "oscillator" laser to generate a coherent wave, and then amplify it. Some experimental laser amplifiers do not use windows or mirrors, but have open orifices, which cannot be destroyed by high energies. Tactical considerations Lasers have two advantages:
Since lasers can defeat artillery and missile attacks, any group fielding an effective laser system will gain decisive advantages in ground, air and space combat. Under Radar control, lasers have shot artillery shells in flight, including mortar rounds. This suggests that a primary application of lasers should be as part of a defensive system. The main difficulty with currently practical lasers is the high expense and fragility of their mirrors and mirror-pointing systems. Some believe that Mirror s or other countermeasures can reduce the effectiveness of high energy lasers. This has not been demonstrated. Small defects in mirrors absorb energy, and the defects rapidly expand across the surface. Protective mirroring on the outside of a target could easily have its effectiveness compromised by incidental damage and by dust and dirt on its surface. Problems with lasers Blooming Laser beams begin to cause Plasma breakdown in the air at power densities of around a Megajoule per square centimeter. This effect, called "blooming", causes the laser to defocus and to lose energy to the atmosphere. It can be more severe if there is fog or smoke or dust in the air. There are several ways to inhibit blooming:
Evaporated target material shading the target Another problem with weaponized lasers is that the evaporated material from the surface of the target begins to shade the surface. There are several approaches to this problem:
High power consumption One major problem with laser weapons (and directed-energy weapons in general) is their high energy requirements. Existing methods of storing, conducting, transforming and directing energy are inadequate to produce a convenient hand-held weapon. Existing lasers need much energy and bulky cooling equipment because they are inefficient and waste much energy as heat. This problem of storing and/or supplying energy in the form of electricity is offset in Chemical Laser s by using energy released in a suitable Chemical Reaction instead of electrical energy. Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser ( Hydrogen Peroxide with Iodine ) and Deuterium Fluoride Laser (atomic Fluorine reacting with Deuterium ) are two examples of laser types capable of megawatt-range output of a continuous beam. Storing and transporting the chemical fuel presents its own problems with these lasers, and the problems of cooling and overall inefficiency remain. The beam being absorbed by obscuration in the air A laser beam or particle beam passing through air can be absorbed or scattered by rain, snow, dust, fog, smoke, or suchlike that a bullet would easily brush aside. This effect adds to blooming. Electrolaser An electrolaser lets Blooming occur, and then sends a powerful electric current down the conducting Ionize d track of plasma so formed, somewhat like Lightning . It functions as a giant high energy long-distance version of the Taser or Stun Gun . Alternating Current is sent through a series of step-up Transformer s, increasing the Voltage and decreasing the Amperage . The final voltage may be between 108 and 109 volts. This current is fed into the laser beam. To complete the electric circuit, there should be either a second laser beam, or a Ground return from the target to the last transformer in the step-up series. This Electric Arc could kill or incapacitate a human target through Electrocution . Any Electric or Electronic devices in the target may be seriously damaged, disabled or destroyed. Because it relies on the blooming effect, there must be air or some other gas between the electrolaser weapon and the target. Electrolasers often occur in .
::In 1985 the U.S. Navy tested an electrolaser. Its targets were missiles and aircraft. This device was known as the Phoenix project within the Strategic Defense Initiative research program. It was first proved by experiment at long range in 1985. :This report may have referred to an early test of MIRACL .
Microwave lasers Microwave guns powerful enough to injure humans are possible.
Low-powered lasers There is an imitation Shotgun which fires a low-powered laser beam at a target which is covered with reflective 90° corners designed to send the beam back where it came from to be detected by a detector on the gun. This is only for target practice without using up ammunition; it has the disadvantage (for a shotgun user) that the beam travels at the Speed Of Light and in a straight line, without teaching the shooter to allow for the effects of wind deflecting the fired shot and the target moving while the shot travels. Laser dazzlers See Also: Dazzler (weapon) Dazzlers generate a beam of intense visible light, intended to temporarily blind and/or disorient the enemy. Optionally they can operate in infrared, when their targets are electronic sensors. Most of the contemporary systems are man-portable, and operate in either red (a Semiconductor Laser ) or green (a DPSS Laser ) part of the spectrum. Laser designators See Also: Laser designator Laser designators are usually infrared lasers used for selective illumination of a target for navigating a Laser Guided Bomb . They are relatively high-power, often using a solid-state laser, eg. Nd:YAG or Eu:YAG. Pulsed Energy Projectile See Also: Pulsed Energy Projectile Pulsed Energy Projectile or PEP systems emits an infrared laser pulse which creates rapidly expanding Plasma when meeting the target. The resulting sound, shock and electromagnetic waves stun the target and cause pain and temporary paralysis. The weapon is under development and is intended to be used as a non-lethal weapon in crowd control. THEL See Also: Tactical High Energy Laser THEL (Tactical High Energy Laser) is a weaponized Deuterium Fluoride Laser developed in a joint research project of Israel and the U.S. . It is designed to shoot down aircraft and missiles. Airborne Laser See Also: Airborne Laser The U.S. Air Force 's Airborne Laser , or Advanced Tactical Laser , is a plan to mount a CO2 Gas Laser or COIL Chemical Laser on a modified Boeing 747 and use it to shoot down Missiles . Ultraviolet laser HSV Technologies of San Diego is developing a laser weapon to paralyze animals (testing for later use on humans) by an electric charge generated by the laser beam. It is described as an Ultraviolet laser and not an Electrolaser . ELECTRIC BEAM IN A VACUUM In a . PARTICLE BEAM WEAPONS Particle Beam Weapon s include charged and neutral, endoatmospheric and exoatmospheric. Particle Beam s as beam weapons are theoretically possible, but practical weapons have not been demonstrated. Certain types of particle beams have the advantage of being self-focusing in the atmosphere. Blooming is not limited to lasers, but is also a problem in particle beam weapons. Energy that would otherwise be focused on the target spreads out; the beam becomes less effective.
PLASMA WEAPONS Plasma weapons fire a beam or bolt of Plasma , which is excited matter consisting of electrons and also protons or nuclei. Examples are:
The Plasma Rifle is a staple of science fiction. There may have been influence from the real Plasma Torch used to cut metal. SONIC AND ULTRASONIC BEAM WEAPONS See Sonic Weaponry . RAYGUNS: DIRECTED-ENERGY WEAPONS IN FICTION See Raygun . HISTORY Mythology Before modern technology developed, many Mythologies described gods or demons using weapons that make Lightning , such as Zeus 's and Jupiter 's Thunderbolt s, Thor 's hammer Mjolnir , and the Hindu god Indra 's Spear (the Vajrā ). Ancient inventors According to Mythology , the concept of the "burning mirror" or ''death ray'' began with Archimedes who created a mirror with an adjustable focal length (or more likely, a series of mirrors focused on a common point) to focus sunlight on ships of the Roman fleet as they invaded Syracuse , setting them on fire. Historians point out that the earliest accounts of the battle did not mention a "burning mirror", but merely stated that Archimedes' ingenuity combined with a way to hurl fire were relevant to the victory. A Byzantine writer hundreds of years later is suggested to have imagined this 2200-year-old death ray, which is attributed to Archimedes. Some attempts to replicate this feat have had some success (though not the attempt by the MythBusters television program). In particular, an experiment by students at MIT showed that a mirror-based weapon was at least possible, if not necessarily practical. Grindell-Matthews After the astonishing Technological Advancement During World War I , many such schemes began to appear credible. Harry Grindell-Matthews tried to sell such a ray to the British Air Ministry after that war. He failed to appear to demonstrate his apparatus, however. It was apparently taken to France but has not resurfaced, leading to various Conspiracy Theory ideas about what might have happened to it, or who might have developed it later. Radar may be a by-product of this research. Tesla Nikola Tesla (1856 - 1943) was a noted inventor, scientist and electrical engineer. He invented Tesla Coil s, transformers, Alternating Current electric Generator s and was a major early pioneer of Radio technology. He was also noted for making some outlandish claims, among them that he had developed what he called a " Teleforce " weapon, or death ray. This death ray would "send concentrated beams of particles through the free air, of such tremendous energy that they will bring down a fleet of 10,000 enemy airplanes at a distance of 250 miles from a defending nation's border and will cause armies of millions to drop dead in their tracks", as said in an article at the time. He offered this invention to the US War Department and to several European countries without success. Various Conspiracy Theories persist regarding the nature of this device and the whereabouts of Tesla's model or schematics for it. H.G. Wells H. G. Wells , in his book '' The War Of The Worlds '', for the first time used a "death ray" like laser in science fiction, in the form of the Martians " Heat-Ray ", which used a heat beam with many properties of the modern laser as a weapon. The weapon used a parabolic mirror to focus and direct a beam of pure heat that had many of the properties of light. This ultimately made 'death ray' like weapons popular in science fiction, which could have contributed to the interest real science has in directed-energy weapons. Nazis In the later phases of WWII , Nazi Germany increasingly put its hopes on research into technologically revolutionary Secret Weapon s, the '' Wunderwaffen ''. Among the directed-energy weapons the Nazis investigated were Sonic Weaponry , using parabolic reflectors to project sound waves of destructive force. This Nazi research included searching in India in the hope that some of the powerful weapons and Flying Craft described in the Mahabharata and other old Indian books were the real products of supposed ancient technology, rather than Mythology based on lightning and other destructive natural forces. Star Wars In the 1980s , Ronald Reagan revived the idea as a matter for public funding with his Strategic Defense Initiative program, which was immediately nicknamed "Star Wars", due to its objective to put Weapons In Space . It was proposed that lasers, perhaps including space-based X-ray lasers, could destroy ICBM s in flight. The program was heavily criticized on both theoretical and practical grounds. It is not clear whether this was part of a general plan to facilitate the Collapse Of The Soviet Union by misdirecting the Soviet s into investing in research that had no practical outputs (this was a common Cold War strategy on both sides). Enthusiasm for these ideas, and the Arms Race they implied, waned in the 1990s . Research proceeded, however, and by 2003 , this led to the THEL project, which is described Above . ENERGY DEVICES WHICH MAY BE CONFUSED WITH DIRECTED-ENERGY WEAPONS The term Electroshock Gun includes two sorts of weapons, but neither of these is a directed-energy weapon, despite its name:-
The real Thermic Lance is not a gun. Occasionally Science Fiction Author s misuse the name "thermic lance" to mean a Raygun . EXTERNAL LINKS
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