The goal of Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Mike Griffin, is making megawatt lasers, hypersonic weapons and directed energy weapons.
* megawatt lasers in space for space control
* 75 kilowatts on top of the Stryker armored vehicles
* 100 kilowatts on the Littoral Combat Ship
* a couple of hundred kilowatts on a KC-46 next-generation tanker so that it can self-defend
* high-powered microwaves to shut down electronics
* microwave emitters can be placed onto missiles or drones to get close to destroy key electronics
* microwave emitter with tens of kilowatts of power might be the best anti-satellite weapon we’ll ever have and could also be on missiles to counter hypersonic weapons
* hypersonic weapons will have to be destroyed at launch points
Artificial Intelligence is widely applicable. The Joint AI Center is not a research center but an applications center. Directed Energy weapons are still a research effort.
SOURCES- Booz Allen Directed Energy Summit, Breaking Defense
Written By Brian Wang. Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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That’s no moon…
Should build them. More powerful though. Then instead of putting them close to earth send them to venus. Turn them on as much as possible, and send some high intensity radiowave satellites to disrupt its ionosphere. Super heat venus atmosphere even more. Disturbed ionosphere and extra hot atmosphere should shed off more atmosphere. Turn off the weapons and satellites. After enough atmosphere is shed off. Air there should cool. Send humans there to explore and possibly terraform.
There’s noises that DARPA is back doing spaced based particle beam stuff with BMDO, and AvLeak is saying something about launching a reactor on a rocket (ROAR).
No
I suppose you could mount one heck of a laser weapon on the Moon, but half the Earth would be out of range at any given moment.
Does a nuclear reactor powering a space laser count as nuclear weapons in space?
I mean, does it fall under any previous treaties’s ban?
Yup, That’s what the Moon is for
That’s what I was thinking: You’re not going to have much of a duty cycle on a megawatt laser, if it’s powered by those tiny solar panels.
Making megawatt lasers is fairly easy. Powering, and cooling them is the problem.