Noah Shachtman writes:
American warships could be armed with disposable laser weapons within five years, if a plan by U.S. Navy scientists works as promised. Michael Wardlaw, with the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division, has proposed that the Navy use a battery of solid-state, one-shot-only lasers to zap enemy boats and defend against missile attacks. This Expendable Modular High Energy Laser (EMHEL), Jane’s Defence Weekly reports, would use a brick of 120, meter-long laser modules that could fire individually or in one giant pulse.
“Each individual module would contain a single-shot laser capable of firing 10 kilojoules of energy at peak power in a single burst,” Jane’s notes. “With such a system, Wardlaw said, ‘you can drill through 6in [15cm] of steel in under a second.'”