US Navy tests shipborne laser gun
APR 12, 2011
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.025213
BBC : For the first time, a US Navy vessel has disabled a nearby boat by firing a laser at its engines, setting them on fire. The test, which took place recently off the California coast, involved solid-state lasers, rather than the bulky chemical laser used in previous tests. The laser owes its potency to the ease with which individual solid-state lasers can be arrayed to produce a single weapon. Laser weapons that blind people are banned under Protocol IV of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons .
© 2011. American Institute of Physics