For the people who watch shows like Future weapons, here’s some good news. Boeing has signed a deal with US Army recently. The Boeing company would be developing truck mounted laser canons. So far we have had truck mounted regular cannons and missile launchers, but no laser cannons. This will be the first of its kind.
This will be part of the US Army’s High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator project. The deal is worth about 7 million dollars. Part of the project will deal with mounting this heavy duty cannon on top of a 20 tonne tactical truck. The other part is to test out the newly developed beam control system. The US Army plans on mounting this laser system on trucks, hummers, jeeps and choppers.
Doesn’t this sound like some kind of space age technology out of Star trek? I think it does. This will take weapons to a new arena and will probably give the US Army the edge over other forces of the world. The General Manager of Boeing Missile Defense systems Pat Shanahan agrees:
We consider this program an important win for Boeing because it supports a cornerstone of the Army’s high-energy laser program
Eventually, the project costs will go up to about 50 million dollars due to the further enhancements involved in the project. A system like this should be able to pin point an incoming mortar shell and split it into half. At least, that’s what the project is geared towards.
Image Credits: Newlaunches, Strangehorizons
