Ah, They're 21st Century Style Death Rays

[Tuckerfan]

Boeing builds a C-130 Hercules “laser gunship.”

Airliners’n’deathware behemoth Boeing announced yesterday that it had fitted a high-energy laser cannon aboard a C-130 Hercules military cargo plane, creating a “Laser Gunship”. The company expects to commence blasting “mission representative” test targets next year, firing deadly energy bolts from a “rotating turret that extends through the aircraft’s belly”.

The ATL Hercules blaster-weapon is seen more as a raygun for every day, zapping things or people during more routine battles as opposed to saving the USA from atomic destruction. This should let it operate closer to its targets, reducing the weight of the system and thus the size of aeroplane required to carry it.

It looks neat 'n all, but this really strikes me as just an excuse to spend money. Huge amounts of research is going to have to be done in areas like power generation and storage, before this becomes a practical weapon. Meanwhile, there’s going to be lots of duplication of effort on the civilian side of things, as people try to figure out better ways of powering alternative fueled vehicles, with little sharing of information because the military project’s classified technology.

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

But there will likely be spinoff tech.

And perhaps that is the idea.