The Slashgear blog reveals DARPA’s new plan to convert decent, respectable fighter jets into pew-pew videogame laser gunships:
One of the laser projects is called the High Energy Liquid Laser Defense System (HELLADS) and the other is the Aero-Adaptive/Aero-Optic Beam Control (ABC). HELLADS … centers on a 150-kilowatt system.
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The HELLADS laser system is small enough to be used on ground and in the air aboard aircraft. The project was to create a laser weighing less than 5 kg per kilowatt able to fit into a total space of three cubic meters. ABC is a laser designed as a defensive weapon. It would be a small laser current mounted on aircraft or other vehicles used to shoot down incoming missiles.
It’s only a matter of time before these things are mounted on unmanned drones and pilots start playing real-world Defender with the laser-gun flying robots.