"A laser developed for military use is a few steps away from hitting a power threshold thought necessary to turn it into a battlefield weapon." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6380789.stm I wonder what kind of shield technology the US is developing or has created.
Polarized hull plating. I'm kidding, of course, but at the same time, note the italicized sentence at the end.... -=Steve=-
Here's an Australian page with several good photos of the US Air Force's YAL 1A laser battle station. It's a Boeing 747 with a giant chemical laser in the passenger compartment and lenses in a nose turret that's intended to focus a destructive energy beam on missiles and aircraft hundreds of miles away. http://www.ausairpower.net/dew-ebomb.html And here's the Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy Directorate. http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/ Lots of stuff to get you hot and cookin', like high-power microwave weapons. Imagine turning your microwave oven inside out so that it cooks whatever you point it at. Actually, these things apparently have a limited lethal range, but they are extremely unpleasant much further out, so they are being tested as non-lethal area-denial weapons. (It's probably not a barrel of laughs when the fluid in your eyeballs starts to heat up...) http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/FactSheets/ The AFRL's DED's motto is "Peace through Light". Here's a picture gallery of some of their projects. http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/Gallery/ They even have a rifle-sized (supposedly) non-lethal laser system designed to temporarily incapacitate enemy combatants, called Personnel Halting And Stimulation Response (PHASR). Set your phasrs on stun.
scotty! shields up! "British scientists are planning to see whether a Star Trek-style deflector shield could be built to protect astronauts from radiation. They argue that magnetic shields could be deployed around spacecraft and on the surfaces of planets to deflect harmful energised particles To create the deflector shield around a spacecraft or on the surface of a planet or moon, scientists need to generate a magnetic field and then fill it with ionised gas called plasma." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6567709.stm
Bill: "...a Boeing 747 with a giant chemical laser in the passenger compartment..." The passengers on that flight wondered how they got it through security.
