The US Navy announced it is two years away from active laser weapons on its warships.

 ABC News reported, “The weapons are designed to track and fire on threats to a warship that could include anything from armed drones and small ‘swarm’ boats to incoming missiles and aircraft.”

A directed-energy weapon, such as a laser, shoots energy in an aimed direction without using a projectile such as a missile or a round fired from a cannon.

Laser weapons usually generate brief high-energy pulses. A one megajoule laser pulse delivers roughly the same energy as 200 grams of high explosive, and has the same basic effect on a target. The primary damage mechanism is mechanical shear, caused by reaction when the surface of the target is explosively evaporated

In May 2012, Scientific American.com said, “In a grainy, black-and-white video that looks like a home movie of a UFO attack a sleek aircraft streaks through the sky one minute, only to burst into flames the next and plummet into the sea.  … The Phalanx—a rapid-fire, computer-controlled, radar-guided gun system—used electro-optical tracking and radio frequency sensors to provide range data to the LaWS, which is made up of six solid-state lasers with an output of 32 kilowatts that simultaneously focus on a target.”

This weapon, of course, will make China’s aircraft carrier killer missile obsolete only a few years after China developed it. On December 27, 2010, Washington Times.com reported, “China’s military is deploying a new anti-ship ballistic missile that can sink U.S. aircraft carriers.”

The country with the most advanced weapons usually rules the battle field. The Chinese, for example, did it for centuries with rockets, napalm and the simple stirrup for riding horses. Once China’s northern enemies, the Mongolians, had these weapons too, China was conquered and Kublai Khan founded the Yuan Dynasty that ruled China 1279 – 1368 AD.

Discover War – the Waiting

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

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