Guns Without Bullets: The Advancements of Lasers in The U.S. Military

The United States Military is one of the most powerful militaries in the world, it’s hard to believe that in only 300 years they have gone from muskets to experimenting with lasers. “Lasers, ”you may ask, ”what do you mean by lasers?” Well, I mean lasers you know, the phew-phew type like you see in Star Wars or Star Trek. That is my first topic, lasers don’t phew-phew they warm up for a little bit then they pick their target and then they fire a continuous beam of energy into what the want to destroy. Real life lasers are more like how the Death Star operates. A little cool-down/warm-up cycle then aiming and then firing. Another, thing Sci-Fi gets wrong a lot is that you can see a laser, lasers in real life are invisible unless something opaque gets in front of them like the target. Okay, now that we have laser conspiracies out of the way we can talk about what the U.S. Military is doing with lasers. One of the main projects that the Air Force is working on is the YAL-1A. The YAL is built on the chassis of the Boeing 747 and its job is to monitor enemy missiles. If an enemy missile is to take off the YAL has a large Chemical Oxygen Iodine Laser (Coil) that blasts a hole through the missiles critical systems rendering it useless. The U.S. Military doesn’t even stop there the U.S. Navy has even installed a layer on the Austin-class amphibious transport dock the USS Ponce. The laser has many times demonstrated its destructive power. The U.S. Army is also getting into the laser frenzy with their new Striker A.P.C.( Armored Personnel Carrier ) with a laser on top. These new vehicles, the Army hopes, will be deployed by 2023 for use as air defence. The Navy goes even farther by, recently, proclaiming that they will be putting lasers on their newest class of aircraft carriers, the Gerald R. Ford class. All-in-all the United States Military is constantly evolving due to the evolving threats of the world, lasers are just a chink in the chain, but a really cool one at that. I guess what I am trying to say is that that tech is important, but the people behind it are more important.