Truck Mounted Laser--For Shooting Down Rockets and Mortar Shells

Directed energy weapons will be more common on the battlefield, for shooting down incoming rockets, missiles--even artillery shells. Boeing was recently awarded a contract to develop a truck-mounted laser weapon for defending ground forces against incoming explosive ordnance, such as rockets, artillery, and mortar shells.

The High-Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator (HEL TD) Phase I contract contains options that would call for Boeing to build and test a significant component of the HEL TD system, comprised of the BCS integrated on a vehicle platform, and to refine requirements for the entire HEL TD system. The options would increase the contract cost to approximately $50 million.

The HEL TD program is intended to demonstrate that a mobile, solid-state laser weapon system can effectively counter rocket, artillery and mortar projectiles.

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Laser and particle beam weaponry will receive a large amount of military funding in the coming decades. Eventually, anti-satellite and anti ballistic missile weaponry will be mainly directed energy weapons, due to their accuracy and speed.

Personally, I would like one of these mounted on the back of my car, for dealing with tailgaters. Which suggests that humans may not be ready for advanced technology after all.

Seriously, directed energy weapons are another example of revolutionary weapons technology--including nano-weapons, bio-weapons, nuclear weapons, and electromagnetic weaponry--that may dramatically alter the way society is structured.

It is only a matter of time before a highly virulent, almost universally contagious engineered bio-weapon is loosed into modern populations. It is likewise only a matter of time before invisible yet deadly reproducing nano-weapons are allowed to escape into the environment.

Nuclear weapons technology is propagating deeply into militant Islam and other enemies of modern civilisation such as North Korea. Nukes will be used against large populations of civilians in surprise attacks. The repercussions from such attacks are frightening and unpredictable.

If directed energy weapons technology escapes into the general population of arms dealers, safe air travel may become impossible in certain parts of the world, such as Europe.

Electromagnetic weapons include electromagnetic pulse weapons (EMPs), electronically activated and timed conventional weaponry, hypersonic electromagnetic rail weaponry, electromagnetic ballistic cannons--including suborbital and orbit capable weapons.

And that is only scratching the surface.

Many of these weapons can make large areas of Earth's surface virtually uninhabitable to densely packed human settlements such as modern cities. Some of these weapons can lay waste to large areas of planted cropland, triggering mass hunger. And so on.

Given the modern predominance of narcissism, psychological neoteny, and academic lobotomy, it is unlikely that most modern persons will know how to react to the coming of these brave new weapons.

But you will know, won't you?

Update: Those of you who believe in the Peak Oil Theory are already thinking along these lines. Big cities with their surrounding suburbs and country bedroom communities full of commuters will not be viable in the age of ultra-expensive gasoline, and oil.

The jury is still out on that theory. Fossil fuels will certainly be more expensive, forcing some hard choices. But that is not really on the same level as mass-death from plague or out of control nano-killers, is it?

Consider looking into the Lifeboat Foundation, or the Society for Creative Apocalyptology. Think about surviving into the next level.