Official News - page 7

REAL LIFE NEWS: US NAVY TO FUND RAYGUNS

by Hazed

The US Navy is putting nearly $10 million into the development of "man-made lightning" blaster weapons. Arizona-based company Ionatron announced this week that it has won a contract to develop its Laser Induced Plasma Channel (LIPC) technology. They report that electrical air-gap spark discharges - which is what will make the "man-made lightning" - are nothing new, but until now it has been hard to make them travel any distance, or indeed to aim them at a target. However, the firm's engineers reckon they've cracked that problem, using a laser pulse to burn a conductive tunnel through the air down which an electrical charge can easily jump.

One obvious use for this kind of technology would be to replace the existing Taser guns, which work like cattle-prods by firing wires into the body of the target. These rayguns could also deliver lethal jolts of lightning, too. Ionatron reckon their zappers could "replace guns as the weapon of choice in close-range defense".

Humans are not the only potential target for one of these weapons: electronic equipment is vulnerable to electrical pulses and vehicle-mounted LIPC blasters could fry the circuitry of roadside bombs or landmines. The US Army has turned down the chance to use them for this purpose in Iraq, but if the Navy-funded development comes to fruition we may well see these futuristic weapons deployed one day.

For more information about LIPC blasters, see the announcement on Ionatron's website.

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