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Like so many other triumphs of science, the laser has become a double-edged sword. Capable of producing an enormously powerful, very narrow beam of light, it has been used to perform delicate surgery on the retina of the eye, puncture tiny holes in material as hard as diamonds, produce three-dimensional pictures called holograms, and even measure the distance from earth to the moon (with an error of only a few inches). But the laser can also be used for less peaceful purposes. It provides, for example, the guiding light for the Air Force's extremely accurate "smart...
What may well be the most important goal of military researchers at Kirtland and elsewhere is to project a laser beam that could intercept and destroy a fast-moving intercontinental ballistic missile when it is most vulnerable-before the booster separates from the warhead. Long a subject of fanciful speculation, such long-range rays may soon become possible because of recent technological breakthroughs like high-energy gas dynamic lasers, which produce beams of laser light when their internal gases are rapidly heated, expanded and forced through tiny nozzles at supersonic speeds. Some new lasers have given off bursts of power...
...optical warfare," nearly double the figure of two years ago. The Russians, also interested in laser weaponry, are thought to be spending even more, and may well be ahead of the U.S. research effort. Only a few months ago, Soviet scientists announced that they had generated a pulsed laser beam of 300 billion watts...
Proverbial Arrow. The very nature of laser light gives it a potential for destruction. Unlike ordinary light, which consists of a chaotic jumble of electromagnetic waves of different frequencies, laser beams are composed of light waves of only a single frequency. These waves are not only parallel but are also in phase: their crests and troughs coincide and reinforce each other, making it possible to produce an extremely intense and concentrated beam. In practice, however, lasers have drawbacks. The beams collide with molecules in the atmosphere and weaken over long distances; like sunlight, they may be blocked by clouds...
Such sophisticated weaponry is probably at least a decade away, but more down-to-earth military uses of the laser may be much closer at hand. TRW Systems in Redondo Beach, Calif., for instance, is working on a portable chemical laser (which produces a beam from the energy released in the reaction of two or more chemicals) that could be carried into battle by a unit of only three men. Aimed like a rifle, it would silently burn a fatal, quarter-inch-wide hole in the body of an enemy soldier up to five miles away. "Once...