Word: beams
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...most high-power lasers the beams emerge from tubes containing mixtures of gases that have been "pumped" by intense bursts of electricity or flashes of light. If the gas in the tube is a helium-neon mix, the laser produces a red beam; a mercury-bromine mix yields a green streak, and other vapors generate other shades. All beams are made up of bundles of electromagnetic energy called photons. Because the photons barely spread out as they move, the beam can achieve pinpoint accuracy...
Moscow's prowess in beam weapons was confirmed nearly a year ago when U.S. intelligence noticed that the Soviets had begun building a large HEL, or possibly a prototype CPB generator, at Sary-Shagan, a weapons testing area near the Chinese border. The first authoritative press account of Soviet progress in beam weapons was put together by two editors of Aviation Week & Space Technology, Clarence Robinson Jr. and Philip Klass. They pointed out that at Sary-Shagan the Soviets are apparently using Pavlovski generators, highly advanced devices that convert the energy released by controlled blasts of explosives directly into...
Lasers are not perfect weapons. Fog and reflective surfaces tend to diffuse or deflect their beam; they cannot cripple a target unless they focus on it for a sizable fraction of a second-a long time in missile warfare. To accomplish this, precision aiming is required. A study conducted at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico shows that an aiming angle correct to less than six one hundred thousandths of one degree must be rapidly achieved if a laser is to hit a missile 5,000 km (3,100 miles) away. Such precision is beyond existing technology...
Research on particle beam weapons is under way at California's Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and at Los Alamos. There, scientists are dealing with a third kind of ray known as a neutral-particle beam. It is made up of particles that carry no electrical charge, such as neutral hydrogen atoms; it would be useful in the vacuum of space, where charged particles like protons and electrons tend to spread out. Development of particle beam weapons is perhaps as much as a decade behind HELS. But if the technology can be ironed out, these could be in military...
Congressional backing of beam-weapons development is growing. Support has come from Defense Secretary Harold Brown too, though he has ordered research on lasers to stress space missions instead of such closer-to-earth uses as defense of ships and missile sites...