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The original Star Wars is starting to look like Flash Gorden, namely a technology treasure trove doomed never to see the light of day–but Raytheon and the Navy think they can at least bring battlefield lasers into the realm of reality. Look for both sea- and land-based battlefield lasers within seven years. R.C.J.

Here is what EETimes says about battlefield lasers: Star Wars-era battlefield lasers successfully shot down unmanned areal vehicles (UAVs) during a simulated attack using the U.S. Navy’s Laser Weapon System (LaWS) guided by Raytheon’s Phalanx Close-in Weapon System (CIWS) sensor suite. LaWS combines six solid-state lasers that simultaneously focused on the moving targets in the test to destroy them in seconds, outperforming previous tests that focused on stationary targets, according to Raytheon…
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