HELLADS
Latest
The Air Force will have combat lasers on its war planes by 2020
The Army has its HEL-MD (not to mention is working on GI Joe-style rifles and minesweepers); the Navy put a battleship-mounted railgun aboard the USS Ponce; and within the next five years, the Air Force expects to have laser weapons of its very own. These armaments, dubbed directed-energy weapons pods, will be mounted on American warplanes and serve to burn missiles, UAVs -- even other combat aircraft -- clean out of the sky. "I believe we'll have a directed energy pod we can put on a fighter plane very soon," Air Force General Hawk Carlisle said at a Fifth-Generation Warfare lecture during the Air Force Association Air & Space conference earlier this week. "That day is a lot closer than I think a lot of people think it is."
