WASHINGTON, DC, Dec 31 — “No kidding, our troops are getting genuine ray guns to use against an enemy attack. They are not the kind that Buck Rogers had back in the day; they are sophisticated defensive laser weapons,” reports the Association of Mature American Citizens [AMAC].
Lt. Gen. Paul Ostrowski recently revealed that by 2022 the Army will add a 50-kilowatt mobile laser weapon to its active duty arsenal. Ostrowski is the principal military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology. He says the lasers will be mounted on Stryker vehicles that combine the battlefield power of a tank and the speed and mobility of a Humvee. They’ll be capable of shooting down armed rockets and drones.
The Navy, too, is deploying laser weapons and “expects to have eight warships, in total, equipped with the Optical Dazzling Interdictor, or ODIN, a laser directed energy weapon system, within the next three years,” according to The War Zone. In fact, the online publication also reported that “One Arleigh Burke class destroyer, the USS Dewey, is already equipped with ODIN.”
The major benefit of laser weaponry is that it requires no ammunition, says Dean Weingarten, a 30-year veteran of the Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation unit. As he explained it in an Ammoland report: “Lasers don’t need to haul a lot of large cartridges around to be effective. Instead, you need power. Lasers take a lot of electrical power. If you can generate the power, you have a viable weapon. Much like tanks or aircraft, lasers need fuel. Run out of fuel, they do not work. Fuel is easier to transport and more versatile than artillery ammunition. It takes a much smaller weight of fuel for a laser shot than a round of artillery ammunition.”
In the same article, Weingarten noted that our military had already made strides in the development of what was known in 2010 as the Airborne Laser system but funding was withdrawn by then President 2011. The system would have had the “ability to shoot down incoming ICBMs from tens or hundreds of miles away, at the edge of space.” Two years later North Korea’s Kim Jong-un was threatening to fire missiles on our bases in the Pacific.
President Trump restored funding for laser defense development in order “to ensure that we can detect and destroy any missile launched against the United States, anywhere, anytime, anyplace.”
It is notable that the mainstream media tends to downplay America’s military might these days resulting in a lack of knowledge about our country’s defensive capabilities, according to AMAC CEO Rebecca Weber. “A recent online Google search for stories about the strides our armed services are making in developing defensive laser weapons resulted in many reports published in military and specialty publications. With the exception of Fox News, few — if any other—mainstream news organizations have covered this critical defensive development.”
About AMAC
The 2.3-million-member Association of Mature American Citizens [AMAC] [https://amac.us] is a vibrant, vital senior advocacy organization that takes its marching orders from its members. We act and speak on their behalf, protecting their interests and offering a practical insight on how to best solve the problems they face today. Live long and make a difference by joining us today at https://amac.us/join-amac.
Well, if Jackass Joe Biden is ALLOWED TO STEAL the Presidency and if so, the Progressively Communist Democrats are trying to destroy local Police Departments by defunding them. That means like in ALL SOCIALIST/COMMUNIST COUNTRIES, they NATIONALIZE THE MILITARY to be used to control the populace. So where better to utilize these new laser guns than there!
It would have been nice if there was also a mention of the development and then about face abandonment of rail guns for navel use after they were successfully tested over the last few years. If for no other reason than to educate the public on what kind of bad decisions, driven by politics, kill American innovation that had the potential to make the nation stronger.
Rail guns with a much longer range than conventional navel artillery shells (naval tests achieved over a 100 miles accurately in repeated tests) in a much smaller package with greater kinetic kill force (ships could carry more shells and stay in combat longer at safer ranges) and with projectile speeds of Mach 6 (5400 mph), it would have given our Navy longer artillery reach along with more firepower. Unfortunately, it seems some of our military contractors didn’t appreciate the competition and lobbied effectively to kill the program, even after a few naval ships were outfitted with rail guns.
So now the only piece of that program that will likely survive are the new shells that were developed for the rail guns themselves. Some genius decided that they will be retrofitted, so they can be fired from conventional naval artillery via gunpowder. Obviously they will not be able to achieve the same hyper-sonic speeds as they would from a rail gun or have the same extended range, but the Navy will be able to carry more of them than conventional shells. Just an example of how we tend to hobble ourselves sometimes, when it comes to national defense.
Also it would have been nice if this article identified who in 2010 killed the Airborne Laser system. None other than Obama himself. He viewed it as a wasteful program defending us from a threat that would never exist. Thus removing the only effective means of deterring North Korea from their ICBM tests. Again, bad political decisions do have consequences.
While I have high hopes that the current laser-based systems mentioned in this article will be put into the field to counter the growing capabilities of both China and Russia in this space (they are not sitting still while we are fixated on the nonsense like cancel culture, identity politics and the whatever the latest diversionary tactic of the day is), one has to always remember that Democrats view defense spending as taking money away from the myriad of unnecessary social welfare programs they seek to expand or create as a means to consolidate power. So it would be nice to see a follow-up article on this one in a year to see if any of these programs are still alive.
I know too much detail for some, but education is a good thing.
“funding was withdrawn by President 2011”? You mean the Dimocratic Dipstick that bowed to every foreign leader? Let’s see, in 2011 that President much have been Hussein Obama.
And we are going to rely on this upcoming generation with such a hatred of all American values, to defend the USA?
And meanwhile Google and other big tech companies are providing AI and other tools to China so they can compete with the U.S. military.
The U.S. universities are educating 370,000 Chinese (that’s the last number I heard from a legitimate government official here) spies to help out their military with the latest developments from our country. Of course, there are other spies, like the one that Swalwell liked so much, but why should they risk doing illegal stuff when our universities love giving away our technical information?