This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on September 12, 2012.
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Despite 50 years of research on high-power microwaves, the U.S. military has yet to produce a usable weapon
This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on September 12, 2012.
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10 Comments
Add Commentsigh.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIronic isn't it? Just last month you had a news blurb right in your own magazine about some physicists who sucessfully produced a MASER using a Laser pumping system I believe. Wasn't the article something like, "First Practical Maser (Microwave Laser) Is Built". Look it up with the search option on the term MASER. Maybe sometimes pre-conceptions can get in the way of innovation? Of course, there's a long way to go yet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI definitely feel it would be worth having somethings like those weapons and am in favour to carry on with the research. New ideas and materials might bring solutions. I saw a picture of the first cavity magnetron, it was as big as a desk. A few months later they made them small enough to fit them into 1940 era fighter planes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWow - the "Active Denial System" - how appropriate!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn a clear day (with low atmospheric humidity) this technology might be considered threatening. What with global warming, will the future effectiveness of such weapons be increased or decreased?
Yes, by all means, lets fund some more of these stories - they're priceless!
Right, but a MASER generates a focused, coherent electromagnetic beam (not necessarily microwaves), whereas this article implies that we are looking for more of an area or theater capability and a globular radiative path.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't believe that we are talking about the same concept.
Yes, my point was (at least I intended it to be) that the military view of a MASER as a "weapons system" blinded them to any "out of the box" innovative thinking. That fact (and the fact that any military research has basically been classified for 50 years) has basically stopped any research on possible other uses and advances in MASER technology. Look at that Scientific American article I mentioned in my previous post. It appeared on 16 August 2012.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe advances mentioned in that 16 August article are:
1. The entire apparatus sits easily on a tabletop.
2. It operates at room temperature. No extreme low temperature cooling required.
3. It produces a coherent directed beam of microwave radiation at what is still a relitivly low power...but nearly a million times higher than any other Maser before.
The difference in results, in my opinion, is that this new research was simply done to see if the idea worked, all the previous military reaserach was to make a weapon.
They simply ignored anything that didn't "look like" a weapon. That pre-conception made them blind to other possible uses of a low power Maser.
Or as the saying goes, "When all you want to do is break rocks, everything looks like a hammer to you."
Nicely put, but as I recall the correct saying (one of my favorites) is: 'To a man whose only tool is a hammer, every problem appears to be a nail'.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, that one doesn't quite fit here...
If they want a tactical area weapon, what is wrong with simple microwave sources from a few microwave ovens being grouped together with 1 side unshielded and run by battery? I'm not saying it would be small or low power but it should be unpleasant.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe FBI stole N. Tesla's papers upon his death; they've remained hidden since the 1940's. Tesla, of course, had invented a "Death Ray" useful to, perhaps, being a winning game-changer in WW-2, Korea, Vietnam, and a few other conflicts. Where are Tesla's papers today?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this«Despite 50 years of research on high-power microwaves, the U.S. military has yet to produce a usable weapon» I found the above news extremely encouraging. Perhaps one day we will learn to devote our intellectual and economic capital to something more rewarding (if less profitable for some) than attempting to find new ways to kill or otherwise incapacitate people....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHenri