Laser weapons developers 'riding the wave' created by Tesla, other battery innovators
Advances made in automotive battery technology by Tesla and others are now being borrowed to help the Pentagon get high-power laser weapons that can kill everything from enemy drones to missiles.
The work on laser weapons underway includes an Air Force Research Laboratory contract awarded to Lockheed Martin last week to develop high-power fiber lasers that will be tested on a tactical fighter jet by 2021. The fighter jet demonstration project is part of the Air Force lab's so-called SHiELD or Self-protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator program.
"You can power the laser like you can power the car off a battery system," said Rob Afzal, senior fellow of laser weapon systems at Lockheed, the nation's largest defense company. "We would use the same type of battery technology ... and the reason is you need to be able to deliver a lot of energy in a short period of time."
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