RW Laser Weapons

[saundby]

I was catching up on some of my reading for work today, among the items I came across was some current work on laser weapons I thought fellow Travellers might find of interest. Here on some websites I found on the programs:

HELLADS, a program to develop a light (flyable) laser weapon module:
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=444
http://www.darpa.mil/tto/programs/hellads.htm

RIFL, an ambitious program to develop a high efficiency (~30%) high power fiber laser system:
http://www.darpa.mil/MTO/Programs/rifl/index.html

APPLE, a program to develop a skin-mounted phased array of lasers with a steerable beam (can steer off axis about 23 degrees each way):
http://www.darpa.mil/MTO/programs/apple/index.html

SCOWL, a system for combining lasers into a phased array with directable fiber ends:
http://www.photonics.com/Content/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=26904
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007SPIE.6485E..12H

And a general article on beam-combining for higher powers. It might be good for flavor text for the game:
http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/print.html?id=332972&bPool=LFW.pennnet.com/article_tool_bar

There may be some better popular articles out there, I dunno. What do you think? Ready to fit out a single turret?