Qinetiq

• There’s no God mode in real life, of course, but the world’s military organisations are very interested in weapons that promise something like it: lasers and other “directed energy weapons”.
• The US government, for example, is spending nearly US$1 billion per year on directed energy projects.
• And directed energy technology is a priority in the new A$3.4 billion Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator (ASCA) program.

What is directed energy?

• In the interest of brevity, we’ll concentrate on laser-based directed energy weapons here, but much of the argument also applies to the other types.
• Directed energy is not affected by gravity like missiles and bullets are, so it travels in a straight line.
• And because directed energy weapons cause damage by heating up a target area, they have less potential to hit nearby objects or send shrapnel flying.

So why doesn’t everyone use directed energy weapons?

• Although directed energy weapons have all these advantages over conventional weapons, useful ones have proven difficult to build.
• One problem faced by laser weapons is the huge amount of power required to destroy useful targets such as missiles.
• For this reason, even portable directed energy devices are very large.

Directed energy weapons will need a whole industry

• But suppose all the technical problems of directed energy weapons are overcome.
• However, to develop and mass-produce directed energy weapons requires an industrial capacity for the fabrication of the necessary laser diodes and high-quality optics, which does not exist in Australia.
• The potential military advantages of directed energy weapons, and the consequences of an adversary having them, mean Australia and many other countries will maintain an interest in developing them.