Microwave Ray Gun Zaps Bombs

To the American military’s grow­ing menagerie of high-​​tech, bomb-​​battling odd­i­ties, add this lit­tle crea­ture: a microwave ray gun, designed to wipe out Iraqi insur­gents’ explo­sives.
Last fall, engi­neers from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and Alliant Techsystems put together the “Scorpion,” a pro­to­type microwave gen­er­a­tor, for an exer­cise at the Yuma Proving Grounds. It was the “first-​​ever high-​​power microwave sys­tem that was built tough enough for trans­port,” accord­ing to Defense Daily. And dur­ing that Yuma test — meant to sim­u­late con­di­tions in Iraq — the Scorpion “blew up… more than 75% of the impro­vised explo­sive devices it encoun­tered in oper­a­tionally real­is­tic sce­nar­ios,” AFRL spokesman Rich Garcia writes.
The Scorpion’s devel­op­ment “was done under a coop­er­a­tive research and devel­op­ment agree­ment that began mid-​​last year… and slated to run until June 1, 2006,” he adds. “No money was involved in the CRADA. Rather, we shared exper­tise, infor­ma­tion and facil­i­ties.“
What’s the next step for ray gun? There’s no word, yet. But if the sys­tem con­tin­ues to work the way it did at Yuma, there are a whole lot of sol­diers right now that could use a Scorpion in Iraq.

May 24th, 2005 | Lasers and Ray Guns | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.