Watching the news the other day, a story came on that peaked my interest. It was about laser pointers and airplanes. It was not a new story, I had heard about a kid in New York in 2011 who had been arrested for pointing a laser at a commercial airliner and then at the helicopter full of cops investigating him…I admired this kid’s tenacity, although misplaced, the kid had balls! The story I was watching interviewed the pilot of the Commercial airliner and he described how blinding the laser was and the lasting effects the burst had on his vision afterwards. Later in the story, a laser “expert” did a demonstration of a $50 laser pointer and how bright a beam it shot out to 1/4 of a mile.
This story got me to thinking….The US Military have been developing and working on such a weapon for a decade or more. Their latest achievement, the Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response Rifle that is powered by two low power diode pumped lasers that disorient and blind you temporarily when fired at your ocular cavities ( your eyes). This thing looks mean.. like the gun used by the Colonial Marines in Aliens. Although the article did not mention it, I imagine the thing would have a setting feature on it, kind of like Star Trek’s tasers..you could either set it to stun or “melt face off”, which ever you felt the enemy deserved at the time. Though there is no actual proof the laser rifle has been put to any actual “combat field” use yet, it would not surprise me if we see a photograph of some SF soldier toting a “X” Model of one of these things in some subterranean armpit of a country real soon.
But alas, since the DoD and ATF are not going to let any of these nifty pulse rifles be put on the civilian gun market any time soon, we will just have to wait for the “civilian friendly” model to reveal itself. With technology advancing at its current rate, it will not take long for some tech minded company to grab hold of the military “blinding laser” concept and come up with some nifty civilian friendly laser gadget you can hang off the end of your pistol or rifle and blind (not melt) bad guys at 15 yards with. I know some of the combo “light/laser” units on the market now come close to that now…My Surefire X400 produces 170 LED lumens with a 5 mW, 635 nanometer laser that can be seen 1/4 mile or more.
It goes without saying that if you cannot see, breathe or hear in a fight, your odds of success go way down; enter the Flash Bang, the CS and the Smoke Grenade, Strobe Lights, OC Spray and the Tazer. Now we can also start a new category: Lasers. I guess we are seeing with our own eyes science fiction come true….it truly is a wonderous time to be alive.
Stay Dangerous.