10 Deadliest Real Death Rays

Commonly referred to as the “Soviet laser tank,” the 1K17 was actually a specialized laser turret mounted on a T-80 chassis and had extremely little chance of actually surviving a direct encounter with an enemy tank. The bank of 13 ruby lasers was intended not to melt or explodify foolish capitalist vehicles, but to burn out the sophisticated electro-optical sights and sensors present on nearly all NATO equipment, and blind any pilots, drivers or troops that were looking the wrong way at the time.

The lasers required 30 kilograms of artificial rubies and specially designed silver-plated coils to energize the beams, making it one of the most expensive proposed vehicles in the Red Army, and altogether not the most efficient way to kill an Afghan goat farmer and steal his opium. Recognizing this, the Soviets eventually relegated the Szhatie and its anti-aircraft counterpart “Sangvin” to the warehouses.

A seaborne equivalent of the 1K17, Project Akvilon took advantage of the greater storage space available on the Soviet Navy’s Polnocny-class landing ships to make use of a more powerful (but considerably larger) chemical laser system of an unknown type. Dependent on the energy from chemical reactions rather than the inefficient and complicated electrically-powered solid-state laser of the Szhatie, the Foros was intended to not only blind relatively slow-moving enemy surface ships, but also take on aircraft and even missiles that came after the task force it was protecting.

Foros was able to successfully intercept and disable a missile during a test in 1984, but killjoys were quick to point out that the ship was given a full 24 hours to prepare for the simulated missile attack, a luxury generally not available during conventional naval combat. While Foros/Akvilon was generally promising, the Soviet Union’s worsening financial situation put the kiboshski on further development.

While Project Akvilon was content to use lasers to blind Western sensors and crewmen, the parallel Project Aidar had much greater ambitions: to actually use a laser to blow stuff up. Aidar was buried in even greater secrecy than Akvilon, largely because it was considered a testbed for Soviet space-based lasers as well as naval artillery systems. To that end, the Navy snaffled up one of their inconspicuous auxiliary freighters, the Dikson, and spent a great deal of time and money turning it into a modern military vessel capable of mounting the more powerful and advanced Aidar laser turret and its associated chemical tanks and aiming systems.

After rebuilding the ship from the inside, the Dikson performed target tests off the shore of the Black Sea, firing at a special sensor four kilometers inland that reported that… it got slightly warmer. The power of the Aidar laser at the four-km range was down by 95 percent due to sea spray, haze, sand dust from the beach, pollen and regular old air. The experiment was still classed as a success by the Russian military science establishment on the grounds that the technology could still be used in space, where the environment is free of laser-sapping particulate matter and atmosphere, but it’s hard not to believe that such a decision was based largely on the need to cover their asses after spending millions on a clunky rebuilt cargo ship.

Millions of dollars have been invested in training and technology that can identify IEDs and other explosives from a safe distance, but for a long time it was necessary for someone to stomp up to a bomb in an armored suit and poke it with a stick until it became safe. Some simpler explosives can be detonated with a bullet or shotgun blast, but sophisticated ammunition and plastic explosives are often specifically designed to resist kinetic shock.

Enter the ZEUS-HLONS (HMMWV Laser Ordnance Neutralization System), an otherwise standard Humvee mounting a (relatively) light and compact 10-kW, solid-state laser on an articulated turret. The ZEUS laser can heat up the surface of a bomb, unexploded shell or surface mine from 25 to 300 meters away until the priming material of the explosive ignites and destroys the target. ZEUS-HLONS is one of the few weapons on this list to have seen real combat, tested in Afghanistan in 2003 and put into official service in Iraq in 2005, making it the very first laser weapon to be used on the battlefield.

Any terrorist group worth its salt has a bunch of mortars and light artillery ready to use. These cheap, mobile weapons allow you to pop off a few semi-aimed rounds at a target from concealment, then scamper off before police or troops can figure out where you fired from. Even if the enemy figures out where the launch site is, the original damage from the shell or rocket has already been done, and unlike larger missiles (like the infamous Scud) there’s no chance of an anti-aircraft gun or missile taking out the incoming mortar shell.

This problem was what lead to the U.S. and Israel developing the Tactical High-Energy Laser (THEL), a fast-reacting laser system that was quick enough to track incoming shells on their way up and powerful enough to destroy them on the way down. Unfortunately, while the bureaucrats who planned the project envisioned a compact, air-transportable system that could fit on a Humvee or tank chassis so that it could scoot around to various threatened areas, the final THEL prototype turned out to be roughly the size of a small office building and absolutely not capable of scooting (although it was very good at shooting down artillery and rocket shells). The revised mobile M-THEL was projected to just barely fit into three tractor trailers, which was not a great improvement over the office building in terms of mobility and air-portability. Both countries more or less scrapped the project, although the current Israeli government has made noises about reactivating the THEL program in its stationary form to defend important installations.

You might be familiar with the Army’s AC-130 “Spectre” series gunships, heavily modified Hercules cargo planes refitted with side-facing gunnery up to and including 105-mm howitzers that orbit ground targets and obliterate basically anything that moves. With the proposed AC-X system, the Army has succeeded in making this system less likely to inflict the sort of ruinous collateral damage the earlier AC gunships were known for, and additionally in making it a zillion times more expensive.

The “Son of Spectre” experimental testbed is a high-spec NC-130 that mounts nothing but the laser itself and the enormous chemical tanks and equipment necessary to fire it, but firing tests show that the invisible beam can be held on an area smaller than the hood of a car, opening up the possibility of assassinating targets by making them appear as if they spontaneously combusted and solidifying our military’s reputation as a bunch of capricious genies.

Developed in parallel with the Advanced Tactical Laser, Boeing’s Airborne Laser Testbed could be called the Advanced Strategic Laser, since while the AC-X would target immediate battleground threats, the YAL was designed to take out short-range ballistic missiles as soon as possible after their launch.

A 747 with a super-sized megawatt version of the ATL’s chemical oxygen-iodine laser (COIL) on board, the YAL-1 was designed to patrol possible launch sites, using its sophisticated radar system to identify and track missile launches and zapping them with the COIL to either destroy its guidance system, damage its maneuvering system or (if lucky) blow it up. Unlike the AC-X, however, the YAL’s laser generally failed to live up to expectations, and the jet (minus the hyper-expensive but disappointing laser) is now biding its time at the infamous “Boneyard” at Tucson’s Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.