The Pentagon’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Development Program (JNLWD) is working toward creating a weapon that can alter atoms and make words from nothing, Defense One reported.
The Laser-Induced Plasma Effect system will hopefully be able to create words out of nothing within the next three years. Currently, it can create sounds, but lacks the ability to create understandable words.
According to the video:
“The weapon is composed of two parts: first, a femtosecond laser, which shoots a burst of focused light for 10−15 seconds, just long enough to rip the electrons from air molecules and create a ball of plasma. (Sometimes called the fourth state of matter, plasma is a field of electrified gas, highly responsive to electromagnetic effects.) The scientists then hit that plasma field with a second nanolaser, tuned to an extremely narrow range of wavelengths. They use that to manipulate the plasma field in a way that can produce light and noise. Get the interaction precise enough and you get something that sounds like a haunted walkie-talkie.”
“We’re this close to getting it to speak to us. I need three or four more kilohertz,” David Law, JNLWD’s Technology Division chief, told Defense One.
Law said that he hopes the system can replace a number of non-lethal weapons by producing noise, heat and light.
Law added that the system would be able to create noises at far distances.
“This is the first non-lethal weapon that could go out tens of kilometers,” he said. “One of the things about the ultra short pulse, it wants to form at longer ranges. It’s harder to form at shorter ranges.”
Check out the system here:
