US Air Force seeks diamond gunports for electropulse ray-cannon

Lewis Page
The Register
Wednesday, January 28, 2009

The US Air Force has made an appeal for a range of new technologies which it will need in building its planned new arsenal of aerial rayguns. In particular, it wants large artificial optically-correct diamonds for use as portholes through which to shoot electropulse microwave blaster cannons.

Under its “Directed Energy [Weapon] Materials Program,” the US Air Force Research Laboratory asked on Monday for a whole sheaf of materials miracles. The most eye-catching, we’d say, is the “High Power Microwave Windows First Category” solicitation (Word doc).

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In it, the Air Force raygun boffins candidly state their desire for high-power microwave (HPM) weapons of “one megawatt or more” – in the same league power-wise as the heaviest military rayguns now in existence, and ten times the poke normally seen as essential to an entry-level laser weapon.

HPM rayguns, however, aren’t intended for burning holes in stuff or people. They are intended to deliver the same sort of effects as the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) emitted by a nuclear bomb, without the need for the bucket-o-sunshine side effect and in the form of a directed beam rather than an omnidirectional zapping.

Nuke EMPs are well-known to be capable of frying or scrambling all unshielded circuitry from a substantial distance, and military electronic-warfare types have long hankered to have this sort of capability in less-drastic form. 

Full story here.

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