Handheld Plasma Weapons

Depends on how you define Plasma weapon. There is a weapon system in the works that could be fielded in less than ten years.

It is known as the Electrolaser. It uses a laser to create an LIPC Laser Induced Plasma Channel. It sends electricty down this channel.

You could call it a Lightning Gun. It uses a laser to create a plasma bloom just like lightning. The first publicly known prototypes were built in the 1980s mounted on ships. They are now at the handheld prototype phase.

The weapon can be set to non lethal to Taze someone or hit them lethally like a lightning bolt. It can fry electronics, knock out missiles and aircraft.

www.ionatron.com...
www.xtremeads.com...

plasma will form an ionized path but plasma wouln't travle threw an ionized path. so try to generate your plasma field and then accelerate it with an ionized field, path, and or device.

A few corrections - Ionatron are now known as 'Applied Energetics'; their technology has never been fielded, they are now out of the nonlethals business but have recently been pushing a device to neutralize IEDs using their technology -

www.ionatron.com...

The won a contract with the USMC last monthy for $9.3m

Meanwhile the Plasma Acoustic Shield System is likely to be out there in the next few years -

technology.newscientist.com...

dudes i may not know too much but it seems like ur all making this whole deal of making plasma weapons drastically more complicated than it needs to be. i mean really gut an old microwave for the magnetron and rig it to a battery pack worn as a backpak by the carrier (such as a car battery or something similar) and rig the magnetron to a glass chamber, fill said chamber with grapes or just straight CO2 flip a switch to turn on the magnetron thus creating plasma and then open say something like a solanoid valve or some such device at the back of a steel pipe and the plasma should take the path of least resistance out of its vessel of containment which in this case would be out the end of the pipe and thus the barrel of the "gun"


anyways those are just my thoughts and im open to any and all constructive criticism