Laser gun?

I have seen lasers take out missles but what about a gun? Silent, possible better range and untracable? Has it been done? could it be done while keep a portable non bulky power sourse?

I think, at the moment, a laser gun can maybe fit in a transport truck.. I don't think thats the 'portable' your looking for though. I also think that is the laser itself, who knows how big the power supply is or how much is cost to power up.

A laser gun is fairly simple to make, you simply have to deal with these limitations:

i. Very few shots.
ii. The target would have to be naked.
iii. The target would have to be close enough to speak with at a comfortable level.

---------------------------

i. Not enough fuel is available in a portable container.
ii. For best efficiency, given the amount of shots and length of said shots, he'd have to wear almost nothing.
iii. Atmospheric defraction.
Or.
Whatever.

I don't know, some of those chemical lasers are looking pretty good, but as you said said Iblis, you have to lug around a heap of chemicals for them. That's why the pentagon has dumped them in favour of the solid state lasers which only need electricity. They also have a smaller wavelength so they get less refraction/distortion or whatever in the atmosphere, transmitting more energy to the target.
There's a link to an article about them here.

i. Very few shots.
ii. The target would have to be naked.
iii. The target would have to be close enough to speak with at a comfortable level.

That your idea of the perfect one-night stand?

OK, on topic. Laser guns... I don't really know anything about lasers other than that little kids bug the hell out of me with them when they use those my face as a target for their little "laser-pointers." Ah well, kids will be kids.

Hey! There's an idea! What about a laser not strong enough to kill, but with the ability to blind! Is that against the Geneva convention? Not like the US cares about the Geneva convention but whatever.

OK, now I'm rambling. I really have nothing to say other than that laser guns would be really cool, at least to the extent that I would finally see my sci-fi dreams become manifested all around me.

the last prototype I saw in the army labs
was a rifle connected to a backpack power supply.
that was almost 8 years ago if they keep up
with state of the art tech it should fit in a
cracker jack box now.

ok so I have a laser gun for you, this one is expensive. piezo ceramic dish! hundreds. pressure sensitive, energy production. you use regular ammo, with no projectile, use the gas created by the combustion to trigger the piezo ceramic dishes. which would create high amounts of voltage, if you are energy harvesting. stacking the piezo ceramic dishes. you would have a extremely powerful weapon.

reply to post by diedagaincraftsmen


I find it hard to believe that with all the research done on quantum well lasers for computing devices that no one has thought of a way to create a massive series of quantum well lasers in succession along a rifle barrel or some kind of hand held device.

There really should already be a progressively amplified light signal powered from a back pack battery at the least that could really do some damage.

Just a thought...wait. I found it!
www.laserfocusworld.com...

"Military interest in higher-power mid-IR sources has led to development of watt-class QCLs. In 2009, a DARPA-funded team at Pranalytica (Santa Monica, CA) reported a then-record CW room-temperature output of 3 W at 4.6 µm. Their novel design allowed simultaneous optimization of several design parameters, reducing threshold current density to ..."

nerdapproved.com...


And finally (really, guys? you don't know how Google works?)

www.lifeslittlemysteries.com...

"Mounted directed-energy weapons are only a matter of time. The prospects for small, handheld laser armaments are not nearly as promising.

"For strategic and tactical weapons, you can store energy on planes, boats or Humvees," said Beason, "but unless a super-source of energy is invented, you may never be able to do it with handheld weapons."

In theory, advances in battery technology eventually could make such weapons possible. But even if they do, the weapons may not fire the bright green or red beams sci-fi fans might expect."

A pulsed diode can produce between 2 and 10 times the normal energy output without frying. That being said, portable lasers range between the 5mW and 2000mW range, which implies a pulsed beam would cap at about 20 Watts. As the required intensity to produce a comparable weaponized beam is between 400 Watts and 1500 Watts, the idea of the pulsed laser weapon is not feasible, as the devices would have to be 200-750 times more powerful than the strongest diode-heat sink combinations currently available. Even with a pulsed system, you are still looking at 20-75 times too weak on the unstable side, and 100-375 times too weak on the stable side.