China Reveals Infinite Laser Weapons In Massive Breakthrough
Science Fiction has been promising us laser weapons on the battlefield for decades, but sadly, in the real world, wars continue to be fought with conventional weapons like guns. All that might be about to change, however as The Byte reports that China might have cracked the code to offensive laser weaponry. According to the Chinese military, the world superpower has discovered a way to fire a laser indefinitely without it overheating—a concept that may change warfare as we know it if true.
The Problem With Previous Laser Weaponry
The technology to fire lasers at stuff in order to blow it up has existed for a while now, but the problem is the high-energy beams generate so much heat that they can’t fire for more than a short time before they start malfunctioning, effectively making laser weapons a dead end as far as global defense is concerned.
Enter China’s National University of Defence Technology, which claims to have developed a state-of-the-art cooling system that allows high-energy lasers to be fired indefinitely without ever overheating.
How China’s Laser Works
According to a report released by the university, the new cooling system would blow gas through the weapon to remove any excess heat while allowing for the laser to shoot more precisely and for what would theoretically be an infinite amount of time without ever losing power or the beam getting distorted.
“High-quality beams can be produced not only in the first second, but also maintained indefinitely,” the team behind the technology wrote in a paper published in China’s science journal Acta Optica Sinica.
Meanwhile, the United States has experimented with similar technology but has largely dismissed lasers as a viable everyday combat weapon due to the beams not being “destructive enough.” A former British military officer, Steve Weaver, posted on X—formerly Twitter—that if China really had perfected its infinite laser glitch, “this is a big breakthrough considering the US failures in this area.”
If China’s claims are true, it would turn the world of global warfare on its ear.
The US, of course, fancies itself the world’s preeminent authority on death and destruction—currently, still, the only country to ever deploy a nuclear bomb during combat—and will no doubt do everything in its power to determine if China’s new breakthrough in laser weaponization is legitimate or just a bluff.
If China’s claims are true, it would turn the world of global warfare on its ear. Countries with the biggest defense budgets, like the USA, which spends nearly a trillion dollars a year on its military, would no longer have an advantage over poorer countries thanks to the relative cheapness of a laser vs. old-school munitions.
Along with a lower cost than traditional guided missile systems, China’s new laser tech would potentially be more precise and provide the country with an easy way to shoot down satellites were they so inclined.
China, like most first-world countries, is no stranger to the threats and bluffs that come with a cold-war-style arms race and, as such, could easily be exaggerating the capabilities of their new laser cooling tech in order to make countries like the USA nervous.
Still, anything is theoretically possible, and someone was bound to make a better laser eventually. Now, who had “China invents real-life Death Star laser” on their bingo card for 2023?
