From Star Wars blaster rifles, to lightsabers, and photon torpedos, the idea of using a laser as a weapon has certainly been popular in the realms of science fiction. In reality though? The idea has always been one that scientists have been receptive of, but too many limitations have, up until now, kept it from truly being used beyond medicine and industry.

Now military contractor Northrop Grumman has test-fired its nex-generation Firestrick solid-state laser, called Gamma. This test was to get a better idea of the potential of “Gamma” as a weapon and was conducted at the company’s Redondo Beach laboratory. The test showed that a laser could burn through the skin and critical components of a target drone that they used to represent an anti-ship cruise missile, the kind that often threatens US navy ships.

Basically, Gamma operated during the test at 13.3 kW for a number of shots that were conducted over a one-and-a-half hour period with stable performance. With only a 13.3 kW output, you might be thinking, “Okay, that can’t do a whole lot though”, but the test was merely to measure the ruggedness, stability and power of the Gamma laser concept. The beauty of the system is that it is designed to be “chainable,” meaning, that you can link together several of these little guys to create a big guy capable of 100 kilowatt shots and weighing just 1.5 tons.

While I wouldn’t expect a bunch of powerful Gamma-equiped tanks and battleships to flood the US military anytime soon, it is clear that the time for change is coming and that ideas that have long been stuck in the realm of science fiction, like lasers, are becoming closer than ever to reality. Perhaps my dream of owning a real light saber may someday still come true. In the mean-time, I could always use one of the unique light sabers we saw just a short while ago.

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Near the end of 2010 NASA chose three companies who would develop three new aircrafts for the year 2025, complying with NASA’s guidelines for the futuristic planes. Now, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have come up with three completely different artist renderings of their proposed aircrafts which are quite inspiring.

NASA’s parameters for the aircraft include less noise, better mileage and cleaner exhaust while flying on a more modernized air traffic system. In addition, the crafts have to fly at 85 per cent of the speed of sound, cover a range of approximately 7,000 miles and carry between 50,000 and 100,000 lbs of passengers or cargo.

“For the rest of this year, each team will be exploring, testing, simulating, keeping and discarding innovations and technologies to make their design a winner,” writes NASA. “Each aircraft…requires a complex dance of tradeoffs between all of the new advanced technologies that will be on these vehicles.”

And there doesn’t seem to be a common idea between the three companies as to how it can meet the requirements. Boeing’s military-style craft looks as if its payload may include bombs, while Northrop Grumman’s concept resembles some sort of giant pontoon plane/jumbo jet hybrid. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, Lockheed Martin’s plane isn’t too far off from what’s already standard for passenger crafts, aside from the single propeller on the tail and the wing extensions that double back to it.

The concepts’ designs will undergo several changes throughout the year, NASA says, and by production, may not even remotely resemble the originals. But its nice to see where things started.

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The Navy is still confused about the situation, not knowing what caused the disconnect, and why the drone did not return. Commander Danny Hernandez, a Navy spokesman, told the NYT “When they lose contact with the Fire Scout, there’s a program that’s supposed to have it immediately return to the airfield to land safely. That did not happen as planned.”

As a result, all 6 Fire Scout drones have been grounded. The Navy did eventually regain control of the drone somewhere in D.C. half-hour and 23 miles later, but that’s enough to take a serious look at the so called “software glitch” that caused it. Let’s just hope these things aren’t carrying live ammunition.

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