Example experimental systems included MIRACL and the Tactical High Energy Laser, which are now discontinued. The power needed to project a high-powered laser beam of this kind is beyond the limit of current mobile power technology, thus favoring chemically powered gas dynamic lasers. The general idea of laser-beam weaponry is to hit a target with a train of brief pulses of light. Laser weapons capable of directly damaging or destroying a target in combat are still in the experimental stage. See Lasers and aviation safety for more on this topic. Incidents of pilots being exposed to lasers while flying have prompted aviation authorities to implement special procedures to deal with such hazards. Weapons designed to cause temporary blindness, known as dazzlers, are used by military and sometimes law enforcement organizations. The extreme handicap that laser-induced blindness represents makes the use of lasers even as non-lethal weapons morally controversial, and weapons designed to cause permanent blindness have been banned by the Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons. Lasers of even a fraction of a watt in power can produce immediate, permanent vision loss under certain conditions, making such lasers potential non-lethal but incapacitating weapons.

The degree, character, and duration of vision impairment caused by eye exposure to laser light varies with the power of the laser, the wavelength(s), the collimation of the beam, the exact orientation of the beam, and the duration of exposure. Many types of laser can potentially be used as incapacitating weapons, through their ability to produce temporary or permanent vision loss when aimed at the eyes. Essentially, a laser generates a beam of light which needs clear air, or a vacuum, to work without thermal blooming. Atmospheric thermal blooming has been a major problem, still mostly unsolved, and worsened if fog, smoke, dust, rain, snow, smog, foam, or purposely dispersed obscurant chemicals are present. After decades of R&D, as of January 2020 directed-energy weapons including lasers are still at the experimental stage and it remains to be seen if or when they will be deployed as practical, high-performance military weapons. Ī laser weapon is a directed-energy weapon based on lasers. The US-Israeli Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL) was used to shoot down rockets and artillery shells before being canceled in 2005 as a result of 'its bulkiness, high costs and poor anticipated results on the battlefield.'.

Long war 2 laser weapons