THE Chinese military has announced that it created new technology that supports high-energy laser weapons which can shoot non-stop.
The new technology is a cooling system that allows the lasers to operate infinitely, because the shooting process creates a lot of heat that has held back its advancement in the past.
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The announcement came from scientists at the National University of Defense Technology, in Changsha, Hunan province, the South China Morning Post reported.
The cooling system is said to completely eliminate the harmful heat that is generated during the operation of high-energy lasers.
“This is a huge breakthrough in improving the performance of high-energy laser systems,” laser weapon team leader and scientist, Yuan Shengfu, said in earlier August in a paper, per the same source.
“High-quality beams can be produced not only in the first second but also maintained indefinitely.”
Laser technology has been around since 1960 but has not been able to work efficiently for long periods of time due to heat issues.
Although people have been anticipating when the laser technology would be perfected as it could come with a decent amount of perks weapon-wise.
This is because laser weapons can move at the speed of light and don’t require continuous ammunition like bullets.
Removing the need for ammunition would make laser technology desirable for military forces around the world.
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“Since the invention of the first ruby laser in 1960, people have been enthusiastic about transitioning from kinetic energy to laser energy for the rapid projection of energy at the speed of light,” Yuan and his colleagues said, per SCMP.
“Dreaming of laser beams to become ‘death rays’ that can instantly kill targets.”
The new forever-firing laser technology is groundbreaking because scientists have been trying to perfect it but have not been successful.
British military official Steve Weaver took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to call it a “big breakthrough.”
“If they have overcome the heating and distortion issues as claimed, in a (relatively) small enough unit for deployment,” Weaver said in a tweet.
“This is a big breakthrough considering the US failures in this area.”
