For the first time in the history of the U.S. Navy, a laser ray gun, mounted on a warship, was fired – striking with extreme energy and setting afire an empty motorboat, as it bounced about in the Pacific Ocean.
This was a test demonstration, taking place near the coast of Southern California close to San Nicholas Island. This could be an indicator of a new era in modern weaponry of the Navy. Apparently, this has equal or higher power compared to the lead bullets we all see today.
What are your thoughts?
Found here:

http://newstabulous.com/u-s-navy-tests-laser-gun-hitting-boat-off-california-coast/8391/

I can see a great future in this.

Because lead guns don't go "PEW PEW PEW"

That is pretty interesting, and great that we have another way for defense. Long range projectile missile defence lasers finally read something on this because of you lol.

UserMike : Actually alexanyways told me to make this thread so all the credit goes towards him.

What are your thoughts?

How effective would a mirror be against it?

AND

Just great, more money spent on defense/"defense" and defense/"defense"-related that is arguably already way above amounts sufficient to defend against an invasion (an unlikely event to say the least at that).

TheMichaelOnline : I'm pretty sure the laser gun would break the mirror. I'm not even sure that mirrors can reflect beams like that.

dkmec20 : Yeah, maybe it would just burn through it real fast or something... It'd be funny to see someone try to defend against it with a mirror and fail though .

US FTW!! lol

Stuff from the old futuristic movies are not so "futuristic" anymore. hehe.

Oh, Das Cool. Too bad I really don't care about the military or I'd line up for a shot to fire it. You know, with me being a pacifist and all.

I bet if someone was shot with it he'd have a clean hole on his stomach

And seriously, why even develop this thing anyway? I mean, this project probably wasted like millions of dollars! They could just donate that money to the poor, right? And the US Army already have a lot of strong weapons anyway!

I think this is a horrible thing. Any type of weaponry made for any type of war or fighting needs is something that should never have been made... All people choose to do is kill each other with these weapons, while we could have made lives easier for ourselves with them instead. I hope that someone will go ahead and just lock this in an unreachable case, where nobody will see it again...

Omniterran : I went and read the whole article, I can't remember the year, but the people who developed this got a approved grant for like 98 million dollar. Ain't it crazy?

huh, that's really cool! a laser gun will help the U.S. navy if China ever challenges us, what with its booming economy and its student's willpower to work extremely hard.

Omniterran : There's no such thing as too much fire power, just when you think you have enough, the CHINESE INVADE.
But yeah, this is pretty cool, now maybe they can outfit this to a Predator Drone or UAV and shoot the tips of nuclear warheads to disable them mid-flight. That would be a greater use than shooting s*** out of the water.

gotta love lazors
If you know anything about America you know that we are trillions of dollars in debt and at this point our mentality seems to be putting off important matters for useless bullsh*t that will bankrupt the America of tommorow
I can't wait to leave this country

What next? Sharks with laser beams attached to their heads? If you want to win a war just use nukes.

This is interesting. How could they effectively use a laser based weapon without it being completely cost inefficient? I mean, the power necessary to fire a cannon should be hundreds if not thousands of times more efficient than a laser. If anything, wouldn't a plasma based weapon work better and more efficiently? If we take the facts into consideration, a laser base weapon would be effective at low power settings as a non-lethal weapon.

As for the plasma weapon I mentioned, it would be remarkably effective if we could find some way to actually produce a plasma that would not spread out and separate midair.

Let's all hope robotics and future weapons advance further. If they do, we might be able to fight wars without losing lives. Imagine, countries waging robotic wars to fuel the economy. We could even use it like a giant game where real stocks are staked in robotic conflict.

that one giant step for science now will they use it for good or evil

My thoughts are, oh great more they have to shoot at us. lol