Did the US pay the Wagner mercenary group over 6 billion dollars?
(files.catbox.moe)
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Wrong again.
Only an idiot can name himself "death ray designer". You are a shill.
What do you call YAL-1A? I worked on preliminary designs, the winning proposal, and program mission analysis. Look it up, Mr. Shill-detector, and weep. If a megawatt-class laser is not a death ray, I don't know what is---nor do you. (We actually had to consider what would happen if a beam penetrated a canopy into a cockpit. The answer was grim: the pilot would be cooked to a crisp in a second, like something having spent too much time in a microwave oven.)
Back in grad school, I had a laboratory director who was a pretty salty guy. We were all working on various aspects of laser technology. One day, he was entirely exasperated with the speculations about laser death rays. "We already HAVE death rays!" he declared out loud. "They're called 'machine guns'! You point them at someone and shoot!"
Really, did you work on this COIL? WOW now I understand why you're so full of yourself. You must be proud eh? What an achievement.... look you know already where to put your laser.... Why you can't point it to the moon and watch for yourself what will happen?
I was mainly working on what came before COIL, the quasi-continuous wave carbon monoxide electric discharge laser (CO-EDL). It was figured to have about 40% quantum efficiency, a number that I have not seen surpassed. But COIL operated at a shorter wavelength, and the Air Force was in love with shorter wavelengths. Now they are working with solid-state lasers. (Kind of like going full circle, considering the first lasers were ruby rods.)
Mainly, I am proud of the fact that my re-editing of the proposal won Boeing a $1billion development contract. We had a guaranteed loser before it was turned over to me.
After the system successfully shot down a boosting ballistic missile in flight in 2010, President Obama canceled the program and scrapped it. So, even if I wanted to point it at the Moon (why? nothing would happen), it is not there to do the job. It would have been a handy counter to the North Korean missile launches.