May the force be with us: DRDO is working on Star Wars-like energy weapons

Star Wars, the epic space opera franchise, has given a lot of ideas to scientists to adopt high-tech weapons and vehicles in real life, one of them being concentrated energy weapons. Very soon, these directed energy weapons (DEWs), like high-energy lasers and high-powered microwaves, will become a reality.

While many countries, like the US, Russia, China and others are in advanced stages of this race, India is also not very far behind.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is in process of developing a 10-kilowatt DEW against UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) like targets, with "the establishment of critical technologies of precision tracking/pointing and laser beam combination".

The unnamed "system" has already been tested up to a range of 800 meters at DRDO’s Hyderabad-based Centre for High Energy Systems and Sciences (CHESS). It was also demonstrated to the armed forces at the Terminal Ballistics Research Laboratory's firing range at Ramgarh (Haryana) last September.

DRDO is treating the development of these DEWs and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons as a top-priority area, especially for the 15-year "technology perspective and capability roadmap" which was chalked out by the defence ministry.

The DRDO, which is often criticised for consuming huge time and having high cost overruns in its projects, has said that it has already developed smaller systems like laser-based ordnance disposal of IEDs and mines, hand-held laser dazzlers to overpower armed terrorists and vehicle-mounted laser dazzlers for controlling unruly mobs.

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