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Light-emitting weapons seem to be the stuff
of science fiction -- Flash Gordon's ray gun, Captain Kirk's
phaser, Darth Vader's light saber. But the imagined future
of science fiction is soon to be a reality. After more than
two decades of research, the United States is on the verge
of deploying a new generation of weapons that discharge
light-wave energy, the same spectrum of energy found in
your microwave or TV remote control. It's called directed
energy. And it's a revolution in weaponry, perhaps more
profound than the atomic bomb.
With the nation responding to terrorism,
and the military undergoing a radical transformation to
more effectively deal with new combat conditions, directed
energy weapons will play a fundamental role in our country's
future security. The first directed energy weapons are being
tested right now, and their deployment is being planned
for today's battlefields.
In The E-Bomb, Doug Beason, a leading
expert in directed energy research, describes these new
weapons in clear and jargon-free prose and answers the questions
that all Americans will ask: What is directed energy? How
do these new weapons work? How lethal are they (in fact,
some new directed energy weapons can be used for nonlethal
resistance)? And are these weapons safe to use?
Doug Beason, Ph.D., Col. (USAF, Ret.),
a key architect of and leading expert in directed energy
research for the past twenty-six years, holds a doctorate
in laser-technology physics. He has served at the White
House, working for the President's Science Advisor in both
the Clinton and Bush administrations in the 1990s. Today
he is Director of Threat Reduction at Los Alamos National
Laboratory and serves on the Board of Directors of the Directed
Energy Professional Society. Dr. Beason is the author of
twelve previous books, including some popular fiction techno-thrillers,
and over one hundred scholarly papers and other works. He
is a Fellow of the prestigious American Physical Society.
He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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