(1) Dan Vergano, 'Star Wars' Becoming Real; Military Is on the Edge of Using
Laser Weapons. USA Today, May 14, 2010 (title in the print; front page).
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2010-05-14-1Adeathray14_CV_N.htm?csp=hf
My comment:
(a) Regarding "the 50th anniversary of the [Laser] technology," see Laser
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser
("in 1950, Alfred Kastler (Nobel Prize for Physics 1966) proposed the method
of optical pumping, experimentally confirmed, two years later, by Brossel,
Kastler, and Winter")
(b) In the print, "Lasers beam crystal-clear for half a century" is a
sidebar to the report.
(2) Steven Ashley, Ray Guns Near Crossroads to the Battlefield [Slide Show];
The Pentagon ramps up efforts to field directed-energy beam weapons for
land, air and sea. Scientific Americans, May 14, 2010.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ray-guns-near-crossroads