Laser crazer

The Pentagon's newest laser weapon has a peak power of more than amillion megawatts, so intense that it warps the air around it. When thebeam strikes the target it vaporises the impact site, producing aplasma fireball and a highly destructive shockwave.

The end result: a tiny crater barely visible to the naked eye.

That's because the so-called "laser crazer" is designed not toburn up missiles or tanks, but to scratch lenses. It's a portablenonlethal weapon designed to take out enemy optical systems at longrange -- ruining an adversary's night-vision gear, sniper scopes andbinoculars in a fraction of a second -- by sandblasting their lenseswith ultrashort pulses of laser light.

Source: wired.comAdded: 13 February 2008