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- The Pentagon’s frontier-busting scientists want to use lasers to transit energy into war zones.
- Electrical power would be converted into laser energy, and then beamed to remote U.S. military bases.
- This technology would make the military far less reliant on diesel generators, and the logistics network that sometimes has to dodge enemy fire to supply them with fuel.
Wireless transmission of energy through thin air is a dream that dates back at least a century, and the Pentagon wants to be the first to make it a wide-scale reality.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)—the research and development arm of the U.S. Department of Defense, which has conducted work on everything from the internet to the science behind COVID-19 vaccines—wants to use laser technology to beam electricity to distant U.S. military bases. The inspiration comes from America’s 9/11 wars, and the need for uninterrupted energy at distant, dusty forward operating bases.