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The Pentagon Has 6 Bomb-Zapping Ray Guns (Which May Be 6 Too Many)

The bomb-blasting 'Laser Avenger.' Photo: Courtesy of Boeing
Since January 2006, the Pentagon has spent more than $18 billion trying to stop insurgent bombs — funding everything from radio frequency jammers to electronic dragnets that hunt bombmakers’ phone calls. But while the military is good at shelling out cash for futuristic bomb stoppers, it’s not as adept at tracking where its money goes. That’s how it ends up spending over $100 million on no fewer than six different kinds of directed-energy weapons designed to fry the bombs from a safe distance. And that’s just the tally of the laser, microwave or radio-frequency blasters that are currently in development.
Those are the findings of a report from Congress’ investigative arm, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), released on Tuesday. The report considered the bomb squad, known within the military as JIEDDO — the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization — a sprawling, bureaucratic mess. JIEDDO can’t even keep track of all the different anti-bomb technologies it’s supposed to coordinate, resulting in wasteful duplication.
The military services have developed six different systems that emit energy, such as radio waves, directed at IEDs [improvised explosive devices, or homemade bombs] to neutralize them,” the GAO report found. (.PDF)
The cost? At least $104 million, as best as the GAO could determine — although it could be higher, since the Pentagon’s crappy bookkeeping makes it difficult to get an accurate tally. And the GAO total excludes any of the laser weapons JIEDDO previously funded, like a $30 million “lightning gun” that’s considered one of the bigger military technology flops of the last decade. Not to mention the parade of Humvee-mounted lasers and high-powered microwave generators backed by JIEDDO and its bureaucratic predecessor.
Directed-energy weapons are, to say the least, a gamble. The Navy has worked on laser guns in earnest for 15 years and still doesn’t think it’ll have one aboard a ship for another decade. The Air Force just unceremoniously retired its laser-firing 747 after 16 years of tests and billions of dollars spent. While there have been a few flashy demonstrations — and even a few battlefield trials — after all those billions, U.S. troops still don’t have a way to blast away the most lethal threat they face: a $265 improvised bomb.
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