Not fiction: DARPA’s
High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense (HELLADS) program is similar in application to the JHPSSL, with a notable difference being that the DARPA lasers are intended to be liquid-cooled and reach 150 kilowatts.
Play YT video at 1:04
NOPE!
Just one more relatively recent article on the progress of HELLADS:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/11/150-kw-laser-should-begin-testing-on-an-ac-130-in-2018-and-a-megawatt-laser-drone-possible-in-the-2020s.html
What are the fucken odds?
Does not need to come from space. We need some planefags to track some AC-130s to coincide with the start of the fires
Articles related.
"The weapon produces a silent, invisible, but extremely hot beam by pumping electricity through rare earth minerals to excite their electrons and generate energy, Defense News reported. "The reason that I want it on an AC-130 is, right now, when an AC-130 starts firing kinetic weaponry, everybody knows you’re there," Heithold said. "What I want on the airplane is to be able to silently disable something."
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/systems/hellads.htm
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/11/150-kw-laser-should-begin-testing-on-an-ac-130-in-2018-and-a-megawatt-laser-drone-possible-in-the-2020s.html