HOLY MOLY! A REAL WORKING LASER GUN! WHOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

I need to go change my pants now.

Here’s the story –

The US Air Force has unveiled its first hand-held laser weapon that gives secu­rity forces a non-lethal option for con­trol­ling crowds and pro­tect­ing areas like check­points, accord­ing to ser­vice officials.

While only in pro­to­type form and years away from field­ing, the weapon, known as the Per­son­nel Halt­ing and Stim­u­la­tion Response (PHaSR) sys­tem, holds great promise, they said.

The PHaSR is about the same size and weight of a fully loaded M60 machine gun – around 9 kg – but shoots a low-power beam of laser light instead of bul­lets. The light it gen­er­ates is capa­ble of tem­porar­ily impair­ing an individual’s vision, much like the dis­ori­ent­ing glare one sees when look­ing into the sun, said the officials.

Upon com­ple­tion of test­ing, one pro­to­type will be handed over to the Depart­ment of Defense’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Direc­torate (JNLWD) and the sec­ond to the National Insti­tute of Jus­tice (NIJ): the law enforce­ment arm of the US Depart­ment of Jus­tice. Both organ­i­sa­tions sup­port the pro­gramme, with the lat­ter inter­ested in its civil applications.