Military Uses
FEL technology is being evaluated by the US Navy as a good candidate for an anti aircraft and missile directed-energy weapon. Significant progress is being made in raising FEL power levels (the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility's FEL has demonstrated over 14 kW) and it should be possible to build compact multi-megawatt class FEL weapons. On June 9, 2009 the Office of Naval Research announced it had awarded Raytheon a contract to develop a 100 kW experimental FEL. On March 18, 2010 Boeing Directed Energy Systems announced the completion of an initial design for U.S. Naval use. A prototype FEL system has since been demonstrated with a full-power prototype scheduled by 2018.
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