Ahhh the Geneva convention, its always the one who should follow it that don't.

Honestly all war is unjust and every act of violence unethical, what is not is the need behind them. If someone wants to kill, you have to act to survive, by any means necessary. You, a person of sound mind (because your not randomly killing people) have an obligation to survive and the antagonist should be dealt with as needed. In an ideal world we could reason with him (the antagonist) but in the real world you can’t be rational with irrational people, you can't talk to those who are unwilling to listen. In such a case you have two options, survive or die.

The Geneva Convention bans the use of laser weapons specifically designed to blind enemy personnel; in other words only lasers that have for their sole intended purpose the permanent blinding of enemy soldiers. *Lasers that are capable of blinding people (which includes most all lasers in existence, military or civilian use) but are designed to be used for other purposes are not banned.

But yes, it does make you wonder what good these rules and conventions of warfare are when there are rouge countries and terrorist organizations out there who have no intention of honoring them! *Of course, there are some things that truly deserve to be forever banned, like disfiguring land mines that maim and kill civilians many years after the war is over. *This wouldn't be the case with laser weapons, blinding or not.

BTW, the crowd dispersal device someone mentioned is actually based on microwaves (or millimeter waves, as the gov't calls them - the word "microwave" conjures up way too many images of baked potatoes and popcorn - not what you want to think of when aiming at a crowd of people!) at a frequency of 95 gigahertz - the Active Denial System. You couldn't make that into a laser at all, though they are working on making it hand-held at some point in the future.

Is'nt the ADS a MASER?

No, it's not a maser technically, since it consists of a parabolic antenna setup. It's just focused microwaves, the equivalent of pointing a high-powered radar at someone. Masers work the same as lasers and require at least two reflective elements inside of a waveguide cavity..

Ah okay, thats makes more sense. imagine the ads collimated like a laser then....

The first battlefield laser has just been released by Northrup Grumman. Please click on the attachment and you will see what is being deployed NOW!

http://www.irconnect.com/noc/press/p....html?d=154600

I contacted a friend who is at the VP level at Northrup and based on our conversation, you haven't seen anything yet.

Hope you enjoy this. I did try to get a video, but for the moment it is classified.

Yep, N-G is working on the JHPSSL for the F-35. the f-35 employs a lift fan powered directly by the turbofan engine. If you remove the lift fan and place the laser there, they can tap into over 27MW of power! more then enough to power a 100kW laser @ 10% efficiency. They would use fuel as a coolant and the tank as a heatsink from what ive read. The f-35 still has two years before they say it will enter into service though. Not sure how long untill they employ the laser after it enters service.

Getting back to the original question, you could build your own multi-watt labby... You could pick up a Radio Shack project box, and five 5W c-mounts off of Ebay, plus a lot of PBSs. And there you go, a portable 25W labby. ;D You could prbably squeeze it into a 5"x7"x2" box.

There's something very important I forgot to tell you...

Don't Cross The Streams!!!

Why? It would be bad.

I seem to recall reading that it is not practical (or at least incredibly difficult), to up the beam power, simply by trying to combine the beams of multiple, independent lasers (that would seem to make sense, given that the independent beams are not likely to be at exactly the same frequency, or in phase).

Multiple-diodes pumping Nd:YAG, however, is another story...

Diode-pumped crystals can also be used as amplifiers, and run in series to increase power even further! 8-)

From what I've read, I believe that is also the approach being used for military solid-state laser weapons design.

The fiber-laser would be the best approach for a powerful , relatively energy efficient and yet small and light package.But I doubt that you are going to find parts for that on ebay :

Sorry to necro post but I am new lol, never seen this before.
imho lasers to kill animals require 2 things:
The correct wavelength, everything has an absorbance spectra in the case of proteins it is about 280nm (side chains, aromatic specifically absorb at this wavelength [wv]) and as animals are more or less protein coated bags of water,it is proabably better to shoot for this wv (no pun intended).
And power enough to force the instant vaprization of water, so anyone have a 280nm laser diode that can pump out 4.188 J (heat capacity of water, to raise 1 degree) x 150~ (temp difference [mammal body temp/vape point of water]) x the qty of water in the area to be vaporized (maybe 100ml in a section of animal 10cms thick x 1cm wide?). I think thats about right, working to about 63kJ of energy required to "blow a hole in any mfrfkr". And that is totally focused 100% efficiency... and this is the real universe lol. So more.

Btw. why go CW? You want as much power put into one spot as possible. Short pulse makes that easier. And switched lasers should be more effective.
Those SSY-1 handhelds are near BB gun damage.

Agreed, but a short cycle is a must, maybe built like a gatling gun so each diode only fires once per X shots.

Very true Mr..... SuicideKing....

+1 for having the most apt name for your post