Emerging Technology (Assignment 1)

Jeff Makin
Page 1

The US Army has developed a new weapon called the High Energy Laser Mobile
Demonstrator (HEL MD.) It has been designed to disable or destroy mortar rounds, missiles,
and drones with a high energy laser. HEL MD uses radar to lock-on to the foreign object and
destroys it after several seconds. Boeing has a vehicle based laser developed but Raytheon also
is creating a system. The laser is transported to site on a heavy expanded mobility tactical truck,
which is build by Oshkosh Corporation. It has recently conducted tests to destroy multiple
targets to prove its effectiveness. As with any system in the military, new programs usually take
several years, between getting the contractors research and development departments to
come up with a design and the military to choose which design is cost effective and is best at
completing the intended task.
If you place High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator into the search box of Yahoo, you
will receive 18,300,000 results. If you place High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator into the
search box of Bing, you will receive 19,200,000 results. I do not see any difference in search
engines other than slight variations in what the main web pages look like. I usually just use
Google because it has always has been the preset search engine on my computer. Most of the
websites that are on the first page of both Yahoo and Bing are the same with a couple different
pages.
The article retrieved on Bing was written by the US Army. The time when the article was
written on is December 11, 2013. This article is about the High Energy Laser Mobile
Demonstrator. The author is part of the US Public Affair department. This article is reliable
because the author has trained for his MOS; 46Q (Public Affairs Specialist,) through military
Emerging Technology (Assignment 1)
Jeff Makin
Page 2

tech school after basic training. Also, people above him review his work before it is released.
This article was written to inform the public about a possible new system that protects our
nation. There is no bias since this article goes through editing by higher command.
I used high energy laser mobile demonstrator as the key words to search on the CCBC
library database. I found this database through the home page of CCBC under Current Students.
Once there, I typed the key words into the search box and choices appeared. I then signed-in to
gain access to them. They provide a lot of information. It seem slightly quicker for the computer
to retrieve articles from the CCBC library versus the internet. It could have to do with the fact
that the computer has to sift through all of the trash on the internet compared to what is
offered by the library. There are plenty of trustworthy sources on the internet, but it has its fair
share of crap. I would definitely choose library resources first.
Bibliography (MLA)
Cummings, John H. " Army Tests Vehicle-Mounted Laser Against Multiple Targets" www.army.mil
(2013). Web.
Golson, Jordan. "Army's New Laser Cannon Blasts Drones Out of the Sky, Even in Fog." Wired (2014).
Web.
Palermo, Elizabeth. "US Military's New Laser Gun Zaps Drones." LiveScience (2014). Web.

Frink, Skyler. Military & Aerospace Electronics. Nov2012, Vol. 23 Issue 11, p27-27. 2/3p. ,
Database: Business Source Premier
Steele, Dennis. Army Magazine. Feb2014, Vol. 64 Issue 2, p34-35. 2p. , Database: Military &
Government Collection