Spectral Beam Combining could make laser guns a reality

Laser weapons are slowly becoming a reality, if not a practical one. Long the provenance of sci-fi movies, a laser weapon almost seems an inevitable part of a future military, but current power and size limits have kept them in the lab for the most part. But Lockheed Martin may have figured out a way to solve many of lasers' issues with an inverted prism.

The laser they've developed produces 100 kilowatts or more of power, and uses fiber optics to produce near-perfect beams, something that's been a struggle to maintain over long distances. It does this by working like an inverse prism: "lasers with slightly different wavelengths enter a combiner, and the result is a single, focused beam. It's called Spectral Beam Combining."

So if in 10 years you start hearing about new supersoldiers armed with spectral beam rifles, you'll know where it all started.

That's rather interesting, but again, it probably isn't realistic, but for purposes of demonstration and research, it's another advancement.