Maybe you can’t use them to fight a duel with your nemesis, you could use a light saber to help save you or your comrade from dying on the field of battle.
A new Pentagon report indicates that the U.S. military is using special issue plasma knife that cuts through flesh with a “blade” of glowing ionized gas.
Sound familiar? You have seen something similar used in “a galaxy far, far away.”
Special Operations Command recently “completed ongoing testing and field evaluation studies” of a “wearable low-power plasma knife” which, in description, sounds like a little lightsaber. It’s a medical device meant to treat injured soldiers on the front lines.
Intended for use by Special Operations Forces that are stuck behind enemy lines or far from an emergency care facility, the portable plasma knife could be the difference between life and death. The device could be used to cauterize wounds so you won’t blead to death while waiting for medical assistance.
“It’s like a very small blowtorch, only instead of burning gas, it’s electrically heated gas,” explains Wired writer David Hambling. “The gas is heated up to a temperature where it becomes a plasma. It’s ionized so you get this stream of glowing gas coming out of it and it can be used as a knife.”
J4y says
Plasma Cutter have been used for cutting metal for decades. weaponizing it was just a matter of time.
anachronite says
sounds like a larger version of this can be used as a weapon, even the small one. But you wont be able to block a strike from another one being swung at you. they blades will pass through each other.