Customer Reviews

Beam Weapons: The Next Arms Race

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Basic principles are laid out very well and it's well written, but it's very dated. I'd like to see Jeff update it with something from this century. Nice cold war perspective of 25-30 years ago. I want the latest technology tho.

As for a participant of the laser weapons arms race between the US and the Soviet Union in the 80th, it was a professional interest for me to read this book in its first edition in 1984. The subject of the book was a hot issue that time, and many details of the US laser weapons program were unveiled for the first time for a broad audience. The Soviet counterpart was mostly classified that time (and it continues to be even nowadays) so that the book presented mainly the general conceptual design of what could possibly be expected of laser weaponry. However, the intriguing style of writing and scientific professionalism of the author made the book interesting for the people like me. The only dull moment seems to be the introduction, going down to Archimedes and early fiction novels about Martians. Nowadays, more than 20 years later, it is a complete revelation for me to see that the new edition of this book is also of interest for younger audience: my son finished it in one day. Summarizing, I can say that this book remains equally interesting for both those who has gone through the era of laser weapons race and the young generation, willing to learn the thrilling history of this subject.

The book in general was very informative. It provided me with a large amount of information that I was previosly unaware of reguarding beam weapons. By the end of the book I share the authors conclusion that beam weapons will be the next arms race. This was very well written.