Customer Reviews

The E-bomb: How America's New Directed Energy Weapons Will Change the Way Future Wars Will Be Fought

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Coming from the position of a layman this book works very well. It provides simple explanations of the physics behind directed energy weapons such that people without scientific training can understand how they work and what this implies. This is done with the use of diagrams where necessary to explain the point. The book moves forward steadily and this isn't a book that you will get bogged down in.

Chapters describe the technology itself, the problems with it, how far the military has taken it, the current state of the art and the possible future manifestations of it. They also describe the ever present battle between the sceptics and true believers in this technology. The book also includes details and photographs of unclassified projects and demonstrators. In addition, Beason makes clever use of what-if scenarios drawn from all too familiar events to demonstrate the possible utility of directed energy weapons.

Overall this book is well written and provides a strong introduction to directed energy weapons that covers both the story so far and the possible futures from the perspective of an advocate for this technology. I doubt that any comparatively accessible books exist on this topic to date. All the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle have been put on the table here and I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in finding out more about directed energy weapons.

Not too bad a book, but definitely an introductory text. It also has some curious gaps. For instance, it entirely omits Raytheon's VIGILANT EAGLE system for airport defense. It makes very little mention of contributions to DEW from the EW community. Other Active Denial System (ADS) it omits all energy-based non-lethal weapons. Finally, it makes very little mention of HPM-based EM threats. I expected it to at least survey the threats of EMP.

If you really want to learn about this subject, start with this book, and move on to your public library. Read the first few chapters of Jane's All The Worlds Fighting Ships and Jane's All The Worlds Fighting Aircraft for weapons systems principles. From there, move on to periodicals and read through the last fifteen years or so of Aviation Week's articles on EW/EMP/HPM. Finally, read the Executive Summary of the report by the EMP threat commission.

Vividly written, this book offers an useful introduction to directed energy weapons and their development history. High-power microwaves weapons will not be feasible unless the large infrastructure are shrinked, microwave powers are increased and atmospheric breakdowns are overcome. However, the non-lethal Active Denial System with limited range against human appears plausible in the near future. As for the high-energy laser, there are many types of laser weapons to be fielded in the air, on the ground and on the sea. These systems are not mature yet and are also too large to be efficient.

The USAF relay mirror experiment proved that a laser system could track a fast-flying object in low-earth orbit, reflect laser energy off a mirror and illuminate a target. This is exciting because airborne or ground-based laser might become a 'global' weapon by increasing the distance of the laser's reach with relay mirrors!

The basic concept of virtually all weapons is to apply energy to a target at come distance from the 'shooter.' The energy may be concentrated at the point of an arrow, a bullet, or there may be an energy source located in the projectile such as an explosive.

Directed energy weapons do away with this concept. Pure energy is sent to the target with no projectile being involved. At first this was the concept in the so called Star Wars system put forward by Ronald Reagan. It was ridiculed by many, although many people subsequently give it considerable credit for the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Since then the Star Wars program was officially cancelled, but under different program names research has continued. Then the devices started to show promise. As they were offensive to the Democrats, Clinton cut the programs back drastically abandoning several promising research tracks.

It is now clear that several of these weapons would have been very useful in the urban warfare in Bagdad and Fallujah. Other weapons are designed to destroy the explosive devices being placed along roadsides.

This book is a summary of current research being conducted into directed energy weapons. It is written from a somewhat sensationalist approach that to me detracts from the facts they are trying to convey, but this is the current state of research in these weapons. The book is by a research scientist working in these areas.

Light-emitting weaponry first was portrayed by Flash Gordon and moved through science fiction warfare scenarios to Star Trek and beyond - now, after over twenty years, the U.S. is about to deploy a new generation of weapons which discharge light-wave energy: a revolution which holds even more potential impact than the a-bomb. Directed energy's science, testing, and military plans are surveyed by a leading expert in directed energy research, who uses simple language to answer basic questions about these weapons, their technology, and their effects. From beam quality to laser distribution and the pros and cons of microwaves, phasing and other scenarios, THE E-BOMB is a thought-provoking portent of the future of military might.

Diane C. Donovan, Editor
California Bookwatch

Beason offers a glowing vision of how directed energy weapons will greatly aid urban and nuclear warfare. Seems only natural, since that area has paid his salary for decades. On the other hand, analyses by respected scientists in academia, with presumably no "axe to grind" are uniformly negative on the likely success of this eg. "Star Wars" and point out that such are easily defeated via decoys and reflective surfaces. And what if a short-range ship-launched missile were used? Meanwhile, there is news that the U.S.' abrogation of the ABM treaty has already resulted in Russia developing new weapons to overcome our planned innovations.

Meanwhile, at a much simpler level there still is the problem of sneaking a nuclear or biological weapon into the U.S. via boat, truck, or airplane. And I saw nothing in the book that sounded effective against IEDs in Iraq or helpful in guerilla combat.

I agree with the Union of Concerned Scientists that instead we should place increased emphasis on reducing terrorism.