Weed Zapper

As I mentioned in an recent post, European scientists are about to use huge megalasers to create a rip in spacetime.

The U.S. Air Force has something a little more modest in mind.  They’ve just published a wish list of technologies they’d like to see developed, and one of them is a “Directed Energy Weed Abatement and Prevention Tool.”

Yes, the USAF is looking to kill weeds with ray guns.

“Develop a device that uses directed energy technology to prevent and abate unwanted plants (weeds) in areas that require control or defoliation. The purpose of this system will be the removal of unwanted plants and keep seeds from germinating.”

This isn’t necessarily as, umm, crazy as it sounds.  I mean, we’d all rather zap weeds with a magic jimjam than have to remove them by hand, right? Right now, the USAF has to pay contractors to do this, or deploy its warfighters against weeds rather than the enemy.

But do we really want the Air Force to do this?  Consider that their four largest transport plane projects are over budget by nearly $1 billion, that the World’s Most Expensive Fighter Plane, the F-22, was recently grounded for months because of its habit of poisoning its own pilots; and that the F-35, which was supposed to be the low-cost alternative to the F-22, has about tripled in cost, has now been grounded indefinitely due to technical problems, and has been described as a plane that “can’t turn, can’t climb, can’t run.”

Why do I have a feeling that by the time the Air Force is finished with their weed-zapper, they’ll cost 4.1 billion dollars apiece, require a crew of twelve, cause power blackouts whenever they’re fired, and require an evacuation up to a radius of 3.7 miles due to a discharge of radiation?