The Air Force Will Have Combat Lasers On Its War Planes By 2020

I only have one question. Which company—Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, or Boeing—is best capable of creating the Vic Viper?

These armaments, dubbed directed-energy weapons pods, will be mounted on American warplanes and serve to burn missiles, UAVs -- even other combat aircraft -- clean out of the sky. "I believe we'll have a directed energy pod we can put on a fighter plane very soon," Air Force General Hawk Carlisle said at a Fifth-Generation Warfare lecture during the Air Force Association Air & Space conference earlier this week. "That day is a lot closer than I think a lot of people think it is."