my laser-related predictions of the future

[WizardG]

I’m looking forward to handheld lasers or masers that are equally powerful as a firearm for self defense. Might be decades away on that though. Maybe we’ll have rail guns sooner

Might be a race between gyrotron weapons in the hundreds of GHz and fiber lasers in the NIR.

 

[Photon Master]

I’d love to have a tunable free electron laser. You can adjust the wavelength between some minimum and maximum value

 

[RedCowboy]

Might be a race between gyrotron weapons in the hundreds of GHz and fiber lasers in the NIR.

Fiber no doubt, at least for now, however gyrotrons may have a use in active denial......they are rather bulky it seems.

The Army’s New Laser Weapon Is Unfortunately Feeling the Burn

In the relentless pursuit of drone defense, a new obstacle emerges—from the climate itself.

www.popularmechanics.com

Funny that Tokamak will use Klystron tubes to power the RF containment and gyrotrons to heat the plasma, it's old tech but still the high output go to.

Gyrotron: The Most Suitable Millimeter-Wave Source for Heating of Plasma in Tokamak

In this chapter, brief outline is presented about gyro-devices. Gyro-devices comprise of a family of microwave devices and gyrotron is one among those. Various gyro devices, namely, gyrotron, gyro-klystron and gyro traveling-wave tubes (gyro-TWT) are discussed. Gyrotron is the only microwave...

www.intechopen.com

This is interesting.

High-Power CW Klystron for Fusion Experiments

A 3.7-GHz 700-kW klystron in continuous-wave (CW) operation has been developed to upgrade the lower hybrid RF plasma heating power in a tokamak up to 10 MW. The klystron is equipped with a diode gun, a five-cavity RF structure, two BeO-disk RF windows, and a large-size X-ray-shielded...

ieeexplore.ieee.org

 

[Photon Master]

Wow this blows my mind https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrotron