The U.S. Army and Air Force are working together to build laser technology capable of keeping soldiers safer while disarming explosives.
The technology, called the Recovery of Airbase Denied by Ordinance (RADBO), is being developed through the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research Development and Engineering Center Prototype Integration Facility (AMRDEC PIF) and will be used by the military's mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicles, according to Fox News.
The AMRDEC PIF will combine the laser and an interrogator arm onto a Cougar MRAP. Other features include infrared cameras and two alternators that provide 1,100 amps of power.
The RADBO will serve as a replacement for the highly-trained explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) teams normally used to manually disarm bombs, as seen in the film "The Hurt Locker," Engadget reported.
The laser can detonate bombs 984 feet away, and the arm can rip up to 50 pounds of the disabled debris out of the ground at a time.
"We may see hundreds of thousands of small unexploded ordnance items on a runway or airfield but the RADBO will allow us to reduce the time it takes to get an airfield operational," Marshall "Doc" Dutton, Air Force EOD modernization program manager of the Air Force Civil Engineer Center, said in a statement. "Currently, if a runway gets hit it can take days to weeks to get cleared. With the RADBO, runways can be cleared and operational at a much quicker pace."
The Army and Air Force plan to move the RADBO to Tyndall Air Force Base in September after current tests are completed. When exactly troops will be able to use this technology has yet to be revealed.
