If you had asked me a few years ago, I would have said laser weapons, while possible, would never be practical... However, as I look back on the past 15 years that I have worked on lasers I have to now admit it is very likely that lasers will appear on the battlefield in the next decade or two..

For instance, the laser I work on now was built with early 1990's technology- it consists of 9 laser subsystems (9 seperate lasers working together), the size of a 18 wheel truck trailer and uses 50 kW of power... equivalent Lasers that I have reviewed using todays technology are the size of a large suitcase, have 2 laser subsystems, and use 3-5 kW- The progress in laser tech is exponential, so laser weapons are going to be practical very soon.

This raises new ethical and legal questions:
Based on the state of current laser technology, I think it is safe to say the most probable laser weapons will operate with a wavelength between 1-2 microns- While not visible to the human eye they will still present a severe blinding hazard. It is simple enough to protect the eyes of the weapon users, but anyone near the target would very likely be blinded. The Geneva convention forbids use of blinding weapons- but this really applies only to weapons whose _intent_ is to blind- but what about a weapon that blinds as a side effect?

These are issues we will have to face soon... In general, I think ethics and war are contradictory terms... but blinding weapons are particularly vile. When the geneva conventions were written I believe the blinding weapon prohibition was included mainly for chemical weapons- should it be updated?