Chinese researchers developed a prototype laser assault rifle, said to have a non-visible beam that can set fire to skin and clothing up to 800 meters away. The ZKZM-500 weighs about the same as an AK-47 at 6.6 pounds, can fire more than 1,000 shots on a rechargeable lithium battery pack, and will cost around USD $15,000 each. The rifle, from ZKZM Laser in Xian, is allegedly ready for mass production, to be sold only to Chinese military and police units.

The July 1 2018 report appeared the In South China Morning Post. It quoted a “researcher who had [taken] part in the development and field testing of a prototype at the Xian Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shaanxi province. The source said “The pain will be beyond endurance.” Another researcher said that because the beam is invisible and noiseless, “nobody will know where the attack came from. It will look like an accident.”

A technical document stressed the “non-lethal” nature of the laser rifle, listing attacks such as burning the banners or clothing of “illegal protests”.

The laser capability claims were disputed, however, by numerous news outlets.

TechCrunch writer Devin Coldewey first noted that military laser systems capable of delivering damaging heat over hundreds of meters require “on the order of tens of kilowatts, and those have trouble causing serious damage.” He calculated that a Tesla Powerwall using lithium ion batteries produces a few kilowatts of power and weighs over 200 pounds. (The complete laser rifle weighs 6.6 pounds.) Coldewey said the problem was atmospheric attenuation of the laser beam which is “non-trivial at anything beyond, say, a few dozen meters. By the time you get out to 800 [meters, the laser’s claimed range] the air and water the beam has traveled through [are] enough to reduce it [to] a fraction of its original power.”

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Tags: China, Assault, Gun, Infrared laser, Weapons, Styropyro

China’s military newspaper PLA Daily said the country was updating a number of “home-made blinding laser weapons” that are “primarily used to blind its targets with laser in short distance, or interfere and damage the laser and night vision equipment, etc.”. The December 9 2015 report included photos of a number of Chinese weapons, including these two:

BBQ-905 Laser Dazzler Weapon


PY132A Blinding Laser Weapon

China’s use of the weapons appears to violate the 1998 Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons, which China has agreed to follow. A Washington Free Beacon article quoted an expert on Chinese weapons as saying “There is a strong possibility these new dazzlers are being marketed for foreign sale.”

From China Military Online via the Washington Free Beacon. Additional photos showing the weapons and how they would be used are at Huanqui.com.

Tags: China, Military, Blinding weapons, Photo, Dazzler

In a September 30 2011 radio interview, U.S. Rep. Michelle Bachmann claimed that “China has blinded United States satellites with their lasers.” She is a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence and thus has access to top secret documents, although she says the information came from an “open-source document.”Click to read more...

Tags: US, China, Satellite blinding, Weapons, Blinding weapons