BARC beam weapon for `soft killing'
MUMBAI, Aug 18: The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) here is in the final stages of assembling a powerful electron accelerating machine named `KALI-5000' which, its scientists say, can potentially be used as a beam weapon.
Bursts of microwaves packed with gigawatts of power (one gigawatt is 1000 million watts) produced by this machine, when aimed at enemy missiles and aircraft, will cripple their electronics systems and computer chips and bring them down.
According to scientists, ``soft killing'' by high power microwaves has advantages over the so-called laser weapon which destroys by drilling holes through metal.
KALI-5000 will be ready for testing by the end of this year according to P H Ron, head of the accelerator and pulse power division at BARC and chief designer of India's first star war weapon.
However, at 26 tonnes including 12,000 litres of oil India's beam weapon is too bulky. Ron said some ``compacting'' was possible.
He said KALI (kilo-ampere linear injector) machine was developed for industrial applications and that the defence use was a recent spin off. He, however, declined to elaborate.
Describing it as a machine ``bordering basic research,'' Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Rajagopalan Chidambaram admitted that it has military potential. ``There are some technologies we have to be in touch with because they may become useful (later),'' he said. Development of KALI machine was proposed in 1985 by Chidambaram, then director of BARC, but work earnestly began in 1989.
Ron said the machine essentially generated pulses of highly energetic electrons. Other components in the machine down the line converted the electrons into flash X-rays (for ultra high-speed photography) or microwaves. The electron beam itself can be used for welding.
The Defence Ballistics Research Institute in Chandigarh is already using an X-ray version of KALI to study speed of projectiles.
Another defence institute in Bangalore is using a microwave-producing version of KALI which the scientists use fortesting the vulnerability of the electronic systems going into the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) under development and designing electrostatic shields to protect them from microwave attack by the enemy.
According to BARC scientists, KALI machine has for the first time provided India a way to ``harden'' the electronic systems used in satellites and missiles against the deadly electromagnetic impulses (EMI) generated by nuclear weapons.
The EMI wreaks havoc by creating intense electric field of several thousand volts per centimetre. The electronic components currently used in missiles can withstand fields of just 300 volts per centimetre.
While the KALI systems built so far are single shot pulsepower systems (they produce one burst of microwaves and the next burst comes much later), KALI-5000 is a rapid fire device, and hence its potential as a beam weapon.
According to BARC-published reports, the machine will shoot several thousand bursts of microwaves, each burst lasting for just 60 billionths of asecond and packed with a power of about four gigawatts.
The high power microwave pulses travel in a straight line and do not dissipate their energy if the frequency falls between three and ten gigahertz. According to BARC scientists, a microwave power of 150 megawatts has already been demonstrated in earlier versions of KALI.[/quote]
The above mentioned article is dated 1999......It means we are at the end of decade from the date it was mentioned.Usually we have to consider a min of 1 year passed when the report is jumped into public media...i.e especially from BARC.It means a decade already passed.
Got any updates on the above?
, production facilities, nuclear facilities,missile bases, oil refineries and everything that has a metal protection 
Since the Laser used on ABL is an high intensity and already its clones were being used for metal cutting in manufacturing industries ,so it wont be a matter to kill each and every thing that acts as a fuel storage(in short every thing that runs on gasoline.
and soon after the disaster, they will blame their own mujahidheens..............
which may incorporate technology from India's Trishul SAM and MBDA's MICA. India' state-run Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) released a global RFP for co-development of SR-SAM system. Levitte said the process to secure a foreign partner is underway.
