10 Top Secret Weapons You've Never Heard Of

5. Bring Down The Thunder

The lightning, actually. The Laser-Induced Plasma Channel, or LIPC, works by creating a plasma pathway in midair and beckoning lightning bolts down them to strike the target. Should the target conduct electricity more efficiently than the air or the ground, they suffer the consequences.

Essentially, a high-intensity laser (around 60 billion watts flicked on for about two-trillionths of a second) ionises the air, forming a plasma channel, which conducts electricity far more efficiently than the normal air surrounding it, allowing electrical energy to travel down the channel towards and then through the target. The science behind the LIPC is sound, but actually creating a working prototype has met with a few problems, chiefly because the focus of the laser could potentially occur within the laser device itself, rather than in the air.

Power requirements are also a concern;€“ in fact, one of the central issues with far too many of the innovative weapons projects currently being developed is that the science for fuelling the devices cheaply and efficiently doesn€™'t yet exist. That means that, for all their innovation and the firing of the imagination in coming up with cool weapon systems, the whizkids behind the LIPC are going to have to solve some basic, boring problems with creating a new, gamechanging power source first.