One of the Pentagon's biggest engines for out-of-the-box ideas, the Office of Force Transformation, has been disbanded. But a few of the Office's wildest concepts have outlasted the organization's demise, Federal Computer Week notes.
Take the "redirected energy initiative," for instance. It was meant to produce a "magic," world-wide ring of laser-directing mirrors which could be used to used to relay communications, supply energy to solar-electric devices, or put smoking holes in the less-than-cooperative. A four-man shop, under the Office of the Director for Defense Research and Engineering, continues the laser-bending work, along with efforts to build miniature satellites and stealthy, wave-piercing ships.
