Nearly 20 years ago, I managed the Sales & Marketing as well as the Engineering Departments of the American Laser Corporation. I had been brought in as an act of desperation, so to speak, as the company had fallen upon hard times; a result of fierce competition from Coherent and other large laser companies. This was a very challenging role for me because the engineering staff consisted almost exclusively of Iranian engineers led by a Russian engineering manager. There was only a single PhD laser physicist who was a Gentile.
American Laser was a premier supplier of Argon Ion lasers, and the company was well-respected around the world for dependable, high quality products. I spent as much time as the company could afford on the road working with University research labs such as the ones at the University of Strathclyde in Glascow, Scotland and Heidelberg University in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. We also supplied lasers for the National Ignition Facility and Photon Science Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory which was trying to develop fusion power ignited by Argon lasers.
In the process, I learned how such lasers could be used for enriching Uranium, doing away with the need for massive banks of centrifuges like those in Iran. I also intercepted a lot of fax requests from the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) who exhorted my Iranian engineers (in the name of Allah) to provide them with technical information about using such lasers for Uranium enrichment. I turned these inquiries over to the FBI for follow-up. They scared me a lot, because if they were successful, they could enrich U-238 in buildings the size of a large garage, totally undetected by any international inspectors. Fortunately, the technology was far beyond anything the Iranians were capable of implementing at the time.
Image courtesy of Lawrence Livermore NIF
This may not be the case at present, and the agreement being promoted by the Obama administration likely does not consider this development in its restrictions or inspections regimen. This worries me a lot. American laser folded a few years later through no fault of my own, and it demoralized me for nearly a decade. No one wants to reveal abject failure at anything, and I am no different.Now, get a load of this from the Boeing Corporation:
Yep, we invented the swarming of inexpensive computer-controlled drones as a means of countering the latest ‘Stealth’ fighter jets and missiles, and now we have the means to shoot them all down, or at least, most of them.Time marches on and so does American technology. I hope Russia and China come to an understanding that no matter what they do to threaten the United Stated of America, they will be behind the ‘Eight Ball’, or as we say on the farm, “Sucking hind titty”
