Aside from doing computer simulations of high-altitude nuclear explosions, the IAP team led by Yevgeniy Stupitskiy has also done research on space-based plasma guns. This is a directed-energy weapon that generates donut-shaped blobs of plasma (so-called compact toroids) and accelerates them to high speeds, creating some of the same effects of plasma waves produced by nuclear explosions. Papers on the research refer to experiments done in the 1990s at the US Air Force’s Phillips Laboratory in New Mexico under the name MARAUDER (“magnetically accelerated ring to achieve ultrahigh directed energy and radiation”). These utilized the energy produced by a capacitator bank named Shiva to compress toroids of plasma to high mass density and magnetic field intensity and accelerate them to high speed. The project went dark in the mid-1990s and it is not known what, if any, work was done in the field in the US in subsequent years. Much of the literature on plasma weapons has emphasized their disadvantages and relegated them to the realms of science fiction. They require a lot of power, are bulky, and the plasma wave quickly dissipates, even in the near-vacuum environment in low Earth orbit. This means that the range of such weapons is limited.
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