Lasers and Directed Energy Weapons thread

[Yuli Ban]

This gave me an idea for a "photonic grenade"

A laser gun is pure science fiction, for the same reasons StyroPyro keeps mentioning. Unlike plasma, which can at least behave a bit like a conventional gun, lasers are light. If it's powerful enough it will burn through anything, but you still run the risk of reflections going haywire; a powerful enough reflector can literally shine the beam right back at you, or your comrade, or something important by accident. So as a weapon, it has limited usecases.

But it's feasible to use that scattered light aspect for an offensive purpose still, if you had a powerful enough battery in a bomb, you could essentially create a "sadistic disco ball," where you set the "bomb" inside of some location and it activates, shooting an urchin-esque wave of focused laser lights in all directions (imagine a dodecahedron-shaped bomb with each vertex or center of a face being the source of the laser).
This would be a laser so powerful that if you get close to it, it burns you alive, or it blinds you instantly, or it deactivates cameras, or whatever ionic effect you need. This prevents anyone in the vicinity from being able to move it; you'd have to waste ammo destroying it from afar. And it'd look pretty cool from afar, this disco-like bunch of lasers shooting out in all directions, probably burning through walls, hopefully losing power soon enough that it doesn't shoot into the general atmosphere.
The device wouldn't last for long, because a laser that stupidly powerful would probably burn its battery out quickly.

I don't know the use case for such a thing, because I am not a military sort of guy, but it's a thought.
Well there's one "cool" idea attached to it.

If a laser is TOO powerful, it can actually create lightning and "ionic thunder" which could be severely disorienting in its own right. (An intense laser interacting with air can ionize it, creating plasma. Plasma is a superheated, ionized gas. This plasma expands and produces a shock wave. This shock wave then transforms into a sound wave as it propagates. So a sufficiently super-powerful laser can quite literally create its own thunder)

[Yuli Ban]

[Lilymoon]

Ride of the Valkyries: The Army Is Getting the US Military's Most Powerful Laser Weapons YetL

The Army has inked a contract with defense giant Lockheed Martin for a platoon's worth of what would be the U.S. military's most powerful laser weapon system to date, the company announced Tuesday.

Developed under the Army's Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL) prototype program and dubbed "Valkyrie," the system can generate lasers at up to 300 kW of power and was designed to offer protection for U.S. troops against incoming unmanned aerial systems, munitions and, most importantly, cruise missiles, according to the service's fiscal 2024 budget request.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/202 ... s-yet.html

[Lilymoon]

The US military is getting closer to deploying lasers and rail guns — here's how they might be used.




Long relegated to the world of science fiction, lasers and rail guns are increasingly appearing in real life.

Railguns use electromagnets to fire projectiles at supersonic speeds, while lasers fire pure energy bursts.

In 2012, the US Navy test-fired a rail gun for the first time and later announced plans to put one on the guided-missile destroyer USS Zumwalt.

In 2014, the Navy mounted and tested a laser on the USS Ponce, an amphibious transport dock, successfully taking out the engine of a small inflatable boat containing a rocket-propelled grenade.

More recently, the US Army successfully tested a laser mounted on an Apache helicopter, and the Air Force is planning to put lasers on AC-130s.

Read more here https://www.businessinsider.com/uses-fo ... uns-2017-8

[Lilymoon]

Watch: High-energy laser takes down drone in world-first combat engagement

The age of laser weapons looks to have officially dawned. Rafael Advanced Defense Systems says that, for the first time in history, a high-energy laser system has been used to destroy multiple drone targets in combat.

A World First — Combat-Proven Laser Defense, Powered by Rafael.
For the first time in history, high-power laser systems have been used to intercept aerial threats in combat.

This unprecedented breakthrough took place during the Swords of Iron War — with Rafael’s advanced

Read more here https://newatlas.com/military/worlds-fi ... ngagement/

[wjfox]

[...]

I merged your thread into this one.

[weatheriscool]

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerosp ... 025-06-13/

MOSCOW, June 13 (Reuters) - Russia said on Friday it had conducted large-scale tests of new laser-based systems to defend against drones.
A government statement described the new technology as "promising" and said it had been tested against various types of drone in different weather conditions.

[weatheriscool]

[weatheriscool]

Dazzling Turkish laser weapon takes down missiles without a blast
By David Szondy
July 20, 2025

When is a laser weapon not a weapon? When it's the ASELSAN YILDIRIM 100 Directed Infrared Countermeasure (DIRCM) System that doesn't actually destroy incoming infrared missiles, but instead blinds them before they have a chance to lock on target.

When discussing military hardware, the temptation is to focus on the things that go "boom." However, a surprisingly large proportion is made to defend against boom or prevent boom altogether. That's the rationale behind stealth technology and missile countermeasures, which have become increasingly sophisticated over the years.

https://newatlas.com/military/dazzling- ... t-a-blast/

[weatheriscool]

[weatheriscool]

[weatheriscool]

We need to develop ours and probably platforms to launch them from.

[weatheriscool]

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerosp ... 025-09-17/

[weatheriscool]

Apollo laser takes down 200 drones unplugged
By David Szondy
September 18, 2025

Australian defense company Electro Optic Systems (EOS) has unveiled its Apollo High Energy Laser Weapon (HELW) that pumps out up to 150 kW of power yet can take out 200 medium-sized drones running on its own internal power supply.

Lasers are often seen these days as a logical defense against the increasing threat posed by weaponized drones. The advantages of drones is that they are inexpensive, small, hard to detect, and can be sent in large numbers to overwhelm air defenses. Meanwhile, lasers travel at the speed of light, can engage with multiple targets, and are famous for their dollar-a-shot ammunition costs.

Anti-drone and anti-missile lasers have been under development for decades and in recent years the systems have been moving toward full operational status. The tricky bit is to not only build a laser that can reliably track and lock onto a target. It also needs enough power to destroy and neutralize that target and be able to operate under field conditions, which tend to be the very definition of harsh and unforgiving.

https://newatlas.com/military/apollo-la ... es-weapon/

[weatheriscool]

[weatheriscool]

German laser weapon in a container moves closer to operational status
By David Szondy
October 30, 2025

Rheinmetall and MBDA have met a major milestone in moving their containerized laser weapon system to market. After a year of sea trials, the high-energy laser is moving to further land-based testing before going operational with the German Navy in 2029.

It wasn't so long ago that laser weapons were exotic props from science fiction that only two or three countries were working on in the form of extremely complex and impractical experimental lash ups. Today, at least a dozen nations are working on laser weapons that are being fielded or moving to the open market.

The reasons behind this are fairly simple. A practical laser weapon, which only costs about a dollar a round, has tremendous advantages, especially against drones and other small, fast, inexpensive targets that don't warrant a countermeasure costing hundreds of thousands of dollars a shot.

One of these systems is the high-energy laser being developed by Germany's Rheinmetall and MBDA. Designed as an all-in-one system that can fit inside a standard shipping container, it has been undergoing sea trials aboard the German Navy frigate Sachsen for over a year, with 100 live-fire tests conducted to evaluate its robustness, performance, effectiveness, and precision.

These trials included tracking and neutralizing "non-cooperative" drones, drone swarms and speedboats, as well as tracking targets against the open sky, which can be difficult because of the lack of contrast between sky and target.

https://newatlas.com/military/german-co ... er-weapon/

[Yuli Ban]

[weatheriscool]

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

The day of the tactical laser weapon arrives
By David Szondy
January 17, 2026
https://newatlas.com/military/high-ener ... n-arrives/

The future arrived on December 28, 2025 as the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) announced that Iron Beam became the first high-energy tactical laser weapon to be fully integrated and cleared for operations in a national defense array. And it's not alone.

When the invention of the laser by Theodore Maiman at the Hughes Research Laboratories was made public on July 7, 1960, the press immediately saw the military possibilities, with the Los Angeles Herald proclaiming "LA Man Discovers Science-Fiction Death Ray."
In the months and years that followed, popular media would often talk about the destructive potential of lasers with the Associated Press publishing an article that proclaimed that a satellite armed with a laser could control the Earth. Concepts of laser weapons were common while thrillers like 1964's Goldfinger cemented the concept of the laser weapon in the public's mind.