TL;DR
Lasers that knock drones out of the sky are stepping off the test range and into real jobs. On Oct. 31 a photographer captured a truck-mounted counter-drone laser parked on a floating platform near the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, guarding the president's property alongside short-range missile launchers; the newest version of that laser is rated at 30 kilowatts, roughly the power of 30 microwave ovens focused to a point. Nobody announced it: the deployment was spotted, photographed and reported, and the military declined to give details. The same week, Germany reportedly ordered (per TWZ, a secondary report) its first laser that hangs in a pod under an aircraft, a demonstrator meant to grow into a weapon that can shoot down drones and cruise missiles from the air. Add a Turkish laser that downed its first real drone in October and a Hungarian one that hit a target drone on Oct. 17, and the beam weapon of science fiction is turning into ordinary equipment in more than one country. To see our odds on when a laser first fires from the air, and the timeline of steps that leads there, subscribe.
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