The future of naval warfare arrived earlier this month when a U.S. Navy laser stationed aboard a ship shot down an aerial drone.
The amphibious transport dock Portland blasted the vehicle with a “solid state laser” prototype on May 16, the first at-sea test of the system, the Navy said in a Friday press release.
The Navy has been developing lasers and other directed-energy weapons since the 1960s. Such weapons “are defined as electromagnetic systems capable of converting chemical or electrical energy to radiated energy and focusing it on a target, resulting in physical damage that degrades, neutralizes, defeats, or destroys an adversarial capability,” the release states.