"This is a technology that has been under development for decades, and it's only really now just really starting to enter the public view. Laser guns are real now. Actual militaries are deploying actual lasers in actual combat."
"Lasers have been a staple of sci-fi and children's entertainment for well over a century. In H. G. Wells's 1898 novel The War of the Worlds, the Martian invaders deploy heat rays. The crew of the starship Enterprise has been firing phaser guns since the 1960s, and the plot of the first Star Wars movie centers on the race to destroy a planet-annihilating superlaser."
Laser weapons have moved from theoretical development into active military deployment. Ukraine's military unveiled the Sunray anti-drone laser, while U.S. Border Patrol and military forces used lasers to neutralize drones along the Texas-Mexico border. These developments mark a significant shift from decades of research to practical battlefield application. Laser technology, long imagined in science fiction from H.G. Wells to Star Wars, is now entering public awareness as a genuine military capability. Aerospace engineers confirm this technology has been under development for decades but is only now reaching operational status. The implications extend beyond military effectiveness to geopolitical considerations, border policy, and institutional power dynamics within government agencies.
Read at The Atlantic
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]