Pew Pew Pew! US Military Developing Laser Weapons to Down Enemy Drones

The military's laser weapon would shoot down unmanned aerial vehicles that try to target U.S. Marines. Credit: Office of Naval Research

Sci-fi authors and gamers have long imagined this day, and now it has come: The U.S. military is developing a laser weapon to shoot enemy drones out of the sky.

The Navy has already developed such a weapon that it plans to deploy on a ship later this summer. The Office of Naval Research (ONR), based in Arlington, Virginia, announced this week that they are now interested in developing a similarlaser weapon for ground vehicles.

The somewhat ominously named GBAD program (short for Ground-Based Air Defense Directed Energy On-the-Move) aims to provide “an affordable alternative to traditional firepower” to guard against unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that could track or target U.S. Marines on the ground, ONR officials said.

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The Latest on: Laser Weapons

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