USAF Looks to Lasers as Defense Against UAVs Written 7 April 2020

The Bristol (VA) Herald Courier  reports that the US Air Force “announced Monday it is ready to test its first high-energy lasers for use against enemy drones overseas.” The new lasers, “with models under consideration from the Air Force lab and defense contractor Raytheon, would take aim at drones that have already proven worrisome in the Persian Gulf.” The Air Force “has been experimenting with lasers in a number of programs since the 1980s.” The US military once sought powerful lasers “as part of the Star Wars program during the Reagan years, but those weapons never came to the fruition.” Now, the military is “looking at more modest solid-state lasers, which could solve a lot of problems in the future.” Relatively cheap and lightweight, the lasers “convert electricity into focused beams of light that destroy targets by melting them or blinding their sensors.”
Full Story (Bristol (VA) Herald Courier)