After 50 years of unsuccessful attempts, the Pentagon seems to have succeeded in creating a combat laser that actually works. According to a Forbes article, the US Army laser shot down a drone for the first time in real combat conditions.
In May, Doug Bush, the head of the procurement department of the US Army, told reporters that it was possible to shoot down a drone with the help of a laser during military operations. However, representatives of the Pentagon refused to officially confirm or deny this information.
As noted in the Forbes article, the Pentagon planned to use the laser as a weapon from the moment of its invention. In 1962, just two years after the first demonstration of the laser in the laboratory, the Pentagon's Defender project became a target for shooting down Soviet missiles.
In 1973, the Defender's successor shot down target drones at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, but was never put into practice. Combat lasers were then successfully demonstrated in various projects, but could never be effective in real-world conditions.
Currently, the US military has about 31 combat laser development programs, several of which are used to protect US military forces. and small drone ships used by the Houthis in Yemen and insurgents in Iraq.
It was also claimed that the UK Ministry of Defense had successfully tested a laser weapon against aerial targets. According to the agency's press service, the laser weapon has an accuracy equivalent to hitting a coin at a distance of 1,000 meters.
Earlier it was reported that North Korea had conducted a test of the Heil-5-23 underwater nuclear weapon system in the waters of the Sea of Japan. . According to the Ministry of Defense of the country, this was a response to the joint military exercises of South Korea, the United States and Japan, which began on January 15.