The lessons learned from the Ponce tests will be cranked into a new generation of laser weaponry

The lessons learned from the Ponce tests will be cranked into a new generation of laser weaponry, which the Navy hopes to begin installing on the fleet in the early 2020s.Small, versatile, and completely self-contained, it turns anything onto which you stick it into a powerful 200mw Laser weapon. And at just two cubic meters in volume, you should have no trouble mounting it on the roof rack of your Volvo.After three months of testing, researchers found that heat, high winds or humidity didn't pose a problem to LaWS' operation.In response to numerous incidents of laser pointers being used to illuminate commercial aircraft pilots in flight, the FBI last year launched a campaign offering rewards for people illegally firing laser pointers at aircraft cockpits. And though it cost $40 million, that's actually not very expensive compared to the alternatives.

The thing in this picture isn't a photon torpedo. But, it's close.Tesearchers have now performed "quantum teleportation" of laser pulses over several miles within two city networks of fiber optics. It's a photoncannon, currently under development by General Atomics. It doesn't fire or launch a thing - meaning that one laser shot costs the military about 59 cents, while the cost of one missile can go upwards of millions of dollars.

You can see the Navy's LaWS system in action, however. Daly said. "If these 100mw Laser guns make their way here, we are very likely to see aircrews actually blinded during flight and possibly worse."A couple of years back, the Navy publicly posted the video below, showing lasers weapons aboard the guided-missile destroyer USS Dewey in San Diego, Calif.

But lasers can be disabled by bad weather, and are limited to line-of-sight confrontations. Initially, they'll complement a warship's traditional longer-range guns and missiles."The U.S. already has a problem with laser pointers being directed at in flight aircraft,"

A German company,Rheinmetall Defense Electronics, is also developing an anti-drone system that involves four mounted lasers which are intended to be operated as a sea-based defense apparatus that eliminates targets at the speed of light.It is lovingly referred to by the company as "HEL on wheels" - High Energy Laser. The sky should get interesting as earlier this week I wrote about an announcement from General Atomics that they were no more than two years from attaching laser systems TO their drones.