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Firing of a UK Navy Dragonfire laser
The development of a new generation of lasers changed the role that this technology had in military arsenals, limited to target acquisition. Lasers are now capable of hitting targets at the speed of light, have an infinite ammunition magazine and cost 11 euros for each shot.
The future has arrived December 28, 2025when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced that its had become the first high-energy tactical laser weapon to be fully integrated and authorized for operations in a national defense system.
And this weapon is not alone, highlights the .
When on July 7, 1960 the invention of the laser by Theodore Maiman, at Hughes Research Laboratories, was made public, the press immediately saw its military possibilities, and the Los Angeles Herald immediately proclaimed that “LA man discovers death ray science fiction.”
In the years that followed, the media frequently spoke of the destructive potential of lasersand the Associated Press even published an article that suggested that a satellite armed with a laser could control the Earth.
Laser gun concepts were common, while action films like Goldfingerfrom 1964, cemented the concept of the laser weapon in the public’s imagination.
However, reality was far, far behind. For years, the laser was known as the solution looking for a problem and while lasers could be spectacular, in the 1960s they were hardly military grade.
Even after the laser found applications in medicine, science and technology, giving rise to miracle surgeries and revolutionary communications, the military applications of lasers were essentially limited to target acquisition systems.
A only true laser weapon which entered service during the 20th century was a low-power laser used by the British Royal Navy during the Falklands War, in 1982, to temporarily blind and distract enemy pilots.
Not that this was due to a lack of trying. Both the United States and the Soviet Union had ambitious programs to develop laser weapons.
Americans even modified a Boeing 747 to carry a huge experimental and alarmingly dangerous chemical laser designed to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles, which was another threat to the crew than for missiles.
Over the past two decades, the development of a new generation of lasers started to change all this.
The basic problem was threefold. First, figure out how to make a laser with enough power to be practical. Second, learn to look for targets. Third, how to adjust the beam to compensate for atmospheric effects.
The big change was the development of solid state laserswhich use glass fiber bundles with exotic elements such as ytterbium, erbium and thulium, along with aluminum, germanium and phosphorus.
These coiled bundles allowed very long and efficient lasers were compacted into very small volumesand new technologies have allowed combine multiple lasers in a single, much more powerful beam.
In the operational field, new target acquisition systems to identify and lock on targets quickly, along with systems that used things like reference lasers to analyze the air between the weapon and the target, so that the killing beam could be altered to compensate for any distortion.
The result of all this is that, in recent years, new laser weapons began to appear and these did not just come from the usual suspects like the United States, nor were they mere concepts that could one day lead to practical systems.
They were emerging in Russia, China, South KoreaFrance, Great Britain, Türkiye, Japan, Germany, India and, most notably, Israel.
It originated in 1996 as a joint US/Israel project. Originally conceived as a deuterium fluoride chemical lasermoved to solid-state, electrically powered, ytterbium-doped lasers when it was transferred to Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.
In 2024, recent conflicts have resulted in the acceleration of development of the system, which has now been officially integrated into the armed forces of Israel as the innermost layer of air defenses, tasked with intercepting short-range threats, including rockets and mortars.
As far as laser weapons are concerned, This is an important milestone. Although other systems have been deployed with various militaries and have even been tested in combatthis is the first time that a laser weapon has been formally added to a country’s military as a fully integrated system.
The reason this step took so long is that there is a big difference between developing a functional, practical laser weapon and making one that is fully operational.
Modern weapons systems act as a component in a network much larger – often global. They also have to be compatible with a very complex logistical supply and maintenance line, and there has to be an actual production line for the weapon, instead of being a series of unique copies.
For a laser weapon to be fully operational, it needs to be robust enough to withstand being “shaken”like any other equipment.
Now, developing systems are designed (interestingly enough) for… development. They include things like manual controls to turn off the laser if it encounters problems such as unexpected software resets or cooling systems that suddenly have dust problems.
They also need safety margins to ensure that the system does not accidentally harm anything while being watched by the monitoring security team – a requirement that combat systems do not have.
Furthermore, test units work alonewhile operational ones must integrate with command and control systems that can decide in milliseconds whether to fire on a suspected target.
Added to this is the fact that operational units must be built according to military specificationswithstand harsh environments and inappropriate storage conditions – all while maintaining reliability. If something goes wrong, a field technician you have to be able to repair it. This means having standardized spare parts available and maintenance procedures designed and tested.
Finally, the targets are different for development lasers and combat lasers. Targets used for development are scheduled or semi-controlled, so engineers can fix all variables and focus on just one problem at a time.
What this all boils down to is that even a laser weapon that is already shooting down hostile drones it is a long way from one that is officially part of the arsenal. Currently, there are around 17 tactical lasers that are operational, combat authorized, field tested or in development.
With the advantages of a weapon that can hit targets at the speed of lighthas an infinite ammunition magazine and costs , there is now a great incentive to put these systems on the ground.
It’s such an incentive that the Royal Navy has advanced its timetable to commission its own in 2027, and it’s likely that others will also see the fast track in the near future.
In the short term, these systems will be used to counter drones, as well as rockets, mortars and other close-range aerial threats. However, this is just in the short term.
As for the long term? It’s an unknown. If these tactical lasers live up to their promise, could be the biggest change on the battlefield since the use of gunpowder passed from fireworks to firearms.
