US military spending $500M on war-ready laser weapons and zapping drones in Iran, along US border: experts

Iranian citizens have witnessed some dazzling laser shows recently — but they’re not the kind you’d see at a Metallica concert.The US military has been deploying lasers in the Strait of Hormuz to knock out regime hardware, taking out “drones and incoming cruise missiles at a much lower cost than using more expensive kinetic weapons like missiles,” the Department of War recently confirmed.The US project to harness laser power has been 50 years in the making and outstrips the capabilities of any other military on Earth.“We can very specifically track and target drones and put the spot exactly where we want it, [in order] to disable its sensors or kill [i.e.explode] the drone itself,” Mark Neice, president of Directed Energy Consultants, which works with the military, told The Post.Laser technology works by drawing energy from generators or battery packs which is then converted into light particles called photons.

The photons are then concentrated as a single beam, which is only visible under infrared light, not the naked eye.They heat the surface they are directed onto until it explodes or melts.“It’s weaponized light that spends several seconds of what we call ‘dwell time’ on the target to bring it down,” said Jared Keller who puts out the newsletter Laser Wars.“It now makes sense to actually take them outside of a laboratory and into real-world environments.

The most significant [development] is the Army awarding a half-billion-dollar contract for building war-ready lasers [which] focus photons on a target to deliver catastrophic, destructive effects,” he added.Somewhat surprisingly, the laser weapons are operated by soldiers using reconfigured Xbox game console controllers.“The video games industry figured out what the best controller was and now the US military is saying, ‘Well, why reinvent the wheel with a specialized control system where you can just use an Xbox controller or something really similar to do the job?'”“If you...