WATCH: New Laser Gun Blasts Drones From the Sky

New tactical laser from Boeing can toast enemy drones in mid-air.

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Boeing’s weapons division has been building and refining death rays–the manufacturer prefers the more modest “directed energy” — for a few years now. Their latest innovation is firing a relatively portable ray gun at what seems like its natural prey: UAVs, or military drones.

Hackread’s write-up of the newest sci-fi wrinkle in the drone wars outlines the innocuous-looking Compact Laser Weapons System’s lightweight specs. The “transportable laser cannon,” Hackread reports, weighs a mere 650 lbs, can be put together in less than 30 minutes, “and produces an energy beam of 10kw, which can bring down a target 22 miles away.”

Hackread goes on to say that since the gun “is precise, silent, portable and above all.. invisible,” it is a real “game-changer.”

Boeing’s brief post about the system–which they’ve dubbed LWS — says a recent test at Point Mugu in California was a “milestone” because the LWS was able to target and disable a “a moving, untethered unmanned aerial vehicle.”

So here’s where we are in the coming Drone Apocalypse: the average guy faced with, say, a pistol-bearing quadcopter or Taser-bearing police drone might potentially be able to fend off the attack with shotgun shells designed to target drones. And if a UAV pilot goes off-reservation at the helm of a military drone, his brains scrambled by too much Virtual Reality Racing in off-hours, Boeing is making ready with its “water-cooled” and battery-powered laser beam.

The future is full of terrifying flying things and beams of focused fire, and an awful lot of fun.

Photos by Screen capture from video

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