Pretty scary what the future holds when it comes to laser use in military use… But at the same time the technology looks pretty cool:

Above is a new video of Raytheon’s laser weapon shooting down an unmanned aerial vehicle. They fired the Laser Close-In Weapon System (CIWS) from a ship, linking the weapon to the US Navy’s anti-missile system of a Gatling gun steered by radar guidance. The breakthrough here is that the CIWS uses solid-state laser technology that until recently didn’t have the oomph required by the military.

(Via Boing Boing.)