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Aug 30, 2015

Boeing’s laser sentry gun takes out drones in seconds

Today, we've got the military equivalent: a laser turret that can down a drone in seconds.

Boeing calls it Silent Strike, and they label it as a directed energy weapon. More precisely, it's a 2 kilowatt laser, the little brother to Boeing's "death ray on wheels," which straps a 10 kilowatt laser on to the back of an armored transport. Engineer Isaac Neil likens the systems' attack to "a welding torch being put on a target, but from hundreds of meters away."

This new version is much, much more portable than the 10kW behemoth. Silent Strike breaks down into four separate components, each of which can be transported by two soldiers — or, perhaps one day, on the back of one of Boston Dynamics'robotic quadrupeds.