That’s Right: We’re Shooting Down Enemy Drones With Fricken Laser Beams – PJ Media– pjmedia.com

It’s the headline I’ve waited since I was probably seven years old to read: “US military spending $500M on ‘war-ready’ laser weapons — and zapping drones in Iran, along US border.”

That’s 50 years, folks, and totally worth the wait.

According to the New York Post — your go-to newspaper for words like “zapping” in the headline — “Iranian citizens have witnessed some dazzling laser shows recently,” because “US military has been deploying lasers in the Strait of Hormuz to knock out regime hardware.”

The Department of War said this week that lasers disable “drones and incoming cruise missiles at a much lower cost than using more expensive kinetic weapons like missiles.”

That’s no joke, either.

The Pentagon is mum on the details, but my understanding is that most of the laser weapons currently in use merely “dazzle” incoming threats, sending them off course. So there aren’t any cool vaporizations.

The Israelis led the way on some of this antimissile stuff, despite our head start with President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (now the Missile Defense Agency and soon as Golden Dome) in the early ’80s.

And Another Thing: No sharks were harmed in the production of this column. That we’re at liberty to tell you about, anyway.

Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile defense system can hit incoming threats at over 40 miles away, but each launcher holds a max of 20 missiles — and each missile costs up to $60 grand. But then there’s Iron Beam, which uses fricken lasers. While Iron Beam is good only against enemy missiles close in (4-7 miles, roughly), each shot costs just five bucks or so. And there’s no limit on how many shots it can take, just so long as the power stays on.