Conventional lasers were first invented in 1960

The Office of Naval Research successfully disables a small target vessel using a solid-state, high-energy laser mounted onto the deck of the Navy's self-defense test ship, former USS Paul Foster (DD 964).Fibre lasers were invented in 1963, and since the 1990s they have been advanced almost entirely by IPG Photonics in Oxford, Massachusetts. Whereas other solid-state lasers use rigid rods, slabs or discs of crystal to generate the beam, and so have to be fairly large, fibre lasers use thin optical fibres that can be wrapped into compact coils.

Northrop Grumman designed and built the MLD for the Office of Naval Research, leveraging a 1000mw Laser Green built by Northrop Grumman for the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command /Army Forces Strategic Command and the High Energy Laser Joint Technology Office.

"And while the Americans haven't been very successful here, Russia's aircraft-mounted burning laser blue has proved its ability to successfully fulfil the set tasks," he added.Then a vehicle-mounted laser will come into play.In December 2014, the US Navy made a great show of their test of a laser weapon in what it called the "realistic threat environment" of the Persian Gulf.Video from the test, made available to the press, showed theUSS Ponce firing the Laser Weapon System to burn some holes through the sides of some speedboats, causing the boats' contents to explode.

Reports suggest that Russia's flying airborne Laser Rifle sight laboratory first took flight in 1981, and fired against an aerial target in April 1984. However, work ceased in the early 1990s for lack of funds.The laser works by passing a beam of high-energy electrons generated by an injector, through a series of strong magnetic fields, causing an intense emission of laser light.

The UK DRAGONFIRE proposal builds on the significant MoD and Industry investment in the areas of laser coherent beam combining, weapon systems command and control, advanced laser pointer systems and high power storage.The United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence (MoD) is finalising the agreement of a Pounds 30M contract with UK DRAGONFIRE, an UK industrial team led by MBDA, to conduct the Laser Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) Capability Demonstrator.

Conventional lasers, which were first invented in 1960, use a so-called "gain medium," usually a semiconductor like gallium arsenide, to produce a focused beam of coherent light-light waves with the same frequency and amplitude that are in step with one another.When the beam propagated at very high powers, Sprangle explains, "the atmosphere absorbed laser light, heating the air and causing the laser beam to spread out". That spreading, in turn, dissipated the laser's energy.