Boeing creates a laser cannon capable of shooting commercial drones down
Boeing has developed a Compact Laser Weapon System capable of shooting commercial drones out of the sky. The 2KW laser is mounted onto an aircraft and will burn holes into a UAV shell that eventually will disable it. After the FAA recently announced that commercial pilots have reported 650 drone sightings in 2015 so far, the laser cannon is likely to be welcomed by the aviation industry as a method to deter drones from flying too close to commercial aircraft.
Hang on to your drone. Boeing's developed a laser cannon specifically designed to turn unmanned aircraft into flaming wreckage.

The aerospace company's new weapon system, which it publicly tested this week in a New Mexico industrial park, isn't quite as cool as what you see in Star Wars—there's no flying beams of light, no "pew! pew!" sound effects. But it is nonetheless a working laser cannon, and it will take your drone down.

People keep flying their drones where they shouldn't. In airport flight paths. Above wildfires. Onto the White House lawn. Luckily, there haven't been any really bad incidents—that is, no one has been killed by a civilian quadcopter or plane, yet.

BOEING

But governments and militaries around the world are terrified by the prospect of drones carrying explosives or chemical weapons (and now, pornography) into places where they shouldn't.

There are lots of theories on the best way to deal with the drone threat. An Idaho company has developed special anti-drone shotgun shells. Some agencies are working on jamming technology to block communication from the operator to the aircraft. Firefighters in New York kept it simple, aiming their hose at a pesky drone hovering near a house fire.

Forget all that. Boeing thinks the best way to kill a drone is to zap it with a precision laser, burn a hole in it, and bring it down. So it created a weapon system to do just that—and the result could someday be installed everywhere from LaGuardia to the Pentagon.

Wednesday morning, the company showed off its Compact Laser Weapon System for media in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It's a much smaller, significantly more portable version of the High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL MD) Boeing demonstrated last year. This setup looks like an overgrown camera, swiveling around on a tripod.