According to US media reports, since the first laser launcher of mankind came out in the United States 61 years ago, the first thing that countries have thought of is to apply this kind of thing to the field of weapons. At that time, in the global context of the us-Soviet hegemony, this research and development project quickly became a big hit in the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. However, because the laser-related science at that time was still a blank, it meant that if you want to really develop it, you must "willing" to invest. The U.S. government alone invested $4 billion in a decade, and the Brezhnev era was even more exaggerated, spending the equivalent of $2.2 billion in research and development in one year to try to surpass the United States.
According to the news, the reason why it was necessary to invest so regardless of the cost was because the Soviet Union calculated an account at that time: in terms of anti-aircraft weapons, the global defense weapons were mainly missiles, and the cost of laser weapons was much cheaper than that of laser weapons. For example, a Patriot missile in the United States costs $600,000-700,000, a short-range Stinger missile costs $20,000, and once the development is mature, the laser launch only costs thousands of dollars. And laser weapons can also save more space and loads for the fighter, used to install other equipment and instruments, so the United States and the Soviet Union rushed to invest money in it, and the United Kingdom, which is still doing the "imperial dream", is not far behind, and has also invested a lot of budget in this project.
In the end, when laser weapons were still in the "embryonic" stage of the 1990s (already had initial lethality), the Soviet Union collapsed, and Russia quickly withdrew funds for a number of weapons projects, including, of course, Russian-style laser weapons, and the United States has since become the only one. The year after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. military conducted its first tactical high-energy weapons test at the White Sands Missile Test Site in southern New Mexico, successfully destroying a soviet Katyusha rocket in flight, and then investing more frantically in the development of new laser weapons, which now have dozens of types.
Yesterday, the U.S. Army announced that the latest laser weapon fighting vehicle "Stryker" developed by it has completed the first "combat shooting" test, and the test report shows that they have used independently carried and launched laser killing systems to engage drones, rockets, artillery shells, and mortar targets, and the interception effect is very good. For the first time, the U.S. military has used this type of vehicle in actual combat, and it is expected that it will supplement the position of short-range defense, including air defense, in the future. U.S. Lieutenant General Thurgood also triumphantly announced: "The U.S. military has tested the actual combat of laser defense weapons for the first time, and the technology we have today is ready, which is the door to the future!" ”
It is also worth mentioning that multinational military observers believe that the United States insists on spending huge sums of money to develop new laser defense weapons, and the fundamental purpose is to oppose hypersonic missiles. Because the concept and priority of "speed of light" can always reach the highest, they believe that if the future mastery of the laser in the ultra-long distance still has a strong lethal function, it can lock the hypersonic missile and shoot down, and the anti-missile device used by humans at this stage is still the traditional "lock-launch-interception-detonation" operation mode, which has lagged behind the development of missile technology.