Video Shows NATO Ally's Advanced DragonFire Laser Weapon in Action

Declassified footage published by the British government shows the U.K.'s new laser weapon in action for the first time.

The black-and-white snippet, published by the British Defense Ministry, "shows the power of the laser to cut down targets at the speed of light," said U.K. Defense Secretary Grant Shapps. The U.K. has spent years developing the DragonFire, which is a laser-directed energy weapon. A concentrated beam cuts through the airborne target.

One of the main ideas behind laser-directed energy weapons are to provide a low-cost way of shooting down incoming targets like drones, taking away the need to use up expensive air-defense missiles to take out threats such as cheap drones.

In the more than two years of full-scale war in Ukraine, Russia has frequently used budget drones to target Ukraine. Ukrainian officials have said Moscow intends to use up Kyiv's scarce supply of costly air-defense missiles and overwhelm its defenses.

The British Defense Ministry said back in mid-January that it had carried out the first high-power firing of the laser weapon against aerial targets. The range of the DragonFire is classified, the U.K. government said, but the weapon can "engage with any visible target," London added.

The weapon is accurate enough to strike a £1 coin from a distance of around a kilometer [0.6 miles], according to the British Defense Ministry. The test was conducted in northwest Scotland, and the British Army and the country's Royal Navy are weighing up integrating the technology into future air-defense capabilities.

"This type of cutting-edge weaponry has the potential to revolutionise the battlespace by reducing the reliance on expensive ammunition, while also lowering the risk of collateral damage," said Shapps.

Firing the DragonFire for 10 seconds costs around the same amount as using normal heating for an hour, and the laser has a price tag of less than £10, or under $13, per shot, according to the U.K.

"This stands in stark contrast to the hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of dollars that a sophisticated air defence or missile interceptor can cost," James Black, an analyst with the European branch of the RAND think tank, said in a piece published in late January.

The technology is maturing in other countries, too. Israel is developing its Iron Beam, designed specifically to tackle the threat of uncrewed vehicles. It will work in tandem with Israel's Iron Dome air-defense network.

Experts say the Iron Beam will be considerably more affordable than its interceptor rocket counterpart, which costs upwards of $50,000 per missile. Instead, the system will only cost a negligible amount to fire its 100-kilowatt laser.

The U.S. Army also said it had sent four 50-kilowatt lasers, mounted on Stryker armored fighting vehicles, for testing in the Middle East in early February.

"It's a prototype, but we want to experiment in a live environment," Army Vice Chief of Staff General James Mingus told digital news outlet Breaking Defense.