438
submitted 1 month ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

South Korea is beginning the mass production of a low-cost laser weapon that has successfully shot down small drones during testing, the country’s key arms agency said Thursday.

The laser weapon, called Block-I, “can precisely strike small unmanned aerial vehicles and multicopters at close range,” a news release from South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) said.

The release did not give a cost for the weapon, but said each shot fired would only cost about $1.50.

Imagery supplied by the agency appears to show a weapon around the size of a shipping container with a laser mounted on top and what appears to be a radar or tracking device mounted on one side of the platform.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] snooggums@midwest.social 21 points 1 month ago

Imagery supplied by the agency appears to show a weapon around the size of a shipping container with a laser mounted on top and what appears to be a radar or tracking device mounted on one side of the platform.

So, 30 million for the setup and deployment but 1.50 per drone. Plus it is huge and unweildy.

Gonna need a lot of drones to make that more cost effective than another drone with a stick or net, both of which have been effective in the defense of Ukraine.

lolThis is probably an early step towards a man portable setup so I'm just joking about the focus on the cost to fire.

[-] nekandro@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 month ago

Lmao Ukraine is about to become devoid of birds

Any radar sensitive enough to pick up drones is going to have an insane number of false positives

[-] CanadaPlus 2 points 1 month ago

Modern radars can see way more than just size. You're right that there should still be a human in the loop, though.

load more comments (6 replies)
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
438 points (99.3% liked)

World News

38184 readers
2278 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS