The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has announced that it successfully test fired Britain’s first high-powered, long-range laser directed energy weapon (LDEW), called DragonFire, on October 17 at the Porton Down science park test range in Wiltshire.

The recent demonstration trials by the MoD’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) were the second in a series designed to show that the technological hurdles needed for Britain to build a home-grown high-energy laser weapon have been cleared.

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The first trials in July demonstrated that the DragonFire system could track and hit targets in the air and at sea. The second test in October fired the laser at targets at a number of different ranges to show that the weapon could safely control and place a high-powered beam on target with pinpoint accuracy from the beam director.

Read more: New Atlas