The beam weapon genre is about to be used on real battlefields.They could be ready for production in five years, as was made clear at a research event in Bonn.However, there are still technical hurdles.MBDA Systems is working on a laser system against mini dronesBeam weapons have been a formative element of various science fiction stories ever since Herbert George Wells attacked the earth with a heat ray in his novel "War of the Worlds" in 1898.More than a hundred years later, this type of weapon is now on the verge of being used on real battlefields.After the feasibility has been proven in principle, laser weapons could be brought to product maturity in a maximum of five years, says Doris Laarmann from the armaments group MBDA Germany.At a research event in Bonn, she is now presenting the status of development.Unlike many visions of the future in fantastic literature, laser beams will not be used against humans for the time being.Rather, the engine of the development was initially the need to be able to ward off attacks with grenades.In recent years, the range of threats from micro-drones, which can also be fought with laser weapons, has expanded, Laarmann explains.During a test last May, a quadrocopter burst into flames after being irradiated with a 20-kilowatt laser for 3.4 seconds.The system developed by MBDA achieves its performance by combining several single-mode fiber lasers into one beam using mirrors.Fiber lasers are mature and commercially available, but their performance is limited.The upper limit is currently around 10 kilowatts.Laarmann suspects that this can be increased to 20 kilowatts, but no increase in performance is to be expected in the long term.However, at least 120 kilowatts are required for the safe destruction of grenades within the short flight time.This strength is to be achieved by the "geometric coupling" of a corresponding number of laser beams.Another way to increase performance is to use a different laser source.For example, Jochen Speiser reported on experiments with a disk laser on the 130-meter-long laser free beam path of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Lampoldshausen, in which several lasers are combined according to the master oscillator principle (MOPA) by means of several passes through the disks.Speiser expects a maximum output that is an order of magnitude higher than that of the fiber laser.However, it is questionable whether this theoretical value can also be achieved in practice.In any case, there is still a long way to go before 200 kilowatts, which he specifies as the target for the safe destruction of grenades.It's a path the military will likely have to walk alone.In the foreseeable future, there will probably be no motivation for civilian laser applications to further increase performance.According to Doris Laarmann, Germany, which according to Doris Laarmann is still the leader in this technology, could only remain at the top if the Bundeswehr increasingly uses radiation weapons.However, they do not necessarily have to be aimed only at grenades and drones.In his lecture, Wolfgang Riede from the DLR Institute of Technical Physics focused on the precise tracking of moving objects using laser-optical systems, but the focus was on space debris in near-Earth orbit.The first task is to measure the orbital data of these pieces of debris, which are up to ten centimeters in size, of which around 28,000 are orbiting the earth and endanger space travel."The data deviate from the real orbits by up to five kilometers," explained Riede."This makes it much more difficult to do evasive maneuvers that are occasionally necessary."But once the orbits have been determined more precisely, the laser could of course also be used immediately to remove the space debris.But that initially fails due to the available power: while 300 milliwatts are sufficient for tracking, a million times as much would probably be required to defend against a threat from space.(app)Epson's DS-790WN feeder scanner digitized 40 double-sided templates in one minute.It scans to the cloud, to a smartphone or to e-mail addresses.Various messengers can be integrated via "Bridges".Messages are sent via WhatsApp or Twitter via the Matrix client.We explain how it works.