I wonder if they tried attacking a boat equipped with some strategically placed mirrors

Looks like this might work on Pirates, how would you like your Pirate cooked ? Medium Rare Please. And a mirror I dint think is going to help with this amount of power, it's going to find any imperfection in a material and poof it's toast ! Things you can do.. when you have a nuke power plant on your ship.

Jay - this ship isn't nuclear powered.

Mirrors are highly overrated as laser defense.

Tesla technology finally unveiled a hundred or so years later?

I wonder how it is at damaging distant commercial aircraft whilst practicing on local UAV's? Just a bit of collateral damage from the US Navy? I hope not.

No mention of any stabilizing mechanism that keeps the laser beam steady as the ship bobs up and down.
Still, technology for a maximum killing effect creeps me out. How much "defense" capability do the US forces need? This is obviously a tactical offensive weapon and totally unnecessary. They don't just continue to build better mouse traps, they're figuring out ways to obliterate anything that moves suspiciously, which greatly increases the chance for error. For every ""terrorist" killed by a drone, 28 innocents die, and thousands more despise you.

can anybody remember rq170? Amin.Askari from Iran

@ 999 HOT That is not a problem with laser weapons you can see everything the beam is going to cross.

@ Amin.Askari You mean that airliner that ignored the warnings that they would be shot at if they didn't change coarse.