Simon Shuster: “If you’ve never seen a laser shoot an aircraft out of the sky, the experience can be unsettling. The weapon fits comfortably into the trunk of a car. It makes no noise and emits no light, not even the glowing red beam that’s so familiar from the movies. When a team of Ukrainian soldiers and engineers took me to see their prototype the other day, it seemed easy to use. Almost too easy.”

“The operator set up the laser cannon on the roof of his pickup truck in the middle of an empty field. It resembles a hobbyist’s telescope with some cameras affixed to the sides. For target practice, one of the engineers launched a small drone, and it flew a few hundred yards away from us, hovering in the gauzy winter sky. The laser swiveled as its cameras followed the target. The operator shouted, ‘Fire!’ Within seconds, the drone began to burn as if struck by invisible lightning, then fell to the ground in a fiery arc.”