The US Navy wants rechargeable magazines for lasers to take out drones

• The US Navy wants to use compact lasers to shoot down cheap exploding drones.
• Rechargeable magazines could enable laser weapons to fire more shots before needing to cool.
• The concept has a lot of potential, but it may be hard to keep the system compact.

The recent attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea have highlighted a problem: launching a $2 million air defense missile to stop a $2,000 drone is a bad trade. Not just financially, but also because warships carry a limited number of missiles.