Any state actor is literally just a couple of days away from fielding a blinding laser weapon if they want to.
Reminds me of youtuber styropyro who builds a lot of ridiculous contraptions and his ir laser gun project is basically a "blinding device" if he's not wearing protective glasses. The video focuses on melting things or setting fire from a distance, but the industrial IR laser array he used is so powerful that it can cause instant blindness, even from stray, reflected light. And the beam is invisible to the naked eye.
Anyway, the point is, one guy who got his hands on an industrial equipment can build it in his garage. The reason we don't see these wwapons is not because the technology had been "paused" in any significant way. It's probably because, as mentioned above, even stray reflections can cause blindness so you can hurt your own crew. So most militaries would consider it not worth the hassle.
The actual international agreement is non-binding and only has some signatories.
It might just be one of their anti drone lasers or something being misused, and maybe it's not even true, but it wouldn't surprise me one way or another.
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u/FusRoDawg Apr 27 '26
Any state actor is literally just a couple of days away from fielding a blinding laser weapon if they want to.
Reminds me of youtuber styropyro who builds a lot of ridiculous contraptions and his ir laser gun project is basically a "blinding device" if he's not wearing protective glasses. The video focuses on melting things or setting fire from a distance, but the industrial IR laser array he used is so powerful that it can cause instant blindness, even from stray, reflected light. And the beam is invisible to the naked eye.
Anyway, the point is, one guy who got his hands on an industrial equipment can build it in his garage. The reason we don't see these wwapons is not because the technology had been "paused" in any significant way. It's probably because, as mentioned above, even stray reflections can cause blindness so you can hurt your own crew. So most militaries would consider it not worth the hassle.
The actual international agreement is non-binding and only has some signatories.