BBC:
For the first time, a US Navy vessel has disabled a nearby boat
by firing a laser at its engines, setting them on fire. The
test, which took place recently off the California coast,
involved solid-state lasers, rather than the bulky chemical
laser used in previous tests. The laser owes its potency to the
ease with which individual solid-state lasers can be arrayed to
produce a single weapon. Laser weapons that blind people are
banned under Protocol IV of the
UN
Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.
