SpaceWar.com reports: “South Korea will begin deploying drone-melting laser weapons designed to shoot down North Korean UAVs this year, the country’s arms procurement agency told AFP Friday.

The new laser weapons — dubbed the ‘StarWars Project’ by the South — are invisible and noise-free, require no additional ammunition, operate solely on electricity and cost only about 2,000 won ($1.45) per shot, according to the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA).

The ‘Block-I’ system, developed by Hanwha Aerospace, will be ‘put into operational deployment in the military this year’, Lee Sang-yoon, a DAPA official, told AFP.

The two Koreas remain technically at war because the 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

In December 2022, Seoul said five North Korean drones crossed into the South, the first such incident in five years, prompting its military to fire warning shots and deploy fighter jets, but they failed to shoot any of them down.

The South’s ‘ability to respond to North Korea’s drone provocations will be significantly enhanced’ by the laser weapons system, DAPA said in a statement Thursday…”