When the first laser was invented by Theodore Maiman at the Hughes Research Lab in Malibu, California, in 1960, it was almost immediately seen as a potential superweapon – the death-ray of science fiction come to life.

While the ability to generate beams of coherent light provided scientists and engineers with a unique tool that would revolutionize many fields over the next six decades, producing a practical laser weapon turned out to be more difficult than first imagined. Today, the development of solid-state lasers based on coils of fiber optic cables doped with exotic elements like yttrium have finally moved the laser weapon from the laboratory to the battlefield.