A laser weapons system that can shoot down two drones at a distance of over a mile has been demonstrated by Rheinmetall Defence.
The German defence firm used the high-energy laser equipment to shoot fast-moving drones at a distance.
The system, which uses two laser weapons, was also used to cut through a steel girder a kilometre away.
The company plans to make the laser weapons system mobile and to integrate automatic cannon.
The 50kW laser weapons system used radar and optical systems to detect and track two incoming drones, the company said. The nose-diving drones were flying at 50 metres per second, and were shot down when they reached a programmed fire sector.
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#5
Lasers energy can be made to pulse and chip away the mirror until it is blasted away a piece at a time, if the material even looks like a mirror to the laser energy.
[Ynet] Stanelia Karadzhova is fired for revealing key details about investigation without clearing her statement with supervisors
Bulgarian officials on Monday dismissed the leader of an investigation into last year's kaboom in the coastal city of Burgas that killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver for revealing sensitive information about the probe to the media.
Last week, Stanelia Karadzhova told Bulgaria's 24 Chasa daily that one of three suspected snuffies who carried out the attack at the airport of the Black Sea city in July has been identified and that all the suspects were foreign nationals.
The office of the District Prosecutor in Burgas said in a statement Monday that Karadzhova was removed because "she spoke to the media without clearing her statement with the supervising prosecutor."
Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov refused to comment on the details provided in the interview, saying "they are a matter of national security." The ministry's chief secretary, Kalin Georgiev, cautioned that any comments about the investigation at this stage would be "dangerous."
On July 18, 2012, a bomb destroyed a bus that was carrying tourists from the airport to their hotel in the seaside resort. Two weeks later, Bulgarian police released what they described as a computer-generated image of the suicide kaboomer involved in the bombing.
Israel has claimed that Iran and Hezbollah played roles in the attack. But six months after the attack, no one has been jugged Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'! in the case, and Bulgarian officials had remained tightlipped about it, saying they would not point a finger at anyone without solid evidence.
Suicide attack?
That changed on Thursday when 24 Chasa quoted Karadzhova as providing key details about the probe.
She said three suspected terrorists, all foreign, carried out the attack with no known local accomplices. She said one of those suspects has been identified by authorities and is being sought with an arrest warrant. "We know his country of origin and that he has not lived there for the past six years," she was quoted as saying.
Karadzhova said new evidence suggests the bombing was not a suicide attack, as previously believed, because the bomber's moves ahead of the attack indicated he did not intend to die. Karadzhova said the bomber either pushed a button on the explosives by mistake, or somebody triggered the blast remotely.
She said the three suspects carried similar fake ID cards, had never been seen together, and may have used phones or laptops to communicate with one another. Another common factor, she said, was their "identical way of life with just few needs, very ordered and simple, like in the army, which suggests they had the same type of training."
She said Bulgaria's Sherlocks will re-enact the attack by blowing up a bus in search of more details.
The announcement of her dismissal as the lead investigator in the case came after Georgiev, accompanied by senior police and anti-terrorist officials, departed on Monday for a three-day visit to Israel. An official statement about the visit said the investigation of the Burgas attack is one issue that will be discussed with Israeli officials.
Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev also has called a meeting of the National Security Council on Jan. 17 during which results of the investigation are expected to be discussed.
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[An Nahar] Bulgarian officials have removed a senior investigator from a probe into a tourist bus kaboom that killed five Israelis, after she revealed sensitive information to the media, BTA news agency reported Monday.
Stanelia Karadzhova, head of the regional investigation unit in Burgas, where last July's attack took place, had been taken off the case, the state news agency reported.
Karadzhova had released details of the investigation without clearing it with the supervising prosecutor, BTA reported, citing a statement from the prosecutors' office.
Karadzhova told the 24 Hours daily newspaper in a January 3 interview that Sofia had identified and issued an arrest warrant for one of the accomplices of the man who blew up an Israeli-packed tourist bus, killing five tourists, their Bulgarian driver and himself.
"The investigation has evidence implicating three people," she told the paper. "The identity of one of them has already been established. He is currently being searched for."
The investigator gave many other details on the probe in the two-page interview.
While Bulgaria's interior ministry has not officially refuted the information, the ministry's chief of staff Kalin Georgiev warned that any comments on the investigation at this stage were "dangerous".
Almost six months after the July 18 attack, Sofia is struggling to identify the actual bomber, despite having his DNA, fingerprints and a computer-generated portrait.
This has prevented Bulgaria from pointing the finger at anyone so far.
Immediately after the attack, Israel blamed Iran and its "terrorist proxy" Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia movement, for the bombing.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[An Nahar] Bulgarian officials have removed a senior investigator from a probe into a tourist bus 
