Israel’s ‘Game-Changing’ Iron Beam Laser System Enters Combat, Offering U.S. Blueprint for Future Missile Defense

Israel has begun field deployment of its “game-changing” Iron Beam laser air defense system, according to the country’s Defense Ministry, which confirmed the technology is now operating as part of the country’s layered missile defense network, with its combat performance expected to inform U.S. missile defense planning.

The announcement, made Sunday, follows months of phased rollouts and testing by Israel’s defense establishment and domestic industry partners. Defense officials said the system is already being positioned at multiple sites nationwide.

Senior defense officials have described the high-energy laser as a system that will “fundamentally change the rules of engagement” as Israel confronts sustained rocket and drone threats from Iran and its regional terror proxies.

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Hypersonics, AI, Space Weapons, & Directed Energy: Lawmakers Release Defense Bill As Expiring Obamacare Subsidies Marinate On Back-Burner

With Congress in its second-to-last week in session for this year, lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee released the final bill text of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Sunday night, which allocates a topline of roughly $8 billion over the $892.6 billion the Department of Defense had requested, and what the House version of the NDAA provided which stuck to the Pentagon’s request. 

The NDAA is the annual law passed by Congress that sets the budget, policies, and legal authorities for the U.S. military and national defense programs. It shapes everything from troop pay to weapons development and foreign military aid.

This year’s National Defense Authorization Act helps advance President Trump and Republicans’ Peace Through Strength Agenda by codifying 15 of President Trump’s executive orders, ending woke ideology at the Pentagon, securing the border, revitalizing the defense industrial base, and restoring the warrior ethos,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said in a Sunday statement. 

The $8B increase is a ‘compromise‘ – as the Senate tried to jack the budget up by $32 billion over the department’s request. According to Breaking Defense, Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, noted that appropriators would have the last word on the final budget, but was optimistic that the $8 bullion figure was in the ballpark.

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Mind-altering ‘brain weapons’ no longer only science fiction, say researchers

Sophisticated and deadly “brain weapons” that can attack or alter human consciousness, perception, memory or behaviour are no longer the stuff of science fiction, two British academics argue.

Michael Crowley and Malcolm Dando, of Bradford University, are about to publish a book that they believe should be a wake-up call to the world.

They are this weekend travelling to The Hague for a key meeting of states, arguing that the human mind is a new frontier in warfare and there needs to be urgent global action to prevent the weaponisation of neuroscience.

“It does sound like science fiction,” said Crowley. “The danger is that it becomes science fact.”

The book, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry, explores how advances in neuroscience, pharmacology and artificial intelligence are coming together to create a new threat.

“We are entering an era where the brain itself could become a battlefield,” said Crowley. “The tools to manipulate the central nervous system – to sedate, confuse or even coerce – are becoming more precise, more accessible and more attractive to states.”

The book traces the fascinating, if appalling, history of state-sponsored research into central nervous system (CNS)-acting chemicals.

During the cold war and after, the US, Soviet Union and China all “actively sought” to develop CNS-acting weapons, said Crowley. Their purpose was to cause prolonged incapacitation to people, including “loss of consciousness or sedation or hallucination or incoherence or paralysis and disorientation”.

The only time a CNS-acting weapon was used at scale was by the Russian Federation in 2002 to end the Moscow theatre siege. Security forces used fentanyl derivatives to end the siege, in which armed Chechen militants had taken 900 theatregoers hostage.

Most of the hostages were freed, but more than 120 died from the effects of the chemical agents and an undetermined number suffered long-term damage or died prematurely.

Since then, research has made significant advances. The academics argue that the ability exists to create much more “sophisticated and targeted” weapons that would once have been unimaginable.

Dando said: “The same knowledge that helps us treat neurological disorders could be used to disrupt cognition, induce compliance, or even in the future turn people into unwitting agents.”

The threat is “real and growing” but there are gaps in international arms control treaties preventing it from being tackled effectively, they say.

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Army Secretary: Love the killer drone or be left behind

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll’s opening remarks at this year’s United States Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting & Exposition — that drones will “absolutely dominate warfare in the twenty-first century” — set the tone for a conference swarming with them.

Describing them as cheap, yet cutting-edge warfighting tools, Driscoll sold drones as a fundamental shift in how wars will be fought — and thus an essential asset to the Army of the future.

“If small arms defined the twentieth century, drones will define the twenty-first. They are the perfect convergence of artificial intelligence, advanced materials, batteries and propulsion systems, sensor fusion and much more,” Driscoll told attendees. “They will absolutely dominate warfare in the twenty-first century.”

Drones “are reshaping how humans inflict violence on each other at a pace never witnessed in human history. They are cheap, modular, precise, multi-role and scalable, and we will rapidly integrate them into our formations,” he said.

Driscoll’s words were music to industry’ ears at AUSA, where scores of tech-forward companies hungry for collaboration with the DoD promoted their state-of-the-art drones to these ends.

Of course the drones’s lethal capacities were at center stage. Elbit America’s display presented its Skystriker loitering munition as a “one-shot, one-kill system” and as a “high lethality warhead for a variety of targets.” A representative for DraganFly, meanwhile, stressed their drones’ ability to carry explosives. And General Atomics’ flyers depicted one of its models equipped and firing a laser weapon — the “High Energy Laser (HEL) Weapon System.”

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Portland Antifa DECLARES WAR on U.S. Military — Calls for Mass LASER Attack on Helicopters Over Portland ICE Facility This Saturday, October 11th

The radical Antifa militants infesting Portland have issued a brazen call to arms: a coordinated “laser party” aimed at blinding and potentially crashing U.S. military helicopters patrolling the skies over the city’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.

Independent journalist Andy Ngo reported the blog’s announcement and said organizers urged participants to converge at different vantage points across the city and “unleash your beam at the cop copter.”

According to the announcement:

YOU’RE INVITED: LASER TAG!

Every night for weeks we are forced to listen to the threatening rhythm of helicopter blades as the federal regime spies on us. The only limit power knows is our refusal to submit.

This Saturday, October 11th, at 9pm you are invited to fight back. All you need is a laser. Leave home – they can see where the laser is coming from. Go to a park, a field, or some other public place, and once the clock strikes 9 unleash your beam at the cop copter. Mask up. Coordinate with friends to throw a laser party!

Let’s take back the night together! It won’t take many of us to ground the helicopters!

Every night for weeks we are forced to listen to the threatening rhythm of helicopter blades as the federal regime spies on us. The only limit power knows is our refusal to submit. This Saturday, October 11th, you are invited to fight back. All you need is a laser. Leave home – they can see where the laser is coming from. Go to a park, a field, or some other public place, and once the clock strikes 9 unleash your beam at the cop copter. Mask up. Coordinate with friends to throw a laser party!

Let’s take back the night together! It won’t take many of us to ground the helicopters!

The spread of accessible acts of resistance, scattered around the city, can cause significant disruption while being difficult (if not outright impossible) to control. Actions that aim at destroying the capacity of our enemies to enforce control in simple and concrete ways can make more daring actions possible.

The Portland Police also use aerial surveillance to target protests and usually have one of their Cessna spy planes in the sky. In 2020 and 2021, PPB used the plane to target specific protesters for arrest. Let’s blind all the eyes in the sky!

During the uprising in Chile in 2019, lasers were used to take down a police drone. It is unlikely that a single laser would have much effect, but many working together can clearly blind cameras and sensors or even force the drone down to earth entirely.

Lasers have the clear downside of being easily traced back to their source, especially from the air. If enough lasers are pointed at the aircraft, we think it will not be able to safely stay in the air for long enough to continue to pinpoint the source for law enforcement, and numbers will make it difficult to focus on a single person. Be ready to dispose of the laser if you need to – wear gloves and clean it with alcohol in case you have to toss it in a hurry. Consider taking precautions to keep DNA off of it as well.

Besides, lasers just look cool!

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House Intel inquiry sent criminal referral to DOJ on strange health incidents on Havana Syndrome

The GOP-led House Intelligence Committee sent criminal referrals to the Trump Justice Department earlier in September related to the congressional panel’s scrutiny of the federal government’s alleged mishandling of the mystery behind the so-called “Havana Syndrome” — officially termed anomalous health incidents (AHIs).

A spokesperson for the GOP-led House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) who declined to be named due to the sensitivities surrounding the HPSCI investigation, told Just the News over the weekend that the committee’s ongoing inquiry into AHIs has scrutinized the response by the U.S. intelligence community (IC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and has identified a number of potentially illegal actions — which were referred to the Justice Department earlier this month. The spokesperson did not identify the exact target of the criminal referral.

The U.S. government has been investigating the unusual symptoms reported among its personnel serving abroad. If a foreign adversary is behind the AHIs, speculation has centered on Russia, China, and Cuba as possible culprits. Symptoms tied to alleged AHIs have included sound or pressure in one ear or on one side of the head and nearly simultaneous signs such as vertigo, the loss of balance, headaches, and ear pain.

Intelligence community questioned by lawmakers

The HPSCI spokesperson said additional criminal referrals might still be sent to the DOJ, particularly related to HPSCI’s review of the IC’s potential obstruction of the House committee’s inquiry into Havana Syndrome.

The House Intelligence CIA Subcommittee released an unclassified interim report in December 2024 arguing that a foreign foe might be behind AHIs and that leaders of U.S. spy agencies had wrongly dismissed this hypothesis. The subcommittee was chaired by Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., who now chairs the full intelligence committee. The December report seemed to jolt Biden intelligence community leaders into opening the door to the chance that a foreign foe could indeed be behind the AHIs.

“Since joining the House Intelligence Committee in 2017, investigating reported Anomalous Health Incidents impacting our intelligence officers, service members, and diplomats stationed around the world has been a top priority of mine personally and remains one of my top priorities as Chairman,” Crawford told Just the News in a statement this weekend. “As I have said before, the Biden administration’s IC was wrong in its intelligence assessment on AHIs, and we are working to set the record straight. The IC generated and utilized the NIH study’s invalid results to prop up the highly flawed 2023 intelligence community assessment.”

Crawford continued: “Among the many issues involved, the withholding of medical care to force participation in this human subject research study, as directed by personnel in the IC, betrayed those desperately seeking help. We will deliver the truth these victims and the American people deserve after being gaslit by the intelligence community for so long.” 

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Israel unveils Light Shield – a world-first laser that can shoot down enemy missiles and drones… with each blast costing just $2 instead of Iron Dome’s $70k rockets

Israel have unveiled the world’s first laser-based interception system that can shoot down enemy missiles and drones for just $2 per blast.

The £413million Light Shield – also known as Iron Beam – fires beams of light with between 100kW and 150kW of energy at targets several kilometres away with pinpoint accuracy.

Now, after completing development and passing its final tests, the state-of-the-art weapon, which ‘never runs out of ammo’, has officially been declared operational.

After being in development for over a decade, the cutting edge weapon will be delivered to the military by the end of this year.

Taking to X to share the game-changing achievement, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett posted a clip of the Light Shield in action, blasting enemy drones out of the sky.

‘For the first time ever, our new Light Shield laser defence system successfully shut down dozens of enemy UAVs, using only a beam of light,’ he said.

Describing how the technology works, Bennett explained that the moment an incoming threat, such as a rocket, drone, or UAV, is detected, a high energy laser locks on and destroys it in mid-air within around two seconds.

‘When a missile is coming in, hundreds of micro lasers are fired at once towards that missile, and then a very clever algorithm identifies which one of them hit the target and then tells all the other laser beams to redirect and then the full laser power hits that exact point.

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Chinese Warship Accused of ‘Laser Attack’ Against German Reconnaissance Aircraft on Red Sea Houthi Mission

Germany has summoned the Chinese ambassador for a dressing down after it stated a Chinese warship, unprovoked and without warning, fired a laser weapon at an aircraft on a European Union military mission.

The militaries of several developed nations are developing and deploying experimental laser weapons, a non-kinetic and potentially cost-effective anti-air capability for blinding military aircraft and shooting down drones and missiles. Now Germany alleges China has used such a device in anger against one of its aircraft over the Red Sea in the text of a diplomatic protest issued against Beijing.

Per the German Foreign Ministry, “The Chinese military employed a laser”, endangering the aircraft and the crew aboard. Germany has made a formal diplomatic protest over the incident, summoning the Chinese ambassador to Berlin for a dressing down. The Foreign Ministry said: “Endangering German personnel & disrupting the operation is entirely unacceptable”.

The aircraft, which is a surveillance platform operated by a defence contractor, flown by civilian pilots, but carrying a German military team operating the intelligence suite aboard, was flying over the Red Sea as part of the European Union’s Aspides deployment. The purpose of the mission is the protection of civilian shipping by monitoring and intercepting Houthi missiles and does not, the European Union says, contribute to American-led strikes on the Iran-backed Houthis themselves.

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Russia tests new laser weapons 

Russia has successfully tested eight anti-aircraft laser systems, the government said on Friday. They were designed specifically to tackle drone threats, the statement added.

The trials were attended by senior Russian officials, including Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov. The tests were conducted at specialized proving grounds and organized by Russia’s Military-Industrial Commission and Ministry of Industry and Trade.

“During the tests, the accuracy of guidance, range of destruction, reaction speed of the systems to moving air targets, and resistance to various weather conditions were checked,” the Russian government said in its statement.

Eight new weapons, ranging from “compact mobile devices to stationary high-power systems,” were tested during the trials. The laser weapons faced assorted targets, including small-sized commercial drones and “more complex devices simulating reconnaissance and attack drones,” the Kremlin said.

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My breakthrough investigation into sinister ‘sonic’ brain attacks on Americans reveals damning proof of a Biden White House cover-up

‘I feel like I am disappearing,’ a medically retired Defense Department professional told me over a meal near Capitol Hill.

Then, she bravely showed me a neuroimaging scan of her brain. It was disturbing. Her mind is wasting away.

Her neurons – the functional cells composing the ‘grey matter’ of her brain – have atrophied. Some structures exhibit neural activity ranking in the bottom 5th percentile of healthy people. A neurologist who reviewed the scans told her that her irreversible, progressive brain damage is consistent with an injury from a traumatic event.

Strangely, these images were, perhaps, more upsetting to me than the woman who I was sitting across the table from. 

To her, these scans were reassuring because they appeared to prove what she and others have been telling the United States government for nearly a decade: that they aren’t imagining their symptoms, or faking them, or suffering from a hereditary neurological disease. 

Instead, this lifelong Defense Department professional and her doctors insist that this is evidence that she’s the victim of an attack by a directed energy weapon, most likely wielded by a hostile foreign government. 

And now, for the first time, a leading US neuroscientist and advisor to the US military is backing her up and the White House is finally taking notice.

For years, the United States intelligence community has assessed that it was ‘very unlikely’ that a foreign adversary or a ‘novel’ weapon was behind a mysterious cluster of neurological ailments that first began afflicting US diplomats serving at the US embassy in Havana, Cuba in 2016.

Since that time, more and more of America’s spies, diplomats, law enforcement professionals and military operatives have come forward to claim that they too are victims of ‘Havana Syndrome’ or otherwise known as Anomalous Health Incidents

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