Military developer Northrop Grumman has a dream. A dream to create proper rayguns. A dream we would happily fund by paying extra tax and posting it off to the American government should it be able to pull it off.

But that’s not necessary – it has already done it. Northrop will soon start testing a 100 kilowatt model of its Joint High Power Solid State Laser, which chains together eight smaller 15kW models. It has already successfully tested a chain of two…