The UK Defence Secretary reports how for the first time a Russian spy-ship used lasers to target pilots of RAF aircraft monitoring its progress. There are three real takeaways from this, the first being (a) lasers are sufficiently powerful enough (as I know from airline experience) to cause temporary blindness in the aftermath (b) crewed aircraft are among the most expensive and at the same time among the most vulnerable assets to deploy... as Ukraine has demonstrated and (c) maritime drones have their disadvantages, but being rendered medically unfit by laser light is not one of them.
Interesting times?
Undersea assets well worth slicing like nerves in time of conflict include electrical power cables connected with the governments drive to literally offshore supplies, internet cables providing the majority of our data traffic with the rest of the world, beside oil and gas pipelines like those which our, er, allies in Ukraine severed at the cost of damaging both our environment and bank accounts.
