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A senior military official says that Ukraine has become one of the first countries to successfully develop a laser anti-aircraft weapon.
The closely-guarded device has reportedly been used on the battlefield against low-flying targets, possibly unmanned aerial vehicles such as those used in the Iranian-made Shahed drones. Colonel Vadym Sukharevskyi, the commander of unmanned systems forces in the Ukrainian military, first disclosed it in an interview with a Ukrainian news outlet.
The device is called “Tryzub,” or trident in English, a nod to the Ukrainian national symbol, embossed in yellow on a blue backdrop in the country’s now world-famous coat of arms.
Details on the new system are few and closely held. Sukharevskyi first publicly announced such developments in mid-December when at a defense industry conference in Kyiv he described the weapon’s existence and some key parameters, according to the Ukrainian Interfax news agency. When asked about it again by Radio Free Europe in February this year, he did confirm the weapon’s fully operational state.
Speculating in reference to battlefield advances combating the threat posed by Shahed-type drones and loitering munitions, he stated: “I repeat — laser technologies are already hitting objects at a certain height.”
No images of the Tryzub have been released and it was not possible to independently verify the Ukrainian military’s assertions. Nor have there been any signs of where it was deployed or exactly what or how many targets it has engaged.
A spokesperson for a operation for the Ukrainian government, referred to as Brave1, which is described as a “united coordinational platform for defense tech,” in a request for comment said it was “unable to provide any comments regarding the Tryzub weapons system or its development.”
It is not clear how much of this is experimental at this stage with the Ukrainian laser weapon. While the military has claimed that it was successful in shooting down enemy “aircraft,” it is very likely that there could be only one system and that its mobility may be restricted.
Laser weapons tend to be a bit on the bulky side in part because they require power generation and cooling infrastructure. That’s a big reason why many of the systems that have been developed around the world are ship-based. But experts said a laser weapon system built to the specifications that Ukraine has said it possesses could be mounted on a truck bed.
Similar devices like the South Korean Skylight, which went into series production last year[13] and has similar ranges of two to three kilometers[14], requires 81 cubic meters for containerized installation, and generates 700°C heat pulses of ten to twenty seconds’ duration[15]. It was commissioned in December 2024.
The technological hurdles notwithstanding, many of the major powers have flirted with the notion of making similar weapons, and some have done research and design work. The promised benefits are principally to provide low-cost defence against massed formations of low-end attack aircraft including drone swarms.
In fielding such a system, Ukraine would join an elite club of major military-industrial powers that have developed laser weapons and one that’s an even smaller group with such weapons in deployment. It arrives amid efforts by Ukraine to reshape the battlefield through innovation more broadly.
The unit, the Unmanned Systems Forces, which seems to be involved both in Tryzub's operation and potentially in the development of the weapon itself, judging by the role of its commander in the official announcement of the weapon's existence, was only formed in 2024. It has also helped facilitate Ukrainian innovations of drone-swarming technologies that have shown to improve their ability to strike deep into enemy territory.
Throughout the world, lessons learned from Russia’s war against Ukraine may have sped up the development of weapons that use lasers. South Korea’s laser, which was revealed a month before Japan’s, its own truck-mounted 10-kilowatt version, had also been under development for more than four years.
Ukraine’s adversary, Russia, has similarly invested in laser capabilities. Induction of the Peresvet system into service was officially announced in 2019, and it was indicated that five strategic missile divisions around the country had the system. But this weapon is intended primarily to blind satellites in orbit, not destroy drones much closer to Earth. In 2022, the deputy prime minister of Russia announced the deployment in Ukraine of a new laser weapon, called the Zadira, able to destroy targets up to five kilometers away in a matter of five seconds — far more like the Tryzub that Ukraine now says it has developed.
The United States and Ukraine at the time said there was no evidence that such a system was actually deployed by Russian forces.
Japan, Israel, and the U.S. also have land-based laser weapons systems near operational use, while a number of other countries — including Turkey and Australia — are indigenously developing them as well.
There has been some speculation as to whether the Ukrainian laser is a derivative of the British DragonFire system. Very large portions of the British “lethal aid” to Ukraine are classified “for both operational and commercial reasons,” according to the defense ministry,
The U.K. government had initially teased plans to sending its laser system to Ukraine in April 2024, only to backtrack a month later to say it wouldn’t be part of the government’s 2024 aid package, according to UK Defence Journal. Leo Docherty, the British armed forces minister then, added that the system was not ready, but would be by 2027, ahead of the previously set deadline of 2033. Docherty’s statement left the door open to possibly sending the weapon to Ukraine after the development phase was through.
Tryzub may very well be an indigenous Ukrainian design. The country has extensive military-industrial resources based on its value to the Soviet military industrial complex, some important segments of which were located in the now-independent Republic. Coupled with what was commercially available in the laser space, resourceful local engineers might have been able to construct a Tryzub-esque weapon, the industry experts said, noting that the scant details that have been publicly released are plausible.
In a military context, “laser directed-energy systems are mostly at the proof of concept stage,” an industry insider who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive technologies said. “They could theoretically be fielded as an initial operating capability.”
Its defense R&D and acquisition processes have been radically reordered, significantly driving up innovation and responsiveness, a January report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank revealed. Just in the first nine months of 2024, despite a continuing war, the Ukrainian government signed off on more than 600 new weapons systems domestically developed.
And Ukraine’s February defense technology exhibition of domestic military advancements, Defense Tech 2025, highlighted a special emphasis on lasers and anti-Shahed weapons in its promotional materials — descriptions that would apply to the Tryzub — in addition to other advanced technologies like swarming drones, lethal autonomous weaponry and sea drones.
The unmanned systems operations command for Ukraine did not reply to a request for comment on this point.