Seems very similar to the DC special flight rules area warning device, which was introduced to cut down the number of incidents of aircraft unintentionally erri

Seems very similar to the DC special flight rules area warning device, which was introduced to cut down the number of incidents of aircraft unintentionally erring into the DC SFRA resulting in expensive things like fighters being scrambled. It's basically the same idea as a control tower's light gun sending the red/green "extreme caution" signal but it's laser-based to work at long range. They refuse to give much in the way of details, it's not even clear to me if it uses radar for targeting or the statements about it being radar-based just mean that the person operating it gets instructions from someone looking at ATC radar. It seems like it might just be a minor modification of this same device. Actually I'll expand on this, because I think the article is a bit unclear but it seems like this is intended for the exact same use-case. it's not really a weapon but a signaling device. The problem with air traffic is that pilots occasionally err into restricted areas unintentionally. For various reasons (mostly bad ones, but still not too uncommon) they may not be monitoring any of the radio frequencies that a controller or the air force would try to use to communicate with them. So if the situation is severe enough, a military aircraft has to be scrambled to conduct an intercept and redirect. Even this has a failure rate because not all pilots seem to be familiar with the internationally agreed upon procedures for intercept and redirect by a military aircraft, although I'd argue it's pretty intuitive (if a fighter comes after you, act rational and follow them when they turn away). So for the DC SFRA where this is a big ongoing problem they introduced this "visual warning system" that's just a laser that flashes red-green at the suspect aircraft. Ideally everyone who flies in that area knows about it, but they figure that even for people who don't, it's bright and conspicuous and alternating red/green means "use extreme caution" (every pilot should know that one, it's on the exam), so it ought to be enough to get people to figure out that there's something going on and they should start monitoring their radio. FAA provided a demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wAhreg9qpo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wAhreg9qpo Seems like this is the exact same idea, it's bright and conspicuous and will make people realize that something is up even if they're not monitoring the radio, and so hopefully they'll either turn their radio on or head the opposite direction to avoid trouble.