Drone Destroyed by Laser

You're right, a shiny metallic surface would be harder to burn through.

According to this, neutral particle beams are not being pursued.

The Pentagon Is Giving Up on Particle Beam Weapons (popularmechanics.com)

For knocking down drones, there's always "militarized silly string".

Sure it works great on small commercial drones,but how about militarized large ones with jet engines?

Of course the Pentagon would not let the public know everything they are working on.

All countries have an ace in the hole.

Russia is known to have been working on explosive-triggered particle beams in the '70's.They were ground based and used a small nuclear explosion to generate the beam,and powerful magnets to focus and concentrate the beams'(think CRT ).

The explosion was contained within a powerful magnetic field and special container.

I am sure we were doing to the same,and given the technology improvements since then,it is probably far advanced from that era.

I am sure the issues with Coulomb repulsion and the variable magnetic field of the Earth have been worked out by now.

An explosive-derived particle beam sounds more like a shotgun.

Anyone for some skeet shooting?

You must mean a implosion device that creates variations of deference in the energy spectrum,or a advanced variations frequency and photon emission systems

No.I mean a particle beam created by a small nuclear explosion.I remember reading about it,and the best I can recall,it had the explosion contained with a strong magnetic field,and the beam went to an accumulator,then focusing chamber with magnets,before exiting the weapon.This was from research done by Russia in the 1970's (approx). They had solved the problem of reducing Coulomb scattering apparently,and was capable of delivering Giga-watts of energy at 100 Km,sufficiently focused to destroy any incoming missile.

I don't remember reading how they accomplished the Coulomb scattering problem,but maybe they used 2 beams of opposite polarity to hold it together.

Imagine a small magnetic "funnel" located concentrically inside of a larger funnel,and you get the idea.Now imagine each focused to a certain distance.Like I said,I don't know if this is even possible,I am just speculating,(through my spectacles), from a HTRN perspective.Imagine more than two concentric funnels;an array instead.

It would give them,or us,an unpenetrable missile defense system.

There was a high risk of self destruction,and this was considered an acceptable risk at the time.

As I stated,I am sure they did not abandon the research back then,and I am sure we have some undisclosed projects underway that are off-budget,being funded by the Pentagon's very deep pockets.

Hold on a minute,there is a black helicopter landing on my roof..."Hey,let's see a warrant...you can't do th-----"

"Drone on" would be the cry not "pull"!

Still would make for fun with those pesky snooper drones.