On May 16, the USS Portland sailed out to sea, where it was attacked by an airborne drone.
With one swift action, the crewmen took aim with America's newest, and most powerful, laser weapon, destroying the target mid-flight.
Furthermore, the Navy was so proud of its new laser weapon (and perhaps eager to demonstrate this capability to adversaries like China) that it released footage of the test on YouTube.
Obviously, laser weapons aren't entirely new to the Navy or other American service branches.
But this one - known as the MK 2 MOD 0, or the Technology Maturation Laser Weapon System Demonstrator (LWSD) - is the most powerful laser weapon that American forces have yet deployed.
The LWSD has an output of 150 kilowatts, making it five times more powerful than other Navy lasers, like the Laser Weapon System (LaWS) that was deployed on the USS Ponce in 2014.
The LaWS, and the Optical Dazzling Interdictor, Navy (ODIN) laser on the USS Dewey have an output of just 30 kilowatts.
That's enough to shoot down small drones but not larger targets like the one the LWSD took down. The LWSD can also destroy small boats, like the ones that recently harassed Navy and Coast Guard vessels in the Persian Gulf.
It's also more powerful than the three laser weapons deployed by the Army in April.
The High Energy Laser Weapon System (HELWS), which is mounted on a Polaris MRZR all-terrain vehicle, has an output of just 10kw, for example.
However, the Army is pushing forward with plans for the most powerful laser weapon to date: The Indirect Fires Protection Capability-High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL), which aims to deliver 250 to 300 kilowatts of explosive energy.
The Air Force is working on laser weapons too.