A new Chinese laser weapon designed to shoot down aerial drone swarms made by Poly Technologies, a firm founded and owned by the People's Liberation Army (PLA), is drawing inordinate attention at the ongoing IDEX 2017 arms show in Dubai.

The laser weapon is called "Silent Hunter," a fiber-optic laser air defense system also known as the "Low Altitude Laser Defending System" (LASS). The laser weapon on display at IDEX 2017 was designed to be mounted on a special truck, and is the first mobile version of Silent Hunter seen at IDEX.

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Silent Hunter was first revealed at the African Aerospace and Defense Expo 2016.

Poly Technologies, one of China's three leading arms exporters, said Silent Hunter can generate a standard output of 30 kilowatts and can fire its lasers out to 4,000 meters. It claims Silent Hunter was first deployed to protect delegates to the Hangzhou G20 Summit from Sept. 4-5, 2016.

Silent Hunter is designed mainly to shoot down large numbers of low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Poly Technologies said the laser is powerful enough to pierce five layers of 2 mm-thick steel plates at a distance of 800 meters, or 5 mm-thick steel plate from 1,000 meters distant.

Poly Technologies was unable to deploy the full-size truck mounted version of Silent Hunter due to size and weight limitations of the transport aircraft. A full model of the laser weapon is on display at IDEX 2017, instead.

Poly Technologies said Silent Hunter is highly responsive; features a high interception rate and multi-target strike capability and can shift and aim at a new target within six seconds.

In addition, the weapon is cost-effective with each shot costing less than $1. It inflicts minimal collateral damage and doesn't generate a lot of fragments after the laser beam strikes a UAV.

Silent Hunter's power output can be varied to 5kW, 10kW, 20kW and 30kW. It can track and shoot down aerial targets with the diameter of less than 2 meters that fly at a speed of less than 60 meters per second.

Silent Hunter has two versions: a truck-borne mobile version and a fixed version.

Tagschina, Laser Weapon, People's Liberation Army, IDEX 2017, Silent Hunter, "Low Altitude Laser Defending System, African Aerospace and Defense Expo 2016, Poly Technologies