Ukraine has reportedly developed and deployed what it claims is one of the first laser anti-aircraft weapons in the world, according to Colonel Vadym Sukharevskyi, commander of the Ukrainian military’s unmanned systems forces.
The weapon system, known as Tryzub (Trident) — named after the Ukrainian national symbol — has allegedly been used on the battlefield against low-flying targets, particularly unmanned aerial vehicles like Iranian-made Shahed drones.
“Laser technologies are already striking objects at a certain height,” Sukharevskyi told Radio Free Europe in February, confirming the weapon’s operational deployment.
Details about the Tryzub remain scarce and closely guarded. As reported by the Ukrainian Interfax news agency, Sukharevskyi first publicly mentioned the system in mid-December at a defense industry conference in Kyiv.
No images of the Tryzub have been released, and independent verification of the Ukrainian military’s claims has not been possible. The Defense News reached out to Brave1, Ukraine’s unified platform for defense tech, but a spokesperson declined to comment.
Joining an elite club
With this development, Ukraine would join a small group of nations successfully deploying laser weapon systems. Experts suggest that a laser weapon with specifications similar to those reportedly possessed by Ukraine could potentially be mounted on a truck bed.
Comparable systems include South Korea’s Skylight, which entered regular production last year with a similar range of two to three kilometers. The Skylight system is housed in a container of 81 cubic meters volume and generates approximately 700°C heat during ten to twenty-second impulses. It entered service in December 2024.
Other countries with near-operational land-based laser weapons include Germany, Israel, and the United States, while Türkiye and Australia are developing their own systems. Japan recently revealed a truck-based 10-kilowatt laser that had been developing for over four years.
Russia has also invested in laser technologies. In 2019, Russia announced the deployment of its Peresvet system with five strategic missile divisions. Unlike Tryzub, Peresvet is primarily designed to blind satellites rather than destroy nearby drones.
In 2022, Russia’s deputy prime minister claimed that a new laser weapon called Zadira had been deployed in Ukraine, capable of destroying targets up to five kilometers away within five seconds — similar to Ukraine’s Tryzub claims. However, both the US and Ukraine stated at the time that there was no evidence that Russian forces were using such a system.
Is Tryzub based on foreign technology?
While some have speculated whether Tryzub might be derived from the British DragonFire system, Leonardo, one of the companies working on DragonFire, told the Defense News that “there is no connection between Tryzub and the Dragonfire system.”
Industry experts suggest that Tryzub could be an indigenous Ukrainian development, leveraging the country’s significant military-industrial base inherited from the Soviet era, combined with commercially available laser technology.
“Laser-directed-energy systems, in a military context, are predominantly at the proof of concept stage,” an unnamed industry insider told the Defense News. “These could, in theory, be fielded as an initial operating capability.”
Ukraine has dramatically restructured its defense research, development, and acquisition procedures, boosting innovation and responsiveness. According to a January report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Ukrainian government approved over 600 domestically developed new weapon systems in the first nine months of 2024 alone.
The emergence of Tryzub comes as part of Ukraine’s broader efforts to reshape the battlefield through technological innovation, mainly through its recently established Unmanned Systems Forces, which has also been involved in developing drone-swarming technologies.
Read more:
- Ukraine’s new military laser burns through metal, downs Russian drones
- UK may send DragonFire laser anti-air system prototypes to Ukraine, Shapps states
- Ukraine becomes world’s fifth nation to deploy combat laser system
