Big pewpews require big power and it's not super practical yet
The end of the article mentions another system, HELIOS, but didn't have much more information, and that was only two units, I think?
I believe you, just wondering how widespread these are relative to traditional projectile weapons.
I've read that the main reason they like it is more about the incredible long range optics and not the laser, tbh.
It'd be a rather short range weapon, that's not easy to aim, require a line-of-sight, can't penetrate armor... or goggles, or fog/dust.
They're "intended" to cause only temporary blindness
Aside the sci-fi vibe, I could imagine James Bond esque - still quite hard to use, has to aim for the eyes, scatter can cause collateral damage, doesn't work in fog, rain, etc.
Blinding laser weapons are in the same category.
Chemical weapons are incredibly useful, just awful.
https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...
They're not. They're effective against an unprepared adversary. Any real military will have anti-chemical-weapons tactics and protection.
So this happens: you douse a building with a gas, and then walk inside and get shot by defenders in gas masks. And by the way, you also will have to wear a gas mask yourself.
The idea was to mess up scope optics, but human heads have lenses too. It was not Geneva Conventions friendly.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Blinding_Laser_W...