Why cant we have phasers or laser blasters like in sci-fi movies instead of guns?
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Power. The batteries would be huge and not last long. Plus the cost per unit is probably more than the soldier.
It’s hard to store enough energy in a compact, portable way for our current laser technology to produce a sufficiently dangerous beam. Basically, we don’t have good enough laser and/or battery technology to make a lethal laser that’s not the size of a small car, weighs less than a tractor trailer, and can be fired more than once every few minutes, cheaply.
[We can](https://youtu.be/iVrJUbeuG44). There are some practical issues being worked out, and they’re banned from use in war in a lot of contexts. But the basic concept is out there. The biggest problem at this point is shrinking them down to the point of practicality.
Lasers require huge amounts of power to generate enough damage to make it worthwhile and that would make them too heavy on the battlefield in addition fog and rain make them virtually useless. https://youtu.be/G8vemFi4mXs
We do to some extent. Law enforcement/Military has used both sound and light as non-lethal alternatives to bullets.
As to the concept of a packet of energy as a projectile to be used non-lethally on humans?
There’s a physical aspect of this that must be considered.
Our skin is naturally very much a resistor of electrical charge, unless it’s wet.
So how do you get an electrical charge past the skin, into the nervous system where it can elicit non-damaging results (in theory)?
In tazers, they use metal tips that puncture the skin in order to apply voltage.
How would it be done with nothing but energy?
Otherwise, you just have a very precise flame thrower.
They require too much energy/power.
Currently we don’t have any batteries that can hold that much energy while being small enough to be portable. Also, we don’t have energy sources (generators, etc) that can produce that much energy and also be small enough to put into a gun or something.
We do have the capability to make lasers and stuff, but they are very large and require entire buildings, generators/special power plant, etc. The US has even tested putting lasers on airplanes to shoot down enemy missiles… but it’s still not super portable or efficient, and it’s prohibitively expensive currently.
Maybe someday… but not yet. Lol
Practically speaking, firearms are very cheap so why would you equip soldiers with phasers or laser blasters.
We simply don’t know how to build them.
We can and do have [mounted laser weapons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/SEQ-3_Laser_Weapon_System), but their power requirements make them infeasible for use as portable/handheld weapons.
They also look nothing like the phasers or laser blasters in science fiction. A real laser is a continuous beam of light, and may not even be of a wavelength visible to the naked eye (US military uses infrared). In movies they are very visible variously-coloured individual projectiles.
In the Star Wars universe these were retconned to be described as “bolts of plasma”, and while that makes them more palatable in a “doesn’t break the known laws of physics” kind of way, we still have no idea how to make anything like it, even ignoring any power supply limitations we would have to overcome to make a real alternative. I believe Star Trek phasers also use the “plasma” explanation without any further details on how it actually works.
The closest real-world equivalent we have is not a laser, but a [plasma railgun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_railgun). For military use it’s a [work in progress](https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/marauder-was-the-us-militarys-first-plasma-railgun-and-it-might-have-worked/).
Very few “laser weapons” are actually laser weapons in sci fi. They are more plasma blasters. We can make big powerful lasers but they are nothing like in the movies. They make no sound and have no kinetic energy
Laser weapons in real life would be very boring.
Lasers weapons are mounted on some war ships I believe but are used to do damage to other boats and not on people. To throw enough energy to vaporise a person or punch a hole through them like in movies you need a lot of energy and probably to be throwing plasma and not light. Lasers may also be really deadly in space warfare too since it is so hard to lose heat in space you could hear up an enemy ship till everyone inside boils. Of course there is nowhere to hide in space and if you can shoot them, they can shoot you right back.
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