Ah, They're 21st Century Style Death Rays

Boeing builds a C-130 Hercules “laser gunship.”

It looks neat 'n all, but this really strikes me as just an excuse to spend money. Huge amounts of research is going to have to be done in areas like power generation and storage, before this becomes a practical weapon. Meanwhile, there’s going to be lots of duplication of effort on the civilian side of things, as people try to figure out better ways of powering alternative fueled vehicles, with little sharing of information because the military project’s classified technology.

But there will likely be spinoff tech.

And perhaps that is the idea.