[markem]

The laser takes fewer to fire, has very little storage for its "ammo" requirements and is way more accurate in delivery than conventional lead ammo.

Long ago, I was in a meeting at Boeing where an air force general was asking us what it would take to build a field-deployable EMP system. One of the engineers in the room more or less said that it was pretty easy to do, but that it rapidly got very difficult if you didn't want to disable the friendlies.