The issues with lasers has always been how to generate the enormous power needed to feed lasers with enough downrange energy to make them worthwhile. This is why they are showing up in shipboard and vehicular form first. We are nowhere near any sort of man portable power source that can provide enough power to drive a hand held laser. Power armor has the same problem, we can build power armor right now, but the suits only work when wired in to external power sources, there isn't anything portable enough to power one right now.
The issues with lasers has always been how to generate the enormous power needed to feed lasers with enough downrange energy to make them worthwhile. This is why they are showing up in shipboard and vehicular form first. We are nowhere near any sort of man portable power source that can provide enough power to drive a hand held laser. Power armor has the same problem, we can build power armor right now, but the suits only work when wired in to external power sources, there isn't anything portable enough to power one right now.
We have similar problems with lightsabers.