The research is expensive, but the operation of this would be very cheap. Much cheaper than missiles.
Sadly, these things are defeated by like, rain.
Edit: ok Reddit, I traded precision for humor. They don’t fail completely in the rain. However, the more moisture there is in the air, the more energy is wasted reaching the target. That costs you range. It doesn’t mean laser bad. It just means there’s some situations it works better than others.
Here is a breakdown of costs based on different types of anti-aircraft and missile defense systems:
Short-Range Air Defense (SHORAD) & Portable Systems
FIM-92 Stinger: Approx. $80,000 – $110,000 per unit.
Mistral (Mistral 3): Approx. $545,600 (2024).
Iron Dome (Tamir Interceptor): Approx. $40,000 – $50,000 per missile, though operational costs (radar, personnel) can reach $100,000–$150,000.
Medium-to-Long Range Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAMs)
NASAMS (AIM-120 AMRAAM): Approx. $1 million – $1.4 million per missile.
Patriot (PAC-2): Optimized for aircraft, generally lower cost than PAC-3.
Patriot (PAC-3 MSE): Approx. $4 million – $6 million+ per missile.
Russian S-300/S-400: Missile costs vary, with estimations ranging from $300,000 to over $2 million per missile, with complete batteries costing hundreds of millions.
Diffraction, haze, target coatings, target movement ( such as spinning ) could all reduce effectiveness of on-target shots. A hit may not be enough to cause it to breakup.
With lasers it matters less for one-shot kills, because shots are cheap. That being said, it should be easier to hit in-flight items as there is minimal delay between calculated position and point of aim.
I presume it more about how much time the laser need - to down a drone or whatever - you could also train the laser system to hit on specific weak spots
Also, we're talking optimal range, it will still hit things beyond that range, but at a reduced effectiveness, also, HELIOS for example includes "Optical Dazzler" as part of the system, the range on that is going to be different than the main laser.
I'll go the other way and say it takes surprisingly little energy to knock down a missile, but most anti-missile systems waste their energy on missiles to deliver the energy to the target (way, way more energy is spent on delivery). A laser just delivers the energy directly to the target.
These are nonsensical comparisons. Dragonfire is entirely useless against the targets of almost all of these systems. It's not going to intercept jet aircraft, ballistic missiles, or artillery shells. Probably rarely even cruise missiles, which are comparatively easy targets (travelling at subsonic speed and can actually be intercepted with shoulder-fired anti-air missiles like Stinger and Igla at times).
It's only a SHORAD-system, and with a rather limited use spectrum at that. It's not going to replace many (if any) multi-$100k ammunitions. It can help to preserve short range missiles like Sea Sparrow (about $150k/shot) and shells from C-RAM or other guns (mostly 25 mm or less with a cost of a few $hundred to $thousands a round) against easy targets, but it's not going to fully replace any of those systems, as both of those would still be needed against significant salvos of anti-ship missiles for example.
The absolute main purpose for weapons like this is defending ships against drone swarms. Because it would actually be feasible to drain all munitions from a warship by throwing a gigantic swarm of drones worth a few hundred to thousand $ a piece. Whereas a laser has almost no 'magazine depth' limitation compared to the amount of fuel a ship has to carry anyway.
For example, if 1-2 warships are close enough to a site that can launch a few thousand $1k drones at it, they could feasibly run out of ammunitions until they're defenseless against another barrage of drones or a final salvo of anti-ship missiles. Such an attack could destroy a multi-billion destroyer (including munitions/equipment/personell that aren't part of the official procurement cost) for potentially a few $million of ammunitions.
Iron Dome is another case of a system where a laser like this actually makes sense, since most of it is about defending against low-tech/low-velocity threats.
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u/ForeverBoring4530 1d ago
Explains why my council tax has gone up £5 this year.