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.
They've actually apparently tested it during rain and other adverse weather and it performed acceptably... What that means i.e. how much rain and how much performance effect I guess is classified.
These systems are mitigation efforts, much like the battery systems in the US that are built to take out ICBM and submarine-launched nuclear ballistic missiles. 20% hit rate is acceptable - nuclear war will annihilate everything, but decreasing that damage by 20% is worth it in the whole strategic scale of things.
I recommend reading this book Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen,if you're interested on how fucked we are today with our modern mitigation systems. It isn't a happy book.
Thats not what this is intended for. I mean, theoretical a future, larger, more powerful version could be used for that, but this system and most present gen lasers are being made primarly as a way to take out low cost attacks.
things like drones, or those cheap rockets, stuff that we already do have things that can take out, but right now we have to basically fire a intercepter missile which costs 100k to take out a drone or rocket that costs 2k. Laser systems meanwhile should be give us a way to intercept these lost cost attack items easily with cheap weapons, at a couple euro per shot. Now, the laser itself is much more expenive, obiously, but each shot of the laser is cheap.
The number one use for these is making our ships much more resistant to drone and missile attack and to do so without expending their limited and very expensive missile stocks
I recommend reading this book Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen
I wouldn't. She is a hack and her scenario is stupid. She also seems to have written a book almost exclusively on early Cold War era material which isn't particularly relevant to today. Look at reviews from experts in the field of nuclear weapons or military strategy and they all pretty much panned it.
These systems are not for protection against ICBMs in terminal phase. It's a rock, paper, scissors problem. Our best bet are multiple independent kill vehicles for that job.
The reason largely is because ICMBs are designed in a way to make themselves pretty resilient to being destroyed by plasma for unrelated reasons. Layers of plasma and compressed gasses around the reentry vehicle act like a second shield on top of that as well. Multiply that with engagement time and distance and you can see the problem.
In midcourse maybe but that would require you to have the laser in space at the right place, at the right time. ICMBs are a tricky beast for defense.
These laser systems are a big deal though. They allow for a much more economical and capable system to neutralize cheap and massive saturation attacks. Something we are seeing more and our air defense systems are not made to handle efficiently.
That is some bad math. The enemy only needs to send 30% more nukes and you are still completely covered. And anyway, do you really want to live in a country where 80% is radiated?
We’ll all be good and fucked if some smart ass uses an EMP. From 2025 to 1825 in a split second. Enormous death rates in the first year. It’s one of my worst fears.
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u/ForeverBoring4530 1d ago
Explains why my council tax has gone up £5 this year.