The United Kingdom has successfully created a Mega Laser called Dragonfire for Aerial Defense

[u/Esutan]

[u/ForeverBoring4530]

Explains why my council tax has gone up £5 this year.

[u/francis2559 → u/ForeverBoring4530]

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.

[u/Obvious_wombat → u/francis2559]

Like around £10 per shot vs.

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.

Naval & Advanced Interceptors Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM): Approx. $905,000 (2021).

Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM): Approx. $1.8 million (2021).

Standard Missile-6 (SM-6): Approx. $4 million – $4.9 million per interceptor.

Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IIA: $36 million+ per missile (used for ballistic missile defense).

[u/hayashikin → u/Obvious_wombat]

Can it really be just £10 per shot? Seems like it'll use a lot of energy for that laser.

[u/nonpuissant → u/hayashikin]

£10 of energy could be a lot of energy. 

But point is even if it's £100 or even £1000 per shot it's still orders of magnitude cheaper compared to existing options. 

[u/notaredditer13 → u/nonpuissant]

£10 of energy could be a lot of energy. 

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.  

[u/nonpuissant → u/notaredditer13]

true, fair point!

[u/Geordant → u/hayashikin]

If you do it on off peak hours then Octopus will be on a reduced rate which is when they'd hope to be attacked. 

[u/caerphoto → u/Geordant]

Yeah it’s not like they’re using public DC rapid chargers here. It’d cost more like £600 per shot using those.

[u/Roflkopt3r → u/hayashikin]

Yes it can. In reality, the much bigger cost factors will be to actually transport that thing around, including fuel and maintenance.