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The U.S. Military Is Freaked: Lasers are No Secret Weapon Against Hypersonic Missiles
(nationalinterest.org)
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
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Technology
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Lasers seen like a really bad match up. Interceptor missiles like are already in service would be much better.
Lasers kill things by heating them up. Like melting the rotors off a quad copter. Existing lasers that are a handful of megawatts still need to focus on a quad copter for a second or so to ensure a kill.
Hypersonics on the other hand have a lot less time to heat up because of their speed, and are much much less susceptible to heating. They already need to survive the heat of compressing the air to plasma. So they have substantial heat shields. A laser with current amounts of power isn't going to add significantly to the heat flux that the hypersonic needs to withstand. Maybe if you target it from above it'll be a little less protected? But trying to kill something specifically designed to deal with heat with heat is always going to be an uphill battle.