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DragonFire: UK fires high-power laser at aerial targets for first time - with 'intense beam of light' able to cut through drones
(news.sky.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
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I could be wrong, but I don't suspect that a laser powerful enough to physically destroy stuff at a distance is going to be meaningfully stopped by regular mirrors, because mirrors don't reflect all the light pointed at them, and as soon as the mirror gets damaged enough to not properly reflect light in the spot the beam hits, it might as well not be there anyway.
A good mirror reflects more than 99% of incident light, effectively increasing the amount of power the laser needs to destroy the target by a factor of 100.
This isn't the real concern, however. Fog, dust, clouds, and rain are quite common on the damp and dusty sphere we live on, and they would all strongly attenuate the beam power and greatly reduce the effective range.
You're not wrong, but at that power level anything longer than a short pulse is going to vaporize the stuff in the way.
They probably take that into consideration and pulse the lazer before giving a more consistent shot.
Clearing out the path before shooting the shot.
Maybe they have a ring around the primary shot as well. Vaporizing the stuff that could get in the way of the primary attack.
These people are smart. It's easier to assume they've taken that into consideration
Off the cuff idea, but thermally ablative coatings that dissolve into light blocking smoke might buy drone operators time to evade - assuming their rotors don’t thin out the smoke screen too much.
The pointing system on a laser based weapon is going to be very fast. It's unlikely to be carrying much weight and will have big high performance motors.
The time of flight is practically instances relative to the spend of drones. So their is no evasion happening like top gun or star wars.
Tricking the section system is the only way a vehicle will avoid this.
If it's electro-optic sensors (cameras) smoke helps, but the laser weapon will be tracking the target prior to engagement and have a good estimate in the few seconds after smoke. A laser this powerful can burn through the smoke and hit the target in a much shorter time. It can also fire in a spiral in the last known location and hit the drone before it could get away.
If it's radar based, then the drone will need to have anti-radar coatings and profile. This avoids detection, but once detected it doesn't stand a chance.
If you want to avoid this system, you need to avoid detection. Or detect and destroy it first. Any adversary going up against this system will have to fly it's drone low and towards the ground. This makes the drones harder to detect and target. However, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown drone operators like to fly high above. Flying high gets them outside of human detection range, which allows for observation and targeting. Drones avoiding this type of laser system will be subject to small arms fire from hostile soldiers on the ground. They will also be less capable of carrying out their missions like they do in the current Ukraine conflict.
That’s a very thoughtful response, and it makes a lot of sense. Thank you!
Wouldn't all those things also affect the mirrors ability to reflect?
But is this the same type of light? We're talking about pure heat damage, how do mirrors reflect heat?
Lasers don't send heat. Lasers send light energy that is absorbed by the surface and radiates it as heat.
If a mirror was 100% effective it would work, but the tiny bit that hits the backing of the mirror will melt it and then it'll cascade.
2028: Chinese scientists have developed "supermirrors".
Super mirrors would enable better lasers technology. This cat and mouse game will never end. I'm just glad the UK, Europe and USA are ahead, because they generally support liberty and value human life. If China gets ahead the world will become much darker.