100
The U.S. Military Is Freaked: Lasers are No Secret Weapon Against Hypersonic Missiles
(nationalinterest.org)
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
100 points (97.2% liked)
technology
23180 readers
263 users here now
On the road to fully automated luxury gay space communism.
Spreading Linux propaganda since 2020
- Ways to run Microsoft/Adobe and more on Linux
- The Ultimate FOSS Guide For Android
- Great libre software on Windows
- Hey you, the lib still using Chrome. Read this post!
Rules:
- 1. Obviously abide by the sitewide code of conduct. Bigotry will be met with an immediate ban
- 2. This community is about technology. Offtopic is permitted as long as it is kept in the comment sections
- 3. Although this is not /c/libre, FOSS related posting is tolerated, and even welcome in the case of effort posts
- 4. We believe technology should be liberating. As such, avoid promoting proprietary and/or bourgeois technology
- 5. Explanatory posts to correct the potential mistakes a comrade made in a post of their own are allowed, as long as they remain respectful
- 6. No crypto (Bitcoin, NFT, etc.) speculation, unless it is purely informative and not too cringe
- 7. Absolutely no tech bro shit. If you have a good opinion of Silicon Valley billionaires please manifest yourself so we can ban you.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
yea turns out lasers aren't magical lightsaber blades that immediately cut through anything, and actually need time to heat the surface of their target while having issues with penetrating thick or dense materials.
Just increase the power. Use a nuke to pump the laser or something
still less penetration less quick than if u used the nuke to propel a solid projectile real fast. photons have like negligible/arguably nonexistent mass, the real fun with lasers (as weapons) is using them to target enemy optics (mechanical or biological). one relatively weak but rapidly spinning laser array could permanently blind an entire unit or crowd of people nearly instantly if they don't have specialized protective equipment like high-quality mirror goggles (implausible) or camera/sensor helmets with replaceable/redundant sensors (likely doable in the future but impractical currently).
funny enough they actually do have zero mass, but non-zero momentum.
Isn't that a war crime?
like many other war crimes, it only counts if you do it to a 'uniformed combatant' of a country recognized by NATO
Hey at least something did came out of it: The most used weapon in the sci-fi Honorverse series.
Ah, so we just need to make lightsabers, got it, that'll be $400B.