DragonFire laser weapon can hit a coin from a kilometer away for around $13 a shot

[Vulcanproject]

It's not a long range weapon and probably not actually fast enough to deal with very high speed threats but we're entering the world of drone warfare.

The likely threat many Western nations face are $1000 drones being thrown at their $500m ships and other expensive installations en masse. The problem really is asymmetric warfare, you don't even want to fire off 'cheap' $100k missiles at these drones if you can avoid it. Let alone $1m ones.

Currently we have the Phalanx CIWS which does a good job, and its effective range is only really a mile anyway. If this can be made to work reliably it might not replace the Phalanx but there are good cases to be made as an additional system in certain situations.

These lasers still need development. It makes a lot of sense to be looking for cheap to fire weapon systems to deal with drones or waves of drones. If they reach that level of performance reliably perhaps later on they might even be useful against faster targets such as cruise missiles or the like.

 

[Vulcanproject]

So if the enemy succeeds in disrupting power access for just a moment, you are screwed!

Uninterruptible power supplies. You might be interested in knowing about potential sources of energy storage for weapons such as these. High power flywheel type energy storage systems. Kinetic.

They can store tens of kilowatts of power, dump it all very quickly, and be recharged in a few minutes. The lifespan of them is potentially decades. This is not some future dream world tech. Interesting flywheel systems had applications in the past.

They are fitted to Gerald R Ford carriers to store energy for the electromagnetic catapults. They're literally in use right now. The catapults had many problems, but slowly they are improving the past couple years. I would argue the system in general was not really ready but I guess nothing motivates development like fitting them to your most expensive naval asset.

This laser is supposedly ~50kw class, within the reasonable bounds of a larger flywheel storage system. Of course these are all prototypes including the laser. In say 10 years this tech largely checks out and seems viable given enough development and funding.

 

[WhiteLeaff]

I wonder if the laser will work on a missile with a very reflective shield that reflect the laser.

Conventional mirrors are not effective at reflecting military destruction lasers, as these lasers are designed to be powerful and penetrating. Specific materials, such as high-reflectivity mirrors for lasers, would be needed, but even so, many military lasers are designed to overcome such defenses.

With economic power like that of NATO, they could easily create tens of thousands of drones carrying this type of weapon and, after prior identification, render all military installations of an entire nation (even one the size of Russia) unusable.

 

[erickmendes]

With economic power like that of NATO, they could easily create tens of thousands of drones carrying this type of weapon and, after prior identification, render all military installations of an entire nation (even one the size of Russia) unusable.

Would it be cheaper to just throw a gargantuan swarm of cheap drones?

 

[kinetix]

Reflective and ablative at the same time is pretty impossible.

I mean two layers