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this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024
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They actually have ones that can burn a hole through a commercial drone. I believe the bigger defense contractors already sell them, look it up.
But the problem is they're bulky, look ridiculously obvious, require weather ideal conditions, needs the targeting system to work well in those ideal conditions, needs to stay on target for a while and have dumb power requirements that Ukraine can't exactly supply. It's like the West™ wants Ukraine to lose, lmao
I feel like I'm a broken record, but I don't actually post about this very often:
Lasers will work in weather conditions that aircraft can't fly in. If the weather is too bad for lasers, it's way too bad for aircraft/drones/missiles. Like, maybe if an ICBM's target has bad weather it'll still work if it's got a large conventional or any size nuclear warhead, as you don't really have to worry too much about accuracy/getting blown off course, but any weapon that relies on atmospheric maneuvering will be grounded/crash before conditions get bad enough that you can't operate a laser.
The biggest issue is still laser power at the target. I absolutely do not have knowledge about classified laser weapons development (and I wouldn't share it here because we don't have a c/WarThunder comm), but they were only able to maybe blind UAV sensors and burn basically stationary objects at a distance a few years back. If the materials-science has progressed to the point where a stationary, ground-based system can burn a hole in a basic UAV at a distance (as demonstrated in a couple of three year old videos published by the weapons contractors, meaning performed under ideal conditions) than I wouldn't consider it a significant improvement.
https://www.dote.osd.mil/Annual-Reports/2023-Annual-Report/
DOT&E, the Department of Defense's Director of Test & Evaluation, has no reports to congress on any laser weapon system as of the end of last FY. This means they are nowhere even close to fielding any lasers, and are still in extremely early phases of development.
I was thinking more along the lines of dust/rain, it's not that it won't work but it won't be as effective, won't it?
All laser weapons used on Earth will operate in one of two bands, one in the visible green spectrum and one in the near IR spectrum, which have the lowest atmospheric impedance. This largely negates all but extreme weather.
Will dust storms impede lasers? Absolutely, but the density of dust in the air that would meaningfully attenuate a real, capable laser weapon would also effect radar and visibility, and implies wind conditions that would impede flight capabilities. Dust storms don't happen without wind.
If it's raining, and you can see an object, you can hit it with a laser. If the rain is dense enough that you can't see an incoming aircraft, the aircraft can't fly.
Now, if we're solely talking about the contemporary systems that the MIC ghouls are hawking as "laser weapons," then yeah, that Lockheed or Raytheon laser that shot down a drone in ideal conditions won't be able to.