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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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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!