Laser tanks are impractical. What if the enemy wears mirrored shades? That laser goes right back and kills you instead. You don't want your 100 million dollar tank to be taken out by a pair of Ray-Bans.
We can put shades on the tank to bounce it right back
Classic,but inappropriate. Tanks should not wear aviators, but big chunky goggle style Warby Parkers on sale $1.89
Str8 outta Fort Sill, Oklahoma BITCHEZ
WAR… is.. disco?
Next your gonna tell me the raving rabbits are the ones driving them.
I guess war does change.
The Army has officially deployed a pair of high-energy lasers overseas to blast incoming enemy drones out of the sky, the service recently confirmed, marking a major milestone for the U.S. military's ongoing development of futuristic directed-energy weapons.
The 20-kilowatt Palletized High Energy Laser, or P-HEL, "is currently deployed to support the Army's mission" in an undisclosed location abroad, a spokesman for the service's Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office, which manages its directed-energy portfolio, told Military.com.
I think the bigger concern is enemy UAVs wearing shades.
What if they do this
I HATE THIS SO MUCH
and its soo awesome
This is why I never open someone else's makeup bag.
Doesn't that cause a nuclear explosion?
That's when you go back to explosives, you don't even need shrapnel anymore, they are already wearing it!
The moment those mirrors stop being perfectly shiny they begin thermal collapse. Which is the real reason mirrors exposed to the atmosphere can't be used as targeting optics.
Counterargument:
The US military has in the past used some large vehicle mounted beam weapons that make your skin burn like all hell, such as the Active Denial System, and I wonder if those could be deflected as well or if they're the part of the spectrum that needs more sophisticated shielding?
I only we had something we could fire that do almost the same arc as that. That would be ballin'! So I'd call it ballistics
Ridiculous! You would basically need the mass of a planet for that to work.
Dangit! We won't find that anywhere on Earth!
You fools. Look up!
It's not a "moonshot," it's a 360 no-scope.
Aiming such a thing would be more than an art.....
That would work if the earth wasn't flat. As it is, you need to transport the artillery below their position and shoot them from there. Like Ender shooting through the ice clouds.
the tank is confused by its own reflection and attempts to fight itself
This is why certain Army weapons are not appropriate for the Marines
Sigh.
Because good lasers are red.
...the color of a blaster bolt (character-scale or starship scale) is determined by the quality of the gas used in it - higher quality gives you green, lower quality gives you red. The Rebellion didn't have access to the highest quality gas, and had to make do with the lower quality ammunition.
Huh, I guess I wondered but never looked it up until now.
I mean, that's how it was retconned, but it was originally just so viewers could tell if it was the good guys or bad guys shooting. Just like there were only supposed to be blue (good guys) and red (bad guys) lightsabers. As the Star Wars universe and lore expanded, things got retconned and added/changed/removed, and it's still happening with the new stuff that comes out. Isn't world-shaping neat?
If you fire a laser against a mirror, it bounces but raises the heat of the mirror so you end up melting the mirror and destroying the drone.
I may risk being too credible here, but a $80 drone is a lot more expendable than a $40m laser tank. The drone can be considered a consumable. Hell, mark the drones down as ammo.
Depending on how long you do it, how powerful the laser, and how quickly it can cool off at the same time.
And like the other guy said, you can make really good mirrors if you only care about one wavelength.
But the drone stays in the air by making wind, which would cool down the mirror?
not if you have total internal reflection
In all seriousness, wavelength-specific dielectric mirrors can approach six nines of reflectivity.
The hard part is hitting the mirror instead of the drone.
Mirrors melt and break when hit with a laser of more than "pretty lights power".
This dude built a 2kW one with optics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNmbvaUzC8Q
mirror at ~ 4:30
EDIT: I know where I am, that video is too good not to share though. Vote away.
I rarely give my time to videos that long, but it was awesome for the full half hour. That guy's having fun. Thanks for sharing.
Nah. This doesn't count because that guy is clearly from the future when you can buy a 1K laser at the corner store. In 2024, they are a little bit harder to come by.
Buddy called inverse-square law
Inverse square law is just a geometric limitation, focus your lasers more, problem solved.
"You see, men, the lethal range is limited by this airy disk... stop giggling!"
We don't need Sky Ranger, mirrorbois or lasertank, we have shitballoons.
Laser artillery!
Queen of battle! Yasss
This is also how you check if your ass is clean.
This was a real concept for the anti-ICMB 747. The idea was to loiter it outside air defense range and then send drones in as reflectors to target the lasers much closer to the threat.
I actually do this with my TV infrared remote control.
Alternately, polish every car window facing east.
Or... skip a step. Line of sight is irrelevant if your aircraft is already exploding!
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