I'm truly surprised that lasers appear to be operational defenses against mortars, rockets, and UAVs. I had thought it would be too difficult to get enough energy from a laser to destroy a target.
But if it works, it's really a game-changer for air defense. In particular, each shot will be orders of magnitude cheaper than existing rocket-based defenses. I would think reliability would improve as well, since the laser can continuously track its target, rather than a single shot as with current defenses.
I wonder how effective countermeasures would be. If you put a mirror coating on a missile, will it reflect enough energy to make the laser ineffective?
>I wonder how effective countermeasures would be. If you put a mirror coating on a missile, will it reflect enough energy to make the laser ineffective?
nope. iirc it depends on specific wavelength of the laser or something. also mirror doesn't reflect 100%
They have been testing it at a lot at the beginning of the last year. I don’t see it on the official website, wikipedia claims the range to be 7.5km, I heard 10km somewhere earlier. So it’s an addition to Iron Dome, for which range under 10km become challenging. The cost of an intercept is allegedly under $100, which is very impressive. The entire project cost 1B ILS, roughly 260M USD and was done by a government owned company. They already presented a naval version. It’s very impressive.
But if it works, it's really a game-changer for air defense. In particular, each shot will be orders of magnitude cheaper than existing rocket-based defenses. I would think reliability would improve as well, since the laser can continuously track its target, rather than a single shot as with current defenses.
I wonder how effective countermeasures would be. If you put a mirror coating on a missile, will it reflect enough energy to make the laser ineffective?