War is good for the advancement of weapons technology. Sadly.
Laser weapons are cool because you just need LOS and the ability to perfectly track and object.
The downside is that those lasers cough "excuse me" directed energy weapons, need time on the target to transfer enough power to damage the target.
On a battlefield, time is a commodity you don't have. The kamikaze drones make sense, they're basically explosives attached to home made RC planes. But anything fancier is going to need to be very precise or far more power hungry itself.
Which means if they are FIELDING them, and ANNOUNCING that they are using them, they have proven without a doubt that they are effective at their purpose. And it must be something else watching a line of fireballs just pop up in the sky 2km away.
Another drawback is that they are more affected by atmospheric conditions such as rain and dust than projectile weapons are.
I've thought about this, but then I've also noticed that the soldiers say they prefer cloudy/foggy weather because there's far fewer (almost no) drones active in those conditions. So if the primary target of the lasers is consumer grade drones, that that might not be a problem.
Infrared lasers will cut through clouds reasonably well and cary a lot of energy
They are more likely air defence weapons that can't be overwhelmed anywhere near like rockets can be.
need time on the target to transfer enough power to damage the target.
I dont think its much of an issue at this point. A 2-3 seconds pulse should be more than enough to bring a consumer drone down.
Interesting showcase of a US weapon system used for this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFiDYFnlp7s If they showcase this, then its probably outdated already and the current version is even better.
2-3 seconds to destroy is tracking the target an additional 400 feet (if they travel at 100mph, they're too small to go very fast). I was basing my response based on that. If they decreased the time to half that, it would be significantly more effective.
If you send swarms of the UAVs say 16 - it would take one turret 48 seconds of fire time - probably more like a minute switching between targets, but that seems extremely fast. That means that the longest living UAV made it an additional mile and a half.
Of course the more you field, the more likely they are to reach their target. Which is true regardless of the kill vehicle being energy or kinetic.
In any case, it should be far cheaper to take down a drone, and more successful even without a better kill time.
The laser weapon system is known as "Tryzub" which means "Trident". I like the sound of that.
The Tryzub is the Ukrainian coat of arms if you didn't know. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_Ukraine
Now attach it to some fricken shark heads and go after their navy.
but do they go pew pew?
I've been wondering if this would show up given how saturated the battlefield seems to be with cheap drones. The US, the UK, Germany, and Turkiye all have truck-mounted anti-drone laser weapons, and the Turkish one was supposedly actually used in combat in Libya
Oh my god! Ukraine now has lasers! Just like inside my kidney!!!!
It's confirmed. Putin is a big kidney stone.
Pew! Pew!
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