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I got talking to a sciencey bloke at university once who basically said what a commentor on that page said. All you need is a mirror or some highly polished reflective metal and it wont be damaged.
 
So the its main purpose is to shoot down missiles. Now missile makers are going to add a mirror coating to the exterior of there missiles, effectively making them immune to lasers. There'll be a lot of collateral damage as non-reflective objects around the missile are burned. Whole flocks of migrating geese would falls from the sky, cooked extra crispy.:p

LOL:D
 
glad to see we are spending our hard earned tax dollars on useful things rather than Obama's health care or education reforms, which are so wasteful
 
glad to see we are spending our hard earned tax dollars on useful things rather than Obama's health care or education reforms, which are so wasteful

Well considering Boing is a private company who usually uses their R/D monies to do a good amount of the research to develop this then the government steps in and pays the winning contract for that project.

Besides, we always need a military and one that can cut down on the collateral damage is always a bonus.
 
About time... the Chinese demonstrated there laser technologies over a year ago.... took us this long to respond...

And being from a plane! Yikes. SO the nukes are heading for us, just let me wake the crew so we can takeoff.... we need ground to air!
 
or civilians

That's one of the major points of these weapons, to be as accurate as possible. Lasers are much more precise than bombs. Could a friendly still get killed by a laser? Of course. But it seems this could really cut down on civilian casualties.
 
So the its main purpose is to shoot down missiles. Now missile makers are going to add a mirror coating to the exterior of there missiles, effectively making them immune to lasers.

First off this is hardly news, the program has been on-gong for many, many years. I remeber ground based tests 20 years ago. Chemical lasers were part of Reagen's "star wars" system.

You can't make the mirror reflective enough. It is very hard to make the skin a perfect optical system. Mirrors that can reflect lasers are very hard to make and need liquid cooling. A missile with optically perfect skin and liquid cooling could not fly.

ICBMs are huge rockets, not something you can move on a truck. To make one strong enough to survive a laser like this it would have to be even more huge so as to be totally impractical

It is not easy to build a rocket that can fly out of the atmosphere and push a warhead into a long suborbital trajectory. Adding armor plating would pretty much be imposable

Much cheaper to simply write the address of the intended target on the warhead and hand it to the UPS guy and have him deliver it for you. ICBMs are obsolete now that FedEx and UPS have world wide overnight delivery
 
"New ToastATruck! With the exclusive Point-And-Smoke Interface! Order yours today!"

In all seriousness, I'm impressed with the stability of the platform.
 
That's one of the major points of these weapons, to be as accurate as possible. Lasers are much more precise than bombs. Could a friendly still get killed by a laser? Of course. But it seems this could really cut down on civilian casualties.

Being more accurate at hitting things doesn't make it better at hitting the right things. All it means is that it will be more precise at hitting targets.

When its pointed at the wrong target - it will still kill the wrong people. It will just do it better.
 
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