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by electrograv 2606 days ago
> So yeah, pulsed lasers can do it, and I'm certain the Air Force would rather be using them.

Do you really think they are so incompetent so as not to have thought of this?

I’m sure the labs developing these are aware of what you’re suggesting, have probably even tried them, and have their reasons for the design they’ve chosen.
1 comments
Retric 2606 days ago
Want to and can are different things.

They likely want to used pulsed lasers assuming average power output stayed the same, but physics is a bitch. So, they don’t get to arbitrarily chose.

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EpicEng 2606 days ago
Ok, but if we're including things which are currently impossible then I'd assume they'd rather just use Professor X and have him mind blast the missiles out of the atmosphere.
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Retric 2606 days ago
Every new design is building something that does not exist.

We already have pulsed lasers with average power output in the kw range over several hours. Even better, this thing does not need to fire for hours at a time so you can skimp on heat dissipation. But, you can buy 2kw laser cutters off the shelf.

Really, scaling it up in a lab is one thing, but getting everything else to work like dealing with vibration, portability, and targeting is hard. So, while this design had slightly better tradeoffs, that does not say much about the design space they where working with or what they consider useful vs required. Ex: What frequency is this?

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