[nostrademons]

Warheads spin on re-entry anyway, so laser energy directed at any point other than the centerline (which is pretty hard to hit) will get dissipated and spread across the whole warhead.

I think the biggest impact is actually against low-tech threats: swarms of fast attack suicide boats, or 1960s-era cruise missiles that have ended up on the black market. There's a big cost advantage to being able to take these out with a quick 30kW pulse rather than a million-dollar missile, particularly since the threat itself probably cost less than a million dollars.

In a great-power conflict (where "great-power" is rapidly expanding to include private multinational corporations) the U.S. military is fucked anyway, but then, so is the opposing power. Perhaps that's the best we can hope for, because it's a pretty strong incentive not to start great-power conflicts in the first place.

[Lev1a]

> In a great-power conflict [...] the U.S. military is fucked anyway, but then, so is the opposing power. Perhaps that's the best we can hope for, because it's a pretty strong incentive not to start great-power conflicts in the first place.

Yes. That is indeed the concept of a (nuclear) deterrent.