USS Portland Tests High Energy Laser Weapon System in Gulf of Aden
(www.dvidshub.net)
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Story is legit.
https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/News-Stories/Article/2873919/uss-portland-tests-high-energy-laser-weapon-system-in-gulf-of-aden/
I don't know why they are testing it on the other side of the world.
The problem with using lasers as a weapon has been that once the laser starts to penetrate, the smoke attenuates the strength of the beam. Also, if you make your surfaces perfectly reflective, the laser will do nothing but bounce off.
So just to be more clear, if you made a laser weapon system to stop hypersonic missiles for example..
All the enemy would have to do have to do is make a mirror finish on their missiles using chrome or some other way. Perhaps our military has figured out a way around this.
All mirrors have thermal limits and they do not handle various wavelengths the same.
Yeah I was thinking they might have figured a way to that makes it difficult or impossible to make a surface that can efficiently reflect the beam at certain frequencies or or a mix of wavelengths.
But the laser we were using was really powerful and the mirrors had zero problems as long as we kept them clean.