Air absorption. The extinction coefficient for free air is ~0.012/km for 500nm light (green) at sea level. Or about 50% losses at 60km. (Now, this is well above sea level. Still.) Both for direct power losses and for secondary effects (high-power lasers have a tendency to create an ionized channel. Natural lightning produces a surprising amount of NOx and O3, and widescale power beaming would too). (For comparison: HVAC lines lose ~7% / 1000km. Or ~0.000072/km. Or 50% losses at 9500km. More than two orders of magnitude better.)
Conversion efficiency.
Beam dispersion in general.
Malice.
Accidents.
Energy cost of the fliers themselves.
Speed of said fliers.
I could see this working reasonably well for defensive warfare (until the power generation gets nuked); this is hilariously ineffective for the stated purpose of long-distance power transmission.
Not sure I want darpa doing anything for us. Facebook, Twitter, amazon Microsoft etc
The air is already filled with radio waves and radiation, now they want to electrocute us.
A few major issues:
I could see this working reasonably well for defensive warfare (until the power generation gets nuked); this is hilariously ineffective for the stated purpose of long-distance power transmission.
https://twitter.com/DARPA/status/1577693508403662849?s