alt Hacker NewsLasers can stop a hypersonic missile, but the challenge is getting a beam on the target through the atmosphere. Some of the old SDI tests solved the problem by flying the laser above most of the atmosphere.
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eightysixfour • today at 5:43 PM
What is the math on how much additional heat a laser would deliver to a warhead which is presumably designed with some kind of ablative shielding that is pushing through air compressed into a plasma? It seems like the damage from a laser pointed from miles away through atmosphere wouldn't be enough to change anything.
There was also the Adaptive Optics where the beam was shaped by lot of individual articulated mirrors that could be used to correct the beam from not only the atmospheric distortion but how the heat of the beam itself would then change the atmospheric distortion. Supposedly, that tech became DLP.