DragonFire: UK fires high-power laser at aerial targets for first time - with 'intense beam of light' able to cut through drones

What if enemies just start adding mirrors to their planes, drones, etc?

Grab some popcorn and search YouTube for "mirror vs solar death ray."
Spoiler: magnifying glass plus sunlight obliterate mirror within seconds.
- Yes, a small, stationery, "Walmart mirror" would be destroyed easily. Probably without using a death ray.
  But military grade glass and cooling (i.e. heatsink) can do wonders.
  I'm sure some creative anti-laser technology exists, or will exist, if these laser weapons become more common.
  Even infrared reflecting paint + additional cooling might be an option.
  Keep in ming that the "target" could have a weapon like this to fire back... No one wins.
I could be wrong, but I don't suspect that a laser powerful enough to physically destroy stuff at a distance is going to be meaningfully stopped by regular mirrors, because mirrors don't reflect all the light pointed at them, and as soon as the mirror gets damaged enough to not properly reflect light in the spot the beam hits, it might as well not be there anyway.
- A good mirror reflects more than 99% of incident light, effectively increasing the amount of power the laser needs to destroy the target by a factor of 100.
  This isn't the real concern, however. Fog, dust, clouds, and rain are quite common on the damp and dusty sphere we live on, and they would all strongly attenuate the beam power and greatly reduce the effective range.
- 2028: Chinese scientists have developed "supermirrors".
easy you put another mirror at the gun
- That's how baby lasers are made
They become easy to spot.
Well I'm basing this off what I've seen the Chinese get up to, they have these mounted on trucks so if there is some kind of effective counter like super smoke, idk, inclement weather conditions (lmao), they just don't roll it out.
Also if these ever get mounted on fighter jets it might be wise to make them part of the automated drone fleets that are gonna be flying in locked formation like Blue Angels. Just don't send out the laser drones unless necessary idk.
I'm just speculating. You're stuck buying our shitty F-35s or whatever lol
- The F-35 is the complete opposite of shitty.
- With lasers this powerful weather would be turned to steam, it's going to clear its path eventually.
tapshead.gif
The future really is chrome

This is going to be a weirdly lit world war.

Generals does take place in like 2030

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said latest trial of the DragonFire system, which typically costs less than £10 a shot, marks a "major step in bringing this technology into service".

It is hoped the weapon could reduce the UK Armed Forces' reliance on high-cost ammunition, with the cost of firing the laser for 10 seconds equivalent to using a regular heater for an hour.

Defence Secretary, Grant Shapps said: "This type of cutting-edge weaponry has the potential to revolutionise the battlespace by reducing the reliance on expensive ammunition, while also lowering the risk of collateral damage.

"Investments with industry partners in advanced technologies like DragonFire are crucial in a highly contested world, helping us maintain the battle-winning edge and keep the nation safe."

Shimon Fhima, director of strategic programmes at the MoD, said: "The DragonFire trials at the Hebrides demonstrated that our world-leading technology can track and engage high-end effects at range.

The development of DragonFire is being led by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), on behalf of the MoD, working with its industry partners MBDA, Leonardo and QinetiQ.

The original article contains 420 words, the summary contains 182 words. Saved 57%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Have they solved the issues with particles in the air like dust or clouds? Or is it just a good weather defense?

DragonFire was able to destroy incoming drones from several positions miles away, The Times has reported.
Sounds like it. A laser that can cut through metal and plastic at those distances is going to vaporise anything else that gets in its way. Normally you'd have an issue with the surface of the target ablating and vaporising into a dense cloud that does a much better job of stopping photons than the atmosphere (see some Styropyro videos for examples of this in action), but it sounds like it's strong enough to punch through that as well to finish the job. And quickly enough that it takes out an aerial target, which typically have to move pretty fast to stay airborne. There's power behind that beam.
- Drones don't necessarily move that fast, I can't imagine this would be all that effective against fast moving targets that vary their speed. So it might catch a drone hovering, but it probably won't catch a 200mph racing drone going through its paces.

o so they caught up to china huh

In what way?
Chinese tech is considered to be pretty good but honestly most of their tech has amounted to “paper dragons” so I’d love to see verified reports of whatever it is you’re referring to.
yes I know it’s paper tigers, paper dragons makes more sense for china IMO
- Some people on lemmy have this weird idea that China is some super high tech future society where they're using fusion for all their power, have the fastest most complex computers in the world, medicine that cures all cancers and a fully functioning space program with a moon base.
  Instead of, you know... About the same as every other developed nation.
  And of course if you ask for any sources, it's either "I don't have to do your work for you" or "here's a source directly from the government from a state-sponsored lab and has only been corroborated by other state-sponsored labs and not a single person outside their team has access of any of the produced things"
  And if you question a source, you're racist because clearly if they were white you would have believed it.
- They already showed off their directed energy weapons for use against drones. It's just nothing new to me, sorry that hurts your pride across the pond.
  Mao was right, we are a paper tiger. The nukes were bluffs. We will overmilitarize and collapse like the USSR did.