Can they fly faster than the speed of light?
Because if not, they are going to have a tough time dodging a navy’s laser anti-missile defenses.
“Can they fly faster than the speed of light?
Because if not, they are going to have a tough time dodging a navy’s laser anti-missile defenses”.
Not if they are not detected before it’s too late.
Never, never, underestimate any enemy.
Childish comment. How many lasers that work are on Navy ships? 3? 1?
True that on our laser weapons coming a long way, a lot more than I expected. But I believe we currently can't rapid fire them (retry when we miss). I believe also the laser has to hold "contact" with the target missile for a total of a few seconds to disable it. I doubt we can do that with the supersonic targets. We're not to the point of split-second laser fire/boom like in the movies.
Think less Han Solo and more Nikola Tesla (his theoretical Teleforce he claimed to have invented).
The laser defenses we don’t have except on two ships?
Also, even with laser defense systems (which currently only blind or ablate, not destroy), there is still time required to slew the mount onto the attack vector and aim, which hypersonic missiles may not allow.
At a height of 10 feet, the horizon is 4 miles away. Something coming at mach 5 ( 3,805 mph ) will cover that distance in a little over one second.
That gives the laser system one second to acquire the missile, point the laser at it, GET WEAPONS RELEASE PERMISSION from the captain, shoot at it, and do enough damage to take it out.
Even if the captain has already given permission for the system to automatically fire upon anything moving faster than Mach 1, that's still not much time.
Not many captains will be willing to risk inadvertently shooting at a ghost signal and hitting a friendly or neutral.
Not this crap again.
The navy has no laser missile defense.