What happens to the misses? Does the laser beam travel off into space and kill some unsuspecting alien and her kids? Or, hit the ground and blow up a gas station?
“What happens to the misses? “
A miss aimed downward might damage whatever it hits, mitigated a bit if the initial beam was focused on the target. The unfocused miss beam would still be dangerous to people down below. In all likelihood a missed beam would be swept along the ground, since it would be trying to track a moving target, so that would limit exposure to any specific point.
Laser light scattered off of a target would also be dangerous. If te target was made to be mirror-shiny then that deflected beam would be hazardous.
Upward-aimed beams would just keep going, gradually becoming unfocused due to diffraction and possibly deliberate defocusing.
A ground observer watching an aerial fight using high energy lasers would risk eye damage. And laser goggles would only help if the goggles were for that specific wavelength. Watching with binoculars would protect against wavelengths greater than 2 microns and less than .4 microns but if if the attack laser is in the visible that woud be quite dangerous.
Some people on the ground in war zones during WW II were killed by all the extra “misses” during air combat.
Even a LASER beam diverges. The answer to your first question is certainly no, to your second ... probably less damaging than a missile or explosive shell that misses its target.
“Big sky” theory says that you have to aim carefully at something to hit it. Of course, unless you are pointing upward with a laser, you are going to his something - but the probability of hitting anything that matters is quite small.OTOH . . .
George McGovern was a bomber pilot in WWII,, and he had occasion to jettison a bomb far away from any city - and out of all the acres and acres of empty dirt it could have hit, it destroyed a farmhouse! McGovern was appalled.
In a further unpredictable twist, he later met a man who lived in that house at the time! And, far from being bitter, the man was so invested in ultimate Allied victory in the war that he took the attitude that “If they need to do that to win the war, I’m for it!"
Once it’s locked on target...speed of light. Not much of a chance of misses.