[r9etb]

One thing they keep forgetting - a laser will not penetrate thick cloud cover or heavy fog.

Nor battlefield or man-made smoke, presumably. There may be ways around this.

Question I have is: how quickly can these things shoot? And if THEL costs $3000 per shot, couldn't you just shell Israel into bankruptcy?

[Ford Fairlane]

I'm not sure how fast the new ones can shoot - if they are fixed and hooked to a large power supply it is probably not very long. The Navy was testing Lasers & Railguns about 10 years ago and they both took about the same amount of time to recharge the capacitors. Smaller units, such as those that could eventually replace the Phalanx system have multiple banks of capacitors so they can fire nearly continuously, but they really require a nuclear power supply. At one time the Army (I think) had a M-60 tank with a laser mounted on it that took about 30 minutes to recharge. I think that was in the 70's.

[SSN558]

"Nor battlefield or man-made smoke, presumably. There may be ways around this."

Don't forget tinfoil, the VRWC secret weapon. For best results wear on the shiny side out.