re: #98 William Barnett-Lewis

It’s an interesting toy, but they’ll put railguns of various sizes (main weapons & point defense) on ships long before any laser will be a practical battlefield weapon.

Lasers will eventually be fielded for point defense, littoral combat against small kamikaze boats (attack on USS Cole), drones and interdiction. Our mistake with the ABL concept was trying to make them a long range stand off option for shooting down ballistic missiles during the launch phase. The entire point of directed energy is to take the per shot cost down, the using a gigantic plane and enormous chemical laser for ABL was never, ever going to offer that.