As someone who is a laser applications engineer in the aerospace industry, I can say you’re missing one HUGE component of what makes the laser successful and that’s matching the laser wavelength to the material you’re firing it at. You showed a rubber rib boat being shot with a near to mid IR laser. Rubber does not couple with those wavelengths, whereas a ceramic composite or metal missile nose cone would couple extremely well.

Right now, the best defense against hypersonic is the lack of depth of the adversaries pockets

As a retired military analyst I followed laser weapon development for decades. I tend to agree with your view of their limitations. As for the future of the weapon potentiality it is not clear what is technologically possible. It should be noted the military had developed adaptative optics some years ago that uses a technique to precisely deform a mirror hundred a time per second in order to compensate for light distortion enabling the laser to focus on the target in the most destructive intensity and manner. This may not work in rain or snow, but it does have a useful impact.

I saw two friends once, in quad-blaster cannon turrets fend off an entire Imperial Squadron, we should just use those!

Task & Purpose : Why Laser Weapons are About to Change Everything (two hours later) Sandboxx : LASERS won't save you from hypersonic missiles

Lasers will eventually be the first line of defense against missiles and drones, current technology is just not there yet.

Well, hypersonics also have limitations. Most important one is altitude. To fly at that speed and manouver, they only can use high altitude. In terminal phase they can't dodge anymore as dense air would break them apart. So if you have missile defense with proper sensors and effectors near the target, you do have a chance to shoot it down. Even with current tech. But you don't have much margin of error. You have window to launch of like 10 seconds at most

I remember seeing the YAL-1 when I was on detachment to Edwards AFB. Lots of cool aircraft out there!

Two things: 1: Laser power is directly additive. If you put multiple systems on multiple ships, you can very quickly hit your megawatt range. 2: The best defense against hypersonic weapons is a bagful of sand. These are boondoggles, not wunderwaffen.

Patriot wasn't supposed to handle Kinzhals. Real world: Patriot intercepts the "unstoppable" Kinzhals. So much for hypersonic hype.

Some of the issues that you are describing can be addressed with "hive" based laser weapons and targeting systems. I don't think anyone is suggesting that a single laser cannon will be sent into battle. So, for a strike group that combines land, sea, air, and space, it is conceivable that there would be over 50 laser cannons for any given attack formation. With network based targeting, each target could be taken out much quicker when focused one at a time. It is possible to get this under a few seconds with the combined targeting. This is especially true for defense based lasers installed on US soil.

as a sci-fi nerd, I don't think it will fully replace Gatling guns either. Their still countermeasures to lasers such as mirrors, sloped angles, material thickness, composite materials, rolling the missile, passive cooling, ultra white paint, etc. while these might only provide about as much as milliseconds to maybe possibly a few seconds of extra survival time for the missiles time they still can make a big difference between life and death since we could still put shielding on the missiles as you said in this vid which I am glad you mentioned. Then again lasers also could suffer from massive amounts of heat if they are not cooled properly and other factors but that shouldn't be a problem if their used in the atmosphere including difraction and such. Then again it honestly depends. Lasers are still gonna revolutionize warfare no doubt and don't have a limited ammo supply as long as you have power. Then again I'm not an expert but doing something like this as simple on missiles could still make a difference. I should also mention if the wavelength of the material matches that of the laser it can also affect it's effectiveness apologize if I got that wrong as I study kinetic weapons not lasers but I am catching up on energy weapons. Correct me or please tell me more please I like to hear your criticism on what I did get wrong then again everything that I said here should be taken with a pitch of salt.

Pulse lasers might be a way around the power output problem, they could output a huge amount of kW for a brief pulse to near-instantly damage something through thermal shock. Or the laser could be tuned to create plasma bubbles in the air ahead of a projectile to make it "slip" out of control on the sudden change in air properties like stepping on a banana peel, so the laser doesn't have to burn holes in the target. A third option is electrolasers, which turn the air along the entire beam path into plasma, so an electric discharge can be channeled through the plasma to kill a target with synthetic lightning.

1. Maneuverability may affect intercepts by THAAD, as they tend to intercept much higher up in the missile's flight path. Patriot against a hypersonic is so close to the target that there is no appreciable change in course by the missile left without also missing its intended target. 2. When it comes to laser based missile defense, realistically you are better off talking to the Space Force than even the Navy. Not only is the energy of the laser undiminished in vacuum, but the field of view is so much greater. Reagan wasn't wrong.

DOD revolutionary Excimer Lasers never shot anything down, but did revolutionize chip manufacturing (DUV Lithography) and the invention of Lasix eye surgery. Worth every dime!

Alex, I'd like to see a video on the potential options that would work to counter hypersonics.

Also a patriot launcher can hold up to 16 missiles. A patriot battery as many as 128 missiles.(Alex knows this, this info is for other's)

Yes they will but you have to heat it more than once. Also remember, hypersonic vehicles want fall apart at the speeds they are moving through a thick atmosphere. A little more heat under such conditions and you are gonna break the hypersonic vehicle.

Alex, the issue is not the cost of the interceptor , but the value of the target.

I think there are some dots that are not connected. 1 - Given the price of hypersonic weapons, there are only about 25 targets in the Asia-Pacific that are rational. Thus, Air Defense doesn't have to guard everything against them - only those targets (11 Fleet Carriers, 9 Small Carriers, Major Bases). This means that maneuvering around AD bubbles is interesting, but point defense is what is going to be important here. Can you detect/track these weapons to get good solutions for your local defenses? 2 - Laser weapons, even if not good against hypersonic weapons, should be effective against everything else. This should simplify defense against the rest of the saturation attack leaving more resources to go after the hypersonic weapon. This should be a great simplification for defenders in planning an AD bubble around a Carrier Strike Group. 3 - It might be even more important to regularly target these weapons to cause them to maneuver before reaching their target. They will have a fixed amount of energy to spend after their boost phase. The more that you can make one turn, the shorter the reach will be. You will also slow the terminal velocity. This is not as true with SCRAM jets based cruise missiles, but nobody has one yet. That means mobile systems capable of targeting these weapons could be useful on their own. 4 - Back to that maneuvering around AD bubble videos. This makes one of two assumptions. Either that such bubbles are static, thus the maneuvers shown are pre-programmed. Or that the weapon actively detects and avoids such bubbles. Both of these scenarios provide some interesting defensive options. In the first case, that means that somewhat mobile AD bubbles are good. In the second case, it means that EW platforms can be a valid defense.

Today's theme from the military video producing Community has been lasers. Anybody else notice that?

You skipped an early part of the development of laser weapons. The Airborne Laser Lab. A product of the Air Force Weapons Lab at Kirtland AFB. Built in a C135 airframe with the laser in a sealed compartment just behind the flight crew. If you think that the chemicals in the COIL laser are hazardous, the laser in the ALL was terrifying. Hydrogen and Fluorine.

I have a question for everyone. Given the high speed of an HGV, wouldn’t the vehicle be enveloped in an ionized plasma at lower altitudes? And wouldn’t that plasma envelope interfere with a laser’s efficiency and effectiveness? If you watch a Sprint ABM launch or watch inbound dummy MIRVs descend to the target area on KZfaq you’ll see examples of this plasma envelope. I may be way off base but it would have to factor into the engineering of the laser.

Alex GOT ME with the fact that a Laser, continuously pointing in one direction, starts to break up the air around the beam. I never knew that one!

Thank you, Alex. Very cool topic. Lasers were the first science thing that I became interested in. I remember having fun conversations with my grandfather about lasers and nuclear power as a kid. The subject still fascinates me.

Once laser technology advances a bit more they will absolutely be able to defend against hypersonics. Right now lasers need a bit of time to heat their target. But once we get to a point where lasers don't need as much time, or any at all, it's a LIGHT SPEED response to whatever threat they're engaging.

Hey Alex, I dunno if anyone mentioned it down below already, but lasers are a springboard into another type of directed energy weapon using laser-induced plasma channels as long distance charge carriers-essentially, it is making your own lightning bolt. I know that an Army video showed something like a LIPC strike on an SUV, and it was quickly taken down and buried, but it's enough to let you know that DARPA has at least messed around with it in the past if not made it a #1 priority going forward into the future. It makes me wonder when you look at some of the new ship designs that have double or even triple the power plants they need for SOP steaming around their fishbowl. Could it be for charging up capacitors for LIPC shots? Who knows? Are they that much more superior to a laser, really? The answer to that is a _resounding_ YES. Why? The answer was given away in one video of the Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy that was taken down and lost shortly after being posted online. This video showed the Challenger screaming down through the atmosphere at roughly Mach 20 at the time. It was burning a plasma tail through the atmosphere it was so hot. In this video, it appears that a positively charged, upper atmosphere 'clear sky' lightning bolt which was purple in the image struck the plasma tail behind the shuttle, which was blueish. Well, the purple bolt went hard to port, followed the plasma tail to the Challenger and hit it. You just had a split second to process what you just saw before the Challenger just...disintigrated. So this brings us to why the physics behind the LIPC are so far superior to a simple hot laser discharge, IF you can get the energy storage needs met: 1. Short burst, medium power laser shot-you only need to induce the air in the laser shot to a plasma state for this to function, 2. Capacitive discharge vs. sustained power-ultra high power discharge over milliseconds, then however long to recharge the capacitor banks for the next shot. Laser gets to cool. 3. Overcoming LoS issues-IF these guys paid attention in Electronics, then they would also deduce that you don't need to even hit the target for a LIPC shot to take out the target; all you need to do is hit the plasma tail of that mach 10+ bird and you will smoke it. And this isn't to say that this unit would be Sierra-Hotel against just birds, either. As the Army was able to show, that LIPC they played with in that video was able to overcome the resistance of the air between the wheels of that SUV they shot at, and the discharge that hit up on top of the vehicle found the ground and the bolt discharged into the dirt, cooking the SUV like a low voltage resistor in a high voltage circuit. Now me, I'm just an old electronics guy who was out of the Navy by '90, so don't try bugging me about "show your sources!" 'cause I ain't got any. But if you have a brain and can do 2+2, you can see how this tech marries up and could be used the way I suggested above. I ain't breaking any oaths, clearances, or whatnot. Just talking about possibilities both technological and practical for keeping our people safe on the battlefields and seas, and in the skies and beyond going into this 21st Century. As always, I have to shout out ⚓GO NAVY⚓

Your video created some interesting discussions. My favorites being the discussions regarding the popular belief that a reflective coating was all you needed to defeat a laser.

If your laser isn't stopping missiles then you aren't using a big enough laser.

Finally! Someone who uses the word "myriad" both grammatically and contextually correct. This was a great video with an honest breakdown of lasers limitations in combat.

Seems like an approach is being missed. For a WWII battle ship they did not try to build one giant gun, they did a broadside of 9 16" guns. If 300KW lasers are what we have with 500KW on the way, why not point a bunch of them at the same target? Say a half dozen laser directors spread along each side of an aircraft carrier. (See: Lockheed to Scale Up ‘Highest Powered’ Laser Weapon to 500kW)

@alex could you make a video about what defenses we DO have against hypersonic cruise missiles? Or ones that are feasibly possible.

I must disagree with you..... If every ship in an aircraft carrier group had 1 or 2 of these laser systems all 20+ could fire at the same target and obliterate it in less than a second and be ready to fire again and just a few moments...

What about…. Now hear me out…. Sharks with lasers! 😂

Hi Alex- hypersonic missles seem a real threat to modern carriers. So, please post more on what seem to be workable solutions to this threat.

I guess I can agree with Sandboxx that lasers can’t save you from hypersonic missiles. There’s also another thing about lasers: they’re not just used for defensive purposes but also for offensive purposes. I can potentially see lasers being used as an extremely practical offensive and hostile firearm in my lifetime. People often think that lasers are defensive because they can stop attacks like drones and missiles, but that isn’t always the case. Lasers are also known for destroying houses and infrastructure; there was an actual case in Chile for that. It is probable, if not inevitable, that a laser equivalent of an atomic bomb, such as the Death Star Superlaser from Star Wars, could exist during my lifetime. Superlasers tend to require extremely thick beams. Hell, there are already some Star Wars-related weapons in real life right now.

Lasers are getting smaller and more powerful every year. That said, I haven't seen a real hypersonic missile that can change it flight path rapidly enough.

Thanks for giving out straight in formation Alex; even if it's not what we'd like to hear. The silver lining is that the understanding of this just makes it easier to identify when we need to change our change our efforts related to specific threats. Pleased keep it up.

Something you didn't mention is that an object moving very fast through the atmosphere creates a sort of plasma cushion in front of it which might significantly diffuse the laser energy.

Great vid Sanddbox! Keep 'em coming!

You addressed some things I’ve wondered about. I think if we could make lasers actually effective on the target, it would be possible have a web of the them on the ground and in the air that could intercept missiles at the necessary ranges.

Alex, thanks for continuing to educate us; the advertised capabilities of maneuvering hypersonics are daunting in scope. How well they really work, IMO, is a lot of smoke and mirrors. But, couple this segment with your previous one on the ground-launched Tomahawks, THAT could be a real game-changer.

How about using tactics from the past to get the most out of weapons of the future? Build large cruiser or even battleship side ship that form a picket line around the carrier so the missile is not being hit nose on. A nuclear powered battleship would be awesome.

As a chemical engineer/materials engineer, I must correct your entire video and tell you that reverberation makes lasers a super weapon to a certain set of particulates. Meaning lasers make specific compounds go boom very easy

Couldn't two lasers focus on the same spot to double the energy? What if you had multiple ships focus their lasers on the target? Or have an array of lasers designed to target other lasers targets. Effectively using laser targeting for the array of other lasers. Edit(to add more of my thoughts): By using multiple lasers that are designed to work together the whole system can decide to use only the necessary amount of resources to take down an individual object. If a target is hard to take down use 3 lasers for that target while the others can take out softer ones. It splits the concentration of resources as well so if one system is lost it can still fight with a small reduction in capability. The only problem with multiple lasers is the amount scattering experienced in the atmosphere is multiplied by the number of lasers. But the pros should more than make up for it.

Well, lasers need time to destroy things through heating them up. Hypersonics are designed to not give you time. And might even just have kinetic energy and no warhead to blow up. And even then, they have heatshields to not blow up through friction heat.

i think you're off base here. if you hit a hypersonic missile with a laser beam and don't manage to melt though anything, you just manage to introduce a small surface defect in its hull it (according to numerous other sources i've seen) will introduce a drag instability that will cause the missile to lose navigational control, tumble and be torn apart by drag.

Using a RTG nuclear reactor in a satellite defense system with a 1MW laser would absolutely be effective. It eliminates all of the impossible challenges like diffusion and range. They could even be used as planetary defense from asteroids, and even space junk.

It takes very little to cause a hypersonic system to burn up in the atmosphere. One tile falls off the space shuttle, and the flight is over. You only need to heat one spot on the heat shield to much hotter than it was designed to endure, which is not so difficult when re-entry already puts it near the upper limit of its tolerances. Also, all the problems of thermal blooming and atmospheric diffusion disappear if the laser is emitted from LEO. I suspect masers are also much less affected by the atmosphere. Nor is it inconceivable that we could put one of those lasers that runs on rocket fuel on, you guessed it, a rocket.

Imagine a modernized "Airborne Laser" platform. (Airforce made a 747 into a giant laser with advances made since then or over next 20 years, I can't imagine lasers NOT being effective on ONLY hypersonic missiles.(at least in next 20 yrs)

While I agree with the general argument that lasers will not soon have sufficient range to be effective against hypersonic weapons due to atmospheric scattering and thermal blooming, I do have to nitpick that adding more heat shielding to a missile is not likely to be nearly as problematic a factor for laser-interception. Adding more heat shielding to a missile not only means adding monetary cost, but also means adding mass, which brings with it a whole host of other physical complications and ensuing monetary costs to overcome or mitigate them. First off, you'd need to add a *LOT* of heat shielding to fend off a laser _on top_ off all the aerodynamic heating the normal heat-shield is for. Even fairly minor damage to a heat shield can produce catastrophic damage while effectively experiencing re-entry. A laser over-taxing a small piece of the heat shield can lead to a cascade failure that ultimately destroys the hypersonic object. Pulse lasers, which rely on thermal shock rather than simple overheating, would likely reek even more havoc on heat shields. The amount of heat shielding an object would need to survive a high-power laser would be absurd. Second, more heat shielding means more weight you need to get off the ground, requiring more powerful and expensive launch vehicles and re-invoking, among other technical nightmares, the Tyrannical Rocket Fuel Equation. More heat shielding means _everything_ about the weapon gets more expensive, not just the warhead itself. Third, that extra mass would increase the hypersonic object's inertia which would massively inhibit maneuverability, especially when traveling at these speeds. For a hypersonic cruise missile, this might be less of an issue since you could just give it more powerful flight rockets, but for a glide-vehicle this would likely be nearly deal-breaking. An HGV with too much heat-shielding might be so unmaneuverable that it might as well not be considered a "modern" hypersonic weapon at all, sacrificing the main advantage "modern" hypersonic weapons have over just a typical ballistic missile. Plus, its range would suffer as heavier objects require more lift to glide the same distance. Of course, they could redesign the missile's shape to make it more aerobatic, but that requires building a whole new glide-vehicle and probably accompanying launch-vehicle to account for new size and shape. But that just runs into the second problem all over again, and any increased surface area to allow greater interaction with the air would require _even more_ additional heat shielding to protect from aerodynamic heating _and enemy lasers_, which puts you back at the start of this problem in the first place. So I don't think effectively "armoring" (because that's essentially what these heat shields would be) hypersonic missiles is an effective way of countering lasers. It's just not a cost-effective way of ensuring your missiles can last long enough to reach their target, because _even if_ someone could make it work without sacrificing significant maneuverability or range, it would probably still be cheaper and about as effective to just lob twice as many missiles at the target instead.

There is a difference in what you expect the system to do. You don't have to vaporize the hypersonic weapon. You just have to achieve a functional disruption that makes it ineffective. If a laser, or other DEW, can harm the Hypersonic's sensors/maneuver systems/structure to the point they cannot do the job it works good enough. Personally, I remember that high speed travel through air gets very dangerous if your vehicle becomes aerodynamically unstable. Also, if you can make it less able to maneuver-it makes it more susceptible to other systems. Not saying lasers are good to go today, but don't discount them either.

How about a cloud of tungsten dust/particulates.....that should do the trick!

Maybe you could target the air/plasma in front/behind the HSM to mess up its steering - causing turbulence or regions of sudden low/pressure. Or maybe you could have drones with targeting mirrors that could redirect ground beams to the flank of a target or that could be used to combine multiple beams on one point of focus death star style.

Lasers do not have to destroy the hypersonic weapon. It just have to cause enough damage to let the atmosphere friction take over and destroy it. Range is an issue though.

From Sri Lanka. Thank you very much for a SUPERB EXPERT analysis presentation. Look forward for more.

I wonder if there will one day be a way to quickly collect, consolidate and hold particles of matter firmly in a specific point in space for a few seconds at a time, potentially in the path of an incoming missile. Not exactly a classic deflector shield, but effectively the same...?

I can't remember all the details but I thought the military had developed a new way to boost the power of laser weapons that involved cycling the laser on and off quickly! Does anyone know what I'm referring to?

Unlike a ballistic, where you do need to blow up the side of the missile, for an HGV you just need to mess up the electronics through resonance so that its guidance fails before the terminal phase. Use HGV's strength as its weakness. Scalpel, not hammer. Discalimer: im not in the military, this is just my guess

Your information was well researched and your conclusions were spot on. We’re not going to burn through a nose cone that can withstand sustained exposure to plasma for a very long time.

Just slap 10 300KW lasers onto the ship. All of that space being occupied by other weapon platforms could just be a bank of lasers. Ability to track and burn through multiple targets at the same time or one target from multiple angles. Another option could be to develop Star Trek force shields. Then you won't need lasers at all and the captain can legit say, "Shields to maximum!"

Can you do some more in-depth content about Chinese anti-ship missiles and the US Navy’s strategy against them? Also I love the new music at the beginning of the video

Another problem with CIWS is the time to reload. It only has several seconds of ammo on board. Reloading is a major process.

Stopping a hypersonic nuclear missile with a lazer is impossible since the casing for the nuclear warhead is a heat and radiation resistant alloy and can only be incinerated by a nuclear of hydro thermal explosion.

I’m not sure I fully buy into the theory that the missiles are designed to handle the high heat of hypersonic speeds. I’m sure it’s shielding is adequate but that heat combined with the heat generated from a HEL is likely more than the shielding was designed for.

Absolutely perfect report here. One area that you mention is LASER pointing, this problem dates back hundreds of years to ships of the line rocking about on the waves while trying to get precision out of smoothbore cannons. Modern fire control systems are very good at pointing and will get better yet. While this is an engineering challenge, this is well within our current technology level.

If I was a missile designer I would look at placing a reflective layer beneath the paint. Make that paint burn easy and completely when hit by a laser (maybe use vinyl instead of paint?), so as to expose the reflective layer. Beneath that, put some heat resistant, or possibly heat spreading material. Might make missiles more expensive and heavier. Which would make them slower, or force designers to reduce the size of the warhead. But I don't see lasers as an unavoidable insurmountable problem, even for subsonic missiles.

Since the DF-ZF is specifically mentioned, there are some caveats that seem like they might not apply. Like, would it ever be beyond line of sight with its target in the glide phase? And if not, the quoted range doesn't seem like it would apply either, as I'd assume "one mile" would be horizontal at sea level, and the range would be a lot longer when pointed upwards, as atmospheric density decreases with elevation.

The US Army just chose General Dynamics and Rheinmetall as finalists for the 4000 Bradley replacement IFVs. Could you do a video about this program, the two finalists and the other three that dropped out. Or more generally the current state of IFVs (Bradley, CV90, Puma, Lynx) and their most likely future. Maybe even including anti air IFVs like some CV90 variants and SkyRanger.

What you are saying is correct, If you are thinking of having to burn through and destroy a target, But it doesn't take that much power or time to blind a targets sensors, A missile that can no longer see targets isn't much of a threat...

Maybe some sort of atmospheric energy disturbance weapon to disrupt the potential area the missle will travel through.

Very nice, well researched video. Keep up the good work!!

I'm kinda curious to know if rail guns could be used to intercept hypersonics, and if so, why the USN didn't continue research on that side of things.

Excellent presentation on High Energy Laser Weapons, their history, the different types and their strengths & weaknesses of these Directed Energy Weapon Systems. As you know, this was what I was in charge of at the Air Force Research Laboratory and still teach courses on for the Department of Defense. You get an A+ for this presentation, Alex!!! 💯👏👏👏👏👏👍😎

We also need research in using lasers to change the atmosphere around the missiles can lead to undesirable flight characteristics. In other words you don't have to destroy the missile but can cause it to lose lift, control, or flame out by heating the air around it.

What a lot of people forget about is counter measures, eg laser reflectors , etc

In 1965 there was a news release on a thing called a gas dynamic laser. The very first prototype of the device put out a 65KW continuous laser beam. Not one more word on that device was ever printed. It ran on jet fuel, and was very easy to build. It is easy to understand why nobody talked about that.

OK, I am just going to say it. Your assumptions are incorrect, what we see is not what we have. They are just test beds. In 1983 I witnessed a LASER mounted on an APC, the generator was packed into it as well. It was capable of shooting down drones back then. Now 40 years later who knows what they really have.

Furthermore, hypersonic missiles travel so fast that they produce a plasma energy barrier around them which is very hard for lasers to penetrate

Drone shields I think are one of the best solutions. Quick launch, shotgun style system that launches a drone swarm into general area of an oncoming hypersonic weapon. That C4 packed drone would maneuver to intercept. With a 10 meter spread. I think it's plausible

For the next few years I expect to see lasers as a replacement CWIS and as something that can blind optical sensors. Baring the military doesn't reverse engineer a phaser from a crashed UAP of course 🙂

Shot the launch aircraft. Not the missile.

Magnetic Lensing is the key component that is missing!

And I wonder what AI can digest upon initial detection to tell the laser how to modulate the response. It seems to me, the power of the laser could need to be applied to the target for a few more millisecond or seconds, but meanwhile the weapon is closing range ultra fast

Alex, please do a piece on the tactical ultra-short pulse laser currently being developed by the Army and the Air Force. If the little which has been publicly presented about this new concept is accurate, the problems with lasers which you speak of will be solved in short order.

Hypersonic weapons are actually pretty fragile. Any imperfection in the casing caused would cause the missile tiling break apart. Also ... in the case of aircraft carriers it wouldn't be one laser hitting the missile. It would be a dozen. Each ship will eventually have more than one.

what is required to make laser missile defense work to protect ships is a large number of sharks with lasers

Or use a super wide laser beam to detect stealth aircraft. It would see it's shadow and easily pinpoint the exact location, speed, heading...basically what you need to track it

Hypersonic missiles will protect us from hypersonic missiles

This seems to be lacking nuance. There's no way to say lasers can't be made powerful enough to be effective.

The BEST DEFENCE AGAINST A LASER IS A MIRROR.

See habitual line crosser. In your intercepter cost analysis, you must also account for the cost of the object being defended

For hypersonic and missile defense in general we will probably need a distributed space and near space based point defense systems with thousands of satellites and airships that can shoot projectiles/energy weapons.

You know you can hit a target with multiple lasers all at once. Something like 20 different lasers converging at one point. This would exceed almost all realistic counter measures.

You mentioned at the end that “that doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer to hypersonic missiles…”, could you do a video on what solutions are in development to protect carriers other than lasers?

If it was just a laser or two firing, that probably would not work very well, but if you have several dozen firing at a target from various ships, planes and drones, then that should do the trick.

Sounds like the navy would need a nuclear powered destroyer/cruiser with Ford levels of power to have enough juice to power a sufficiently powerful laser or would need to coordinate multiple laser systems to hit the same target. Also, LK99 might pan out as a room temp & ambient pressure superconductor which would be a huge boost to how much juice you can give a laser.

So often times when employing a laser it flicks of many many times a second. This creates an rapid expansion and contraction cycle causing fracturing an ablation. I wonder how catastrophic ablation on high speed bodies in atmosphere is?

He did not mention another big problem for LASER: it does not work in bad weather like rain. And you can not prevent enemy strike you when it is raining. So at least LASER alone is not enough for anti-missile defense.

Basically lasers aren't strong enough to get through the missile in the seconds it would have to do so. At best it gets one but the rest get through. Maybe particle weapons can advance enough but we are a long ways from that. Catching them is space would be ideal. All this being wildly oversimplified by a layman, so let's see how it plays out lol One day I'll learn to proof read.... That is a lie .