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It’s interesting to think how this would work to the point I’m hoping they at least try it. I’m sure in the next 3 months you’ll see more PR’s about this kind of test, now that there’s a very wide-open purse for anyone who meets the need.

I have severe doubts any laser on earth has the wattage and the focus to be able to connect with the balloon at altitude, and when you think about how long it would need to take to actually heat up the target it would probably take forever. Those things normally cook the target down low, right? Heating up a drone at 300’ AGL from ambient 100º to 500º in a half-second so it pops?

Things are cold as shit up there, and helium isn’t the the most conductive material. So maybe they would just ham fist it and fire it for 10 seconds at a time for half an hour, raising the envelope’s temp from -25º to -10º…..so it could rise further?

That’s kind of silly, so let’s assume they have a really good lens system and they can focus all that energy on one spot to actually perforate the skin of the balloon. (I know you don’t need to ‘focus’ a laser, but I’m assuming diffusion will occur from water vapor, dust, etc so you have to start thick and hope enough powers through)

How many cells will they need to puncture? How long can they fire? How long between shots until the laser has to reposition? Even if you can punch 5 holes in it while it passes through your range, you still have…….1,000 more to make before it bleeds enough.

It’s an interesting fringe case for all these systems, fun exercise because it’s basically outside everything we ready and plan for. I think the old, post war AA guns could actually schwack it out of the sky easy with flak, they’d just dial in the right distance and make some puffs and it’d be done. But we haven’t had those in decades.

RT: https://poa.st/objects/0902e2b4-6574-4cd4-9723-bbd45f8f0826

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