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originally posted by: anzha
a reply to: yuppa
Lasers are less effective against ICBMs or other weapons designed for high speed/high temperatures. Reentry is very brutal.
However, against those, we will have the railguns. The US Navy is looking at them for anti missile defense as well as long range bombardment. They did a test of a railgun round vs a ballistic missile warhead on a static mount. The damage was impressive.
The real revolution of lasers and railguns is the cost per shot. Lasers are pennies. Railguns are far, far cheaper than missiles.
That's part of the reason the Chinese are seeking boost glide hypersonic weapons: if we miss, the chance to try to kill the incoming again goes down a lot at hypersonic speeds. At Mach 1, a missile covers 30 miles in 150 seconds (+/-). At Mach 5, that's 30 seconds. Mach 10, 15 seconds. However, the cost of hypersonic weapons is probably going to be very high.
Boost glide weapons are rather different in flight path than traditional ballistic missiles. Also the ASM DF-21s are intermediate range missiles rather than ICBMs. Again, a different trajectory. If they ever built an ICBM ASM, that'd possibly be an apocalyptic mistake.
originally posted by: anzha
a reply to: yuppa
If it has optical and radar, its going below a certain velocity, making the DF-21D warhead much easier to hit. One of the reason Project Thor was a bust was because of the plasma sheaf.