Comment by CrzyLngPwd
10 hours ago
Drone tech will adapt, as it has been in the russia/ukraine conflict.
A small, fast, autonomous drone flying between trees and buildings, avoiding obstacles and not flying in a straight line could destroy such an expensive system with very little explosive.
Or a cloud of such drones.
Or launch your attack on a foggy/rainy day.
Its so fun to armchair general drones nowadays.
I think they're hoping this will be useful against long range cruise missile style drones, not hyper agile FPVs. Agile FPVs have not been a major threat from Iran vs Israel.
Does israel get a lot of fog and rain? Might this be part of a layered defense?
https://www.rafael.co.il/system/lite-beam/
This system was originally built as a cheaper version of Iron Dome, useful against dumb, slow, predictable trajectory Hamas rockets. The new drone branding is a twist, but of course it's fully usable against things like the Iranian Shahed drones that are basically slow, prop driven cruise missiles.
If someone got close enough that a normal FPV drone like what is seen in Ukraine was in play, I don't think these laser stations would survive for long. Nape of the Earth followed by a barrage of very inexpensive exploding drones.
This is not gonna be placed within 15 km of a fibre optic operator
drones with mirrors?
First wave of drones explode into clouds of chaff, second wave of drones penetrates the very expensive laser system…
yeah no footage of the system in operation, no demo reel. seems like a feelgood measure. even if such footage existed and was real the things you mention would be cheap and easy.