Why doesn't the military do this? are they stupid?

We can put shades on the tank to bounce it right back

That's when you go back to explosives, you don't even need shrapnel anymore, they are already wearing it!

The moment those mirrors stop being perfectly shiny they begin thermal collapse. Which is the real reason mirrors exposed to the atmosphere can't be used as targeting optics.

The US military has in the past used some large vehicle mounted beam weapons that make your skin burn like all hell, such as the Active Denial System, and I wonder if those could be deflected as well or if they're the part of the spectrum that needs more sophisticated shielding?

Ridiculous! You would basically need the mass of a planet for that to work.

Aiming such a thing would be more than an art.....

That would work if the earth wasn't flat. As it is, you need to transport the artillery below their position and shoot them from there. Like Ender shooting through the ice clouds.

This is why certain Army weapons are not appropriate for the Marines

...the color of a blaster bolt (character-scale or starship scale) is determined by the quality of the gas used in it - higher quality gives you green, lower quality gives you red. The Rebellion didn't have access to the highest quality gas, and had to make do with the lower quality ammunition.

Huh, I guess I wondered but never looked it up until now.

I may risk being too credible here, but a $80 drone is a lot more expendable than a $40m laser tank. The drone can be considered a consumable. Hell, mark the drones down as ammo.

Depending on how long you do it, how powerful the laser, and how quickly it can cool off at the same time.

And like the other guy said, you can make really good mirrors if you only care about one wavelength.

But the drone stays in the air by making wind, which would cool down the mirror?

not if you have total internal reflection

I rarely give my time to videos that long, but it was awesome for the full half hour. That guy's having fun. Thanks for sharing.

Nah. This doesn't count because that guy is clearly from the future when you can buy a 1K laser at the corner store. In 2024, they are a little bit harder to come by.

I actually studied laser physics in university and still learn a ton of practical shit from styropyro videos

This is the most fascinating thing I've seen on youtube in a long time.

Queen of battle! Yasss

Inverse square law is just a geometric limitation, focus your lasers more, problem solved.

Interesting! Yeah, I think in the right atmospheric conditions this could absolutely work.

Why it's NCD, as drawn, is that shells already exist and do exactly this when fired on an indirect arc.

There's a building in central London that melted a car. Solar laser, so SEO friendly, so on fleek.