Its generally always the same problem with any kind of laser, maser, whatever variant of a beam of intense energy of some frequency:
They require stupendous amounts of energy, and if your platform is mobile, that means batteries.
Batteries that are big, heavy, and tend to immolate like a burning cybertruck at fucking 1800 F or what not if structurally comprimised.
We still have yet to get reliable, hardy, high energy dense batteries to a point where it doesn’t either massively weigh down your platform, or require some absurdly expensive production process for a more advanced battery, because we only know how to make ‘can test its properties in a lab’ volumes, not ‘actually industrial scale mass manufacturing’ levels.
They make kinda sense on say, a naval mounted rail gun… they do not downscale to truck, tank, infantry scale.
Like you could maybe make a giant rail gun tank with current tech. Maybe.
Problem is it would be ~70% battery by mass, weigh ~250 tons, be able to fire maybe… 5, 10 times? and if basically anything pens the armor, you now have an inferno that will burn for 12 to 24 hours, likely into a slag that actually burns or digs a hole a foot or two into the ground, roughly shaped like its foot print.
Its generally always the same problem with any kind of laser, maser, whatever variant of a beam of intense energy of some frequency:
They require stupendous amounts of energy, and if your platform is mobile, that means batteries.
Batteries that are big, heavy, and tend to immolate like a burning cybertruck at fucking 1800 F or what not if structurally comprimised.
We still have yet to get reliable, hardy, high energy dense batteries to a point where it doesn’t either massively weigh down your platform, or require some absurdly expensive production process for a more advanced battery, because we only know how to make ‘can test its properties in a lab’ volumes, not ‘actually industrial scale mass manufacturing’ levels.
They make kinda sense on say, a naval mounted rail gun… they do not downscale to truck, tank, infantry scale.
Like you could maybe make a giant rail gun tank with current tech. Maybe.
Problem is it would be ~70% battery by mass, weigh ~250 tons, be able to fire maybe… 5, 10 times? and if basically anything pens the armor, you now have an inferno that will burn for 12 to 24 hours, likely into a slag that actually burns or digs a hole a foot or two into the ground, roughly shaped like its foot print.