The Royal Navy has confirmed plans to trial direct-energy weapons for use on ships and helos for anti-drone and anti-missile applications. There are obvious parellels with requirements for countermeasure systems on Endeavour.
There's been debate here about whether a close-in defence "phalanx" system should be based on kinetic-energy or direct-energy (or both).
Thoughts?
Using directed-energy for close-in defence would make sense given we wouldn't have to store a whole bunch of ammo. But would the power required to run that many lasers at the necessary intensity be too much of a power drain? A phalanx system would require a lot of them.