What if enemies just start adding mirrors to their planes, drones, etc?
I could be wrong, but I don’t suspect that a laser powerful enough to physically destroy stuff at a distance is going to be meaningfully stopped by regular mirrors, because mirrors don’t reflect all the light pointed at them, and as soon as the mirror gets damaged enough to not properly reflect light in the spot the beam hits, it might as well not be there anyway.
A good mirror reflects more than 99% of incident light, effectively increasing the amount of power the laser needs to destroy the target by a factor of 100.
This isn’t the real concern, however. Fog, dust, clouds, and rain are quite common on the damp and dusty sphere we live on, and they would all strongly attenuate the beam power and greatly reduce the effective range.
You’re not wrong, but at that power level anything longer than a short pulse is going to vaporize the stuff in the way.
They probably take that into consideration and pulse the lazer before giving a more consistent shot.
Clearing out the path before shooting the shot.
Maybe they have a ring around the primary shot as well. Vaporizing the stuff that could get in the way of the primary attack.
These people are smart. It’s easier to assume they’ve taken that into consideration
