Honestly laser defenses against rockets are not the craziest idea in the world, you definitely reduce the amount of debris. However, they just started deploying that system like this week I believe, so it is basically untested in real world scenarios. I doubt it was ready to be used yet.
It could be a surprise success but I doubt it. Might work a bit better against slower moving targets that are easier to track, like drones. I also would wonder how often it can be fired. It's pulling a lot of power per firing, I doubt it can be rapid-fired in the volume they'd need to intercept the volume of Hamas rockets being fired.
Even if it worked perfectly, it would still cost several times the cost of a hamas rocket per firing.
The main issues tend to be that lasers need clear weather conditions, which likely isn't a problem there, the power consumption, and heat dissipation. The other two problems are kinda hard to solve. If you're intercepting one or two missiles, it works fine, but if you have thousands coming in then the system either overheats or it needs more electricity than you can produce.
Even extremely hot lasers, you have to keep trained on a single spot to have them burn through anything. The idea that you could reliably do this on a spinning, flying rocket in realtime seems pretty incredible.
Laser beams are also generally easily defeated by fog or smoke or clouds, which is already abundant in any warzone but which could surely be easily added as a countermeasure.
If these things work at all, there are likely many caveats.
To add to this, the alternative to trying to slow burn through a rocket like you mentioned is to use pulse lasers, but not only do they still suffer from blooming, they're also a massive power drain by comparison and unlikely to be viable for long because of that
Wonder how effective that is, actually.
You remember back in WWII when Nazi Germany was making goofy ahh weapons
Frantic, delusional, desperate. As good a sign as one's knees buckling.
Honestly laser defenses against rockets are not the craziest idea in the world, you definitely reduce the amount of debris. However, they just started deploying that system like this week I believe, so it is basically untested in real world scenarios. I doubt it was ready to be used yet.
It could be a surprise success but I doubt it. Might work a bit better against slower moving targets that are easier to track, like drones. I also would wonder how often it can be fired. It's pulling a lot of power per firing, I doubt it can be rapid-fired in the volume they'd need to intercept the volume of Hamas rockets being fired.
Even if it worked perfectly, it would still cost several times the cost of a hamas rocket per firing.
The main issues tend to be that lasers need clear weather conditions, which likely isn't a problem there, the power consumption, and heat dissipation. The other two problems are kinda hard to solve. If you're intercepting one or two missiles, it works fine, but if you have thousands coming in then the system either overheats or it needs more electricity than you can produce.
Even extremely hot lasers, you have to keep trained on a single spot to have them burn through anything. The idea that you could reliably do this on a spinning, flying rocket in realtime seems pretty incredible.
Laser beams are also generally easily defeated by fog or smoke or clouds, which is already abundant in any warzone but which could surely be easily added as a countermeasure.
If these things work at all, there are likely many caveats.
To add to this, the alternative to trying to slow burn through a rocket like you mentioned is to use pulse lasers, but not only do they still suffer from blooming, they're also a massive power drain by comparison and unlikely to be viable for long because of that