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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tarchon" data-source="post: 1729110" data-attributes="member: 5990">You're right on about the laser - firing rate is going to be a significant challenge, not only from the heat issues.  It's a notorious problem with chemical lasers, and that's been one of the key barriers to directed energy weapons.  Another thing is that I'd hate to be a guy standing around when the deuterium fluoride tank gets hit by shrapnal.  DF gas exposure can be an extremely unpleasant way to die.  One will also note from reading DoD solicitations that detection of hazardous gas leaks is an area of substantial interest right now. The computer power isn't such a big issue with single rounds, though I totally agree that a full artillery barrage would be rather challenging.  I think they envision this initially as being more of a defense against artillery pot-shots on bases and compounds, like what they get from insurgents in Iraq.  In the more advanced stages, I think they're looking for a system to defend mobile armor, in which cases they're unlikely to need to fire very often.  There's actually some interesting work in figuring out how to prematurely detonate armor piercing rounds without requiring the immense pulse energies in something like MTHEL.  You don't really have to destroy one of those to make it ineffective - you just have to make it blow a couple milliseconds early to mess up the plasma shaping.</blockquote>