Footage from a laser weapon test. It melted through quite a few steel plates from a distance of 1,000 meters. The system is very compact and weighs less than 100kg.
This system probably has extremely good focusing and low dispersion.
Damn.
By Rayleigh criterion that should require an aperture above a meter. Are you sure?
Yeah, those burn-throughs do not look done by a 4mm spot. Do you have the units right? 4cm looks a lot more reasonable and the aperture would be a little under 11cm.
Brochures say so. Whole system weighs 300 kilogram.
Maybe 3km is not where the focal point is? Thinking a bit more about this, the lasing efficiency could be coming from other factors such as higher frequency output, more efficient photon output at high pulse power, or lower photon loss through the optics? Essentially the input power performance could just be coming more energy delivery for a narrow beam. The brochure might be citing the beam width at 3 km because that's the tested limit for effective performance, rather than because it's the focal point of the laser?