“You will hear it said that lasers have ‘a pathetically low range’ and are ‘suitable only for point defense and the inner engagement envelope’. To put this statement into its proper context, one must understand the proper scale of starship engagements; i.e., that the pathetically low range in question is approximately a light-second, or to put it another way, that the enemy vessel must close to within a distance roughly equal to twenty-five diameters of your home planet before you can engage them with this notoriously short-ranged weapon.”
– The Dirtsider’s Guide to Interplanetary Warfare
This makes me wonder what a long-range weapon (I.e. one designed specifically for engagement at the other extreme end of the envelope; the notional “sniper rifle”) would be.
An AKV with a thruster pack, dispatched to the general location of the target by coilgun.
Which does start really blurring the line between pulling the trigger on a sniper rifle, and handing a briefing, kill order, and plane ticket to an assassin.
If your laser is short-range you’re just not using a big enough laser. I’m sure someone has a re-jiggered starwisp tender for use as a inner-system PDC.
KInda hard to steer at angular speeds useful for aiming, those.
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