Israel Has Anti-Missile Lasers, but They're Useless Against Drones? Really?

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Going by "The Tech Wizardry Need to Stop Drones," you'd think we're stumped. 

Cait in all her g

Dan Michaels: This is very urgent because unlike some security concerns that are in the future or potential, this is happening now. Drones, as you say, are showing up over cities, military bases, airports across Western Europe, not just along the front line. We saw Russian drones going into Polish airspace and crashing. There have been drones in Munich over a military base in Copenhagen, over the airport. So it is a clear and present danger.

Caitlin McCabe: Got it. So clearly a very pressing need for this, but how easy is it to actually intercept these drones?

Dan Michaels: That's the issue here. It's not at all easy. Listeners may be familiar with the Patriot anti-missile system, which is, by all accounts, a very impressive system, but that's designed to hit missiles that are following a steady, linear path. One difference with drones, aside from them being much smaller, is that they can zig and zag and stop and start again more like a tiny helicopter than a rocket. And even the best computer, which might be able to track a missile in flight, isn't going to know what a drone is going to do three seconds later. So there are a lot of very complicated technical challenges involved in just locating the drones to try to knock them out of the sky.

Caitlin McCabe: And so Dan, can you walk us through some of the tech that's been developed so far?

Dan Michaels: Like with so many other situations, defense planners and engineers are trying to develop layers of systems to stop drones. The first thing you want to do is spot them far away and hit them as far away as possible.

How does this work? A laser weapon can handle a missile doing 1000 mph, but we can't figure how to use them against drones that fly MUCH slower? Go figure.