Despite Your Skepticism, Lasers Are Being Used By The Military

Installed on a single Humvee does not equal "being used". Lasers are being demoed by the military, just as they have been for years, and just as they will be for as long as the R&D money holds out.

There’s no ammunition concerns, just power, and despite being totally un-serviceable in the field, the lack of moving parts makes the possibility of breaking very slim.

This is so hilarious it makes my sides hurt.

First, there's the phrase "just power". As if you could run a military laser on a pair of AA batteries. As if the N kilowatt portable generator, the gigantic battery pack, the capacitor bank, and/or the long extension cord trailing behind you aren't pretty big handicaps to your movement and your logistics, just as ammunition is.

"Lack of moving parts?" Sounds like someone doesn't understand lasers. For one thing, although lasers are the most efficient converters of electricity to light in the world, their wall plug efficiency is still only of order 50%. That means that for every joule you pump into the enemy, you're generating a joule of waste heat. This works, because the heat is more concentrated at the far end than it is at your end. But you still need a high-performance cooling system. And your cooling system contains... moving parts! Coolant! Pumps! Heat exchangers! All of which can break down, and which tend to weigh a lot.

The other problem is that you only think the laser has no moving parts. But I assure you that deep inside the sealed packages, deep inside the crystals where the action is, atoms are moving. Metals are migrating. Defects are migrating. Meanwhile, on the outside, dust motes are fusing themselves to your lenses. So there's only so many shots you're going to get out of your laser before it dies forever and needs to be replaced. Particularly if you're running it at high power, which keeps it under a high temperature.