I'm thinking the same thing. You don't even need to fully destroy the drone, if you manage to damage the camera sensors or the exposed lithium cell it's game over for the drone.
(1) if prop based, launch something to snare the props (2) if reflective, pre-launch something to spray black non-reflective paint at it, and followup with laser (3) if evasive, approach with random manouvers (4) if unknown, launch everything and see what works, and feed it back to the training data ... etc, etc.
So the cartoons lied to me?
Or miss by a long shot and hit a civilian instead.
I’ve read about a bunch of these systems even if they aren’t in widespread deployment some are still being tested in real world conditions.
What about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Hunter_(laser_weapon)
“The Silent Hunter has been used by Saudi Arabia to guard against Houthi drones and missiles.”
“During the World Defense Show in Riyadh the February 05, 2024, Poly Technologies announced the first hard-kill engagement of a one-way attack drone.[6]”
The targets, whether it's plumbing pipe rockets or lipo drones, come in at 100-1000 yards/sec, so you don't really have that many seconds per target.
They work in the demo in which you just shoot down the sole target as it fly perpendicular to the machine for both physical and career safety, but when it comes to deploying the thing around your bed, guns make a lot more sense.
Also, your objection doesn’t really fit how drones have been used. Massive highly coordinated drone swarms are extremely unusual, the threat is mostly individual drones or small clusters.
Many very dangerous drones are well under 100y/s aka 200mph.
1000 yards/second aka Mach 2.7 is well beyond the ‘drones’ people are concerned with and into expensive missile territory. Which is where anti missile systems get used.
full blown deployment by end of this year
Note that his laser burns through various reflective materials, including mirrors, copper, aluminium, and steel.