That does not make any sense at all. If you can melt through an artillery shell’s wall, you trigger the explosives inside it. The shells end up exploding miles away from your ship’s hull. Maybe you’ll end up with some inert metal fragments falling down on your ship’s deck, but it’s not going to do any damage except maybe minor injuries to unarmored personnel standing on the deck.
It can’t melt through such a large mass of steel in the short time it has before it hits. The lasers are meant for missiles which have very thin metal walls. Also, the AP rounds aren’t explosive. They’re a solid mass of steel.
Nope. It can only melt them.
That does not make any sense at all. If you can melt through an artillery shell’s wall, you trigger the explosives inside it. The shells end up exploding miles away from your ship’s hull. Maybe you’ll end up with some inert metal fragments falling down on your ship’s deck, but it’s not going to do any damage except maybe minor injuries to unarmored personnel standing on the deck.
It can’t melt through such a large mass of steel in the short time it has before it hits. The lasers are meant for missiles which have very thin metal walls. Also, the AP rounds aren’t explosive. They’re a solid mass of steel.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2015/february/armaments-innovations-navys-supershells
Huh. Learn something new every day.
Not if they are cannon balls. Checkmate lasers.
I mean…I don’t think any naval ship manufactured after 1870 has much to fear from cannon balls.