Hey, but the satellites could at least theoretically destroy antisatellite missiles trying to shoot them down. Except the same problem applies and you can fire a lot of antisatellite missiles for the cost of one laser satellite.
Actually, to ballpark the number, you could probably launch maybe two antisatellite missiles per laserstar. Orbital launch is the hard part.
This is not how going to orbit works. LEO is moving 7.8 km/s sideways plus about 1.8 km/s atmospheric drag and fiddling about. That is to launch a few tons of nuclear reactor radiators and lasing medium and sensors and CnC nonsense. An anti-satellite missile does not need to go at 7.8 km/s. It just needs to go up to the top of the atmosphere, more or less, and then coast vertically until the target screams along at 7.8 km/s and smacks into it from the side. Maybe a one pound bomb puts a cherry on that cake. That is why the American anti-satellite missile is just 18 feet long and launched from an F-15.
Or use the 1963 American system; a ground-launched Nike Zeus and the basis of the 60's era ABM system.
"How do you hit it if it dodges."
They don't dodge, they functionally cannot dodge. It would require either a rocket engine in the final stage that costs substantial reductions in warhead or increases in booster or some form of aerodynamic control. The missile interception takes place out of the atmosphere, so there is no use of aerodynamics. The only remaining method is a rocket burn which will both throw the warhead off target and be immediately detected by the ground tracking. The warhead dodges in one direction, the antimissile corrects the same as any missile corrects for an aircraft making an evasive maneuver, and the result is just a warhead off target unless it un-dodges or has routed itself to a new target. There is limited maneuverability beyond apogee.
"But you're hitting a dinner plate with an arrow in space"
No, you are hitting a dinner plate with a thermonuclear bomb, in space. And if you design that bomb correctly, you can readily turn your blast radius into a blast
cone, throwing the cube law out the window for the destructive effects of x-rays and pushing you comfortably toward the square law.
An anti-missile with a nuclear warhead is a directed energy weapon of a power impossible to attain with a laser and immune from anti-satellite weapons and for far, far less launch weight and cost. You simply throw your x-ray emitter out of the atmosphere and in range of the target, then
bang.I am actually suspicious the current crop of American ABM/ASAT systems are kinetic-kill in as much as the
Bismark was a Versailles-treaty compliant armored cruiser; the Germans had the illegal-to-mount battleship rated guns in a warehouse next to her moorings with the cranes all lined up to install them. Likewise we have to deal with SALT.
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