Blasting the Air in Front of Hypersonic Vehicles with Lasers Reduces Drag (2020)

From 2020.

Love the optimism that AGM-183A Would be in production in 2022.

Narrator: they would not.

I researched plasma drag reduction for normal vehicles at one point and the primary issue is that it just costs too much power (disregarding that it slightly ionizes the paint job). I did not, however, consider using short-burst lasers beams on their (fricking) headlamps. Added to the ‘not street legal, pending cheap+sufficient supercapacitor storage’ wishlist :)