Reply #3: Real Genius, anyone?

[haele]

It's all in theory. I 'spose if you had a nuclear-powered ship or battery, you might be able to sustain a beam long enough to "shoot" more than once at long range (20+ miles) before it runs out of energy or starts burning itself out, but if you have multiple incoming targets, err, contacts, over a sustained period of time, "theoretically", you'll run into some degradation issues.
I've worked radar and directional systems, and participated in some serious theoretical engineering discussions on how a lazar beam could be useful in combat situations, other than for blinding a pilot. I'm not saying it can't be done, it's just that there's a lot of sustainability issues involved, which is why the various iteration of Star Wars have been such a bust.

And I certainly don't think it could replace the ship's favorite li'l R2D2 gatling gun (i.e., Phalynx); not all incoming can be detected early enough that the shrapnel or a pop-up missile or even torpedo couldn't do some serious damage, (it was a Mirage surface skimmer pop-up that took out the Stark in 1987) nor might one expect just one incoming contact at a time.

Haele