system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[General "Hard-ish" SciFi] Wouldn't missiles be relatively useless in a space battle, considering the potency of future detection systems associated with laser point defense systems?

Considering Issac Arthur's "First Rule of Warfare" (there is no stealth in Space) and considering that missiles can never beat lasers for speed, I don't see how missiles could be used in space warfare, if we are talking about a relatively hard scifi story.

Is there something I'm not considering?
gpt
Depends on a lot of factors, including the relative sophistication of the missile and related technologies. In the most general sense a missile in the sense of a *kinetic projectile* has a lot of utility behind it: Force equals mass times acceleration, so even a little mass moving really fast (*a la* a rail gun or thor shot) can pack a lot of force, and lasers or other energy weapons might not be able to boil enough of that mass off fast enough to prevent impact.

If you're talking about missiles in the sense of self-propelled munitions, it's a little more difficult. Again, the whole point is for your missile to get close enough to the target to do some damage, and point defense systems can put a crimp in that...but for every countermeasure, there are counter-counter measures. Exotic materials or construction that make it hard to target, ablative armor that can absorb enough "hits" from point defense but still get through, or swarming the target with more missiles than the point defense can handle...all solid possibilities.