system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Could the US militarys powerful laser weapon be defeated using mirrors?
gpt
Not really. If a laser weapon is used to shoot down something like missiles, then you'd think you could cover the missile in a mirror-like surface and have it protected. But there are at least two immediate problems. One is that mirrors are made to reflect a fairly specific range of frequencies (for regular mirrors that's the visible light spectrum of course), while directed energy weapons could use different frequencies. Make it a microwave emission and a "mirror" that reflects lasers.

And the other problem is that mirrors still absorb light. An effective mirror-like surface vs. lasers would still need to be able to absorb the energy, which it would in practice not be able to, even using a first-surface mirror to make it more effective.

It's also fun to note that something as mundane as dust would significantly hamper your efforts. Dust particles on your mirror would absorb the energy, which heats it up, which damages the actual reflective surface, which only makes it less effective and so on, until you have a superheated useless mirror.