I have a hard time believing that.
Indeed. Maybe that megawatt laser could do that if it were focused on a very small point and there were no atmosphere interfering and any gas forming on the impact point would vanish right away. Oh and the target shouldn't be moving.
Lasers are not really practical in atmosphere, IMO. Too many issues but very little advantage over conventional weapons, or railguns (which are also a bit impractical, until we get better materials, changing barrel every few shots is not ideal).
Atmosphere caused scattering blinds everyone not looking elsewhere or wearing protective goggles, the weapon is a powerhog (at least cooling is not a big issue on a ship, there's a lot of water around, just stick cooling fins at the bottom of the ship), a lot of the energy is wasted in atmosphere and blooming (the laser ionizes air to plasma, though you could use this to guide an electric shock to the target). Oh and the laser weapon itself is going to be rather large, space-telescope like as you need largish mirrors to focus the beam without it destroying the weapon itself and it is going to be rather fragile as well, likely.
At least they ain't going to use a particle beam weapon in atmosphere, that would cause radiation sickness to anyway close to beam and not behind radiation shields...
EDIT correct me if i'm wrong on anything.
And some may find this interesting, even though this is about lasers in space:
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/spacegunconvent.php#id--Laser_Cannon
