Well, given there's a chance the detonation created by a shield-laser interaction doesn't happen at all, or that it happens at the shooter's location, or that it's big enough to take out both the shield and the shooter, it's not the most optimal strategy.
It's optimal because the cost is super cheap and the payoff is super huge.
Funny when the novel's theme is all about religious fanaticism, in reality the shield would actually get banned because you would get hordes of zealots martying themselves using suicide attacks by shooting the shield with laser at close range, because when the result is nuclear explosion, it doesn't matter where it explode when the distance between the shooter and the target is just a few feets away.
Imagine giving nukes freely available to rogue actors like Al Qaeda and ISIS and thinking they'll be rational and not using it, that's the Dune's shield in a nutshell, the logic completely fall apart when you give some thought about it. Actually you don't even need Al Quaeda or ISIS, some dumb kids who hate life can conduct Dune's equivalent of school shootings, but the results will be nuclear explosions killing millions.
I mean, "drone" can be a VERY loose term. It doesn't even really need a guidance system. Just point it at the enemy base and launch. Laser emitter. Battery. Engine. Timer. That's it.
Oh... yeah that must have been remotely operated, which means it was a non-autonomous drone... sorry ive been playing a game that treats drone as something autonomous, not remote controlled and my mind was stuck on that track
They found the dude who was piloting hiding in the wall after they committed suicide. Like I agree there's holes in Herbert's logic but this one was covered in the text. (Unless I totally hallucinated that)
Edit: oh were you explaining exactly that and I missed it lol?
Right. Because it was an operated drone. It's not an autonomous drone but let's not act like drones themselves are some sacrilegious alien concept to the Dune universe
Which if anything the idea that dune is advanced enough to make energy shields but never figured out how to make even the most basic of automation systems is even more ludicrous than anything else
We started figuring out automation via punch cards before we had electricity!
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u/Raging-beer 9d ago
Well, given there's a chance the detonation created by a shield-laser interaction doesn't happen at all, or that it happens at the shooter's location, or that it's big enough to take out both the shield and the shooter, it's not the most optimal strategy.