Tip: "burning out" (a colloquial term for overheating) has by its very definition a lot to do with cooling. ;) And high power LASERs, by their very nature, produce rather a lot of heat.
Incorrect. The countdown in the Ka-50s ATGM HUD is the weapon ToF + a 6 second LASER cool down time.
The quoted LASER cycle times are only possible if you correctly follow the limitations including the 6 second cool down between firings. If you ignore the cool down the LASER will fail sooner than the specified life. Although you can comfortable launch a full load of ATMGs with no regard for the LASER cooling cycle.
You also cannot get 10-15 minutes of continuos LASER use as you said previously. The LASER does have however a combined firing duration of of just over 13 minutes, if and only if you you follow the specified usage limits. The LASER in the Ka-50 isn't even capable of continuous firing, the duration of the firing cycles for ranging and weapon guidance are all limited to pre-programmed values.
This is discussed extensively in the Ka-50 forum.
I just wanted to quote this so that no one missed it, because it was much more well said than what I wrote and I kinda page sniped by accident.
That's exactly like saying I know that airplanes can fly in this game, I just haven't seen any indication that it has anything to do with "wings".
Things don't spontaneously combust into fine smoke once they pass the set failure date provided in the manual. My harddrive will not explode as it passes its MBF time.
If you buy a flight simulator and the manual goes out and explicitly tells you that, hey this thing might overheat. You can be rather sure that that is the problem when you go about trying to make it do so.
That is irregardless if said overheating makes sense or not.