Veering back on topic, one of the major advantages of a laser is that it has an unlimited focal length - the dot is in focus no matter the distance of the target from the emitter. While you can add a lens that will increase the size of the dot, it will only be in focus at a fixed distance. The more that you depart from that fixed distance, the blurrier the dot will be.
The laser light is collimated - essentially, all of the light is traveling in one exact direction with its wavefront aligned in one plane. If you disrupt that collimation with a focusing lens, then that planar wavefront only exists at a fixed point, which you see as a well-defined dot. At any other point, you get a fuzzy dot.
Want a bigger dot? You need a bigger laser. Sorry...
Basically this is true...however I am not sure that you are using the correct terms.
A standard incandescent flashlight (and almost all light), is
incoherent light in that it spreads out in all directions from the source. The marvelous thing about laser (light amplified by stimulated energy radiation), is that it is
coherent light, which means it travels in parallel waves from its source without spreading out or dispersing. That is why unlike a flashlight, or lighthouse, it does not need a lens to focus it. However, without a lens to change the focus the "red dot", can be no larger the size of the ruby rod (the original lasers used ruby rods) from which it emanates. To get a red dot that does not fade out (like incoherent light), or is as big as a tennis ball, the ruby rod would have to be the size of a tennis ball.
Note; Modern high energy lasers that can weld steel are no longer based on ruby rods (some are gas filled hollow glass tubes), and are are invisible.
As mentioned, if one desires a high energy laser weapon of large diameter, one must use a huge amount of energy and a large diameter tube, or resort to a lens to concentrate the beam and then end up with a focal distance. Where as if there were no focusing lens, just a huge powerful beam of coherent light, the beam would be deadly in space, to an indefinite distance. Inside of Earth's atmosphere, the beam would be dissipated somewhat by fog, impurities in the air, steam from boiling blood and tissues of the human targets, etc. Nice huh?