[extropy-chat] LASER: DARPA's HELLADS small laser weapon makes headway

Mike Lorrey mlorrey at yahoo.com
Fri Sep 2 14:19:13 UTC 2005



--- Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> 
> At some level of power, you have plasma defocusing the beam in the
> path,
> requiring very large apertures, which make such lasers not portable.
> Over distances, you need active optics tracking the beam despite
> atmospheric microlensing.
> 
> Mirorring the target makes it effectively immune against laser
> (though the sensors remain the weak part of it, of course). 

Ever changed a halogen bulb? High concentration light has difficulty
with impurities. The oil and/or dirt from a fingerprint on such a bulb
will cause it to fail, either immediately, or soon.

So what if you mirror the surface of a mortar round at the factory?
Your grunts are going to get it dirty, are going to handle it with bare
oily hands, so that even if you are able to mirror polish the surface
to a high enough degree for a laser (which will require polishing to
such a degree that the mortar round's price inflates from a few bucks
up to thousands of dollars each, thus making your war much more
expensive), your grunts are going to negate all that with handling.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
Founder, Constitution Park Foundation:
http://constitutionpark.blogspot.com
Personal/political blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com


		
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