On Thu, 31 Oct 2002, Steve Schear wrote: > >Information about the damage such lasers could inflict is classified. But in > >general, experts say, a 25-kilowatt laser could blind an enemy sensor several > >hundred miles away. It also could put a hole through a sheet of metal from a > >distance of several miles.
A few assumptions and you can estimate the damage. Is that laser power level or source power level? Peak powers in the terrawatt range are normal, but energy level is usually only a few joules. If it's CW, then 25kJ/sec on a 1cm^2 area could do some useful damage to most anything. > >Correspondingly, a 100-kilowatt solid-state laser -- the Holy Grail for > >weapons developers -- could deliver a destructive beam to a target dozens of > >miles away, making it an effective tactical weapon. With the engines of a B2 bomber maybe... > >Lasers do have one big drawback. The beam is not very effective in inclement > >weather and requires greater levels of energy to pierce thick clouds. Use a better wavelength dummy... > Because of the relative motion and closing rates of actively engaged combat > systems and the ease with which the missile surfaces can be hardened > against directed energy, I suspect fielding an effective system will be as > difficult and expensive as the antimissile systems now under development. Light speed is faster than any mechanical motion we can do for the forseeable future. 10^4 Joules is needed to do damage, so if that can be delivered in a millisecond the receiving end is gonna have problems. An interesting defense would be an easy to ablate surface that ionizes at low energy so the laser can't penetrate very deep. After 30 seconds, the receiving end is still gonna have problems. So if the missle can close the range to the laser in less time than that, the laser has problems. For every weapon there is a counter :-) Just like crypto... Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike
