| From: | Adam Getchell <acgetche@****.UCDAVIS.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Lasers |
| Date: | Mon, 31 Oct 1994 08:43:04 -0800 |
> Another thing that tends to cut down on the effectiveness of lasers:
> Drop a bunch of smoke grenades. Problem solved.
In a word: no.
The first lasers the U.S. Army tested was, I believe, the 10
kilowatt Alpha, mounted in an M-113. They quickly discovered one hangup
about battlefield lasers.
When the beam strikes the target, the energy tends to immediately
vaporize the surface it strikes. On armored vehicles, this is usually
some sort of metal or armor. This vaporized metallic armor is converted
by the laser into a high reflectance plasma, which then scatters the rest
of the beam. So no armor penetration.
The way this was solved was by using a low power IR laser, which
would then range and determine beam path irregularities and estimate
thermal bloom. The weapons laser would then be focussed to the necessary
target point, getting past the armor plasma and incidentally, reducing
dispersion and diffusion. This was a continous process, so active
focussing had to be developed.
Smoke and such things would be "focussed past" in a battlefield
laser, and only a specifically tailored aerosol with particles on the
order of the laser wavelength would be able to significantly interfere
with a battlefield laser. As to why FASA doesn't know this, well they
didn't work on lasers.
> Kyle Monroe
+-------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|Adam Getchell|acgetche@****.engr.ucdavis.edu | ez000270@*******.ucdavis.edu |
| acgetchell |"Invincibility is in oneself, vulnerability is in the opponent"|
+-------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
