Big stakes for lab to build battle laser

Oakland Tribune ^ | October 27, 2003 | Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

[Paul Ross]

Ping. SDI finally is pushing to field weapons.

[Alamo-Girl]

Yeehaw! Thanks for the heads up!

[PuNcH]

I bet it would be good for anti aircraft and anti missile.

[inPhase]

BQ for the jhpssl, no way and they know

[inPhase]

no thermal blooming for air platform if you could get any on ax intens at range

wrt TB, dwell time is way too short

even head on

[PoorMuttly]

Muttly WANT mobile Battle Laser !

Oh...right.

Muttly want BIGGER mobile Battle Laser !!!!

[inPhase]

coil is trying to

phase

hel modules together, never been done

the multiwavelengths for the scoring, and beacon are different supposedly to tell them apart

who cares will never work

what they are grabbing big dollars for is on the ground -- which works SEE
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/laser-03e.html



also here

http://optics.org/articles/ole/7/5/5/comment/view/53

[inPhase]

MIRACL is DF and not airborne, but on the ground

airborne laser would use much longer wavel, COIL

techies,
why can't they get COIL to higher powers, just a fact and the why of a need to phase together

[inPhase]

It depends on the range .


But you are right,
the path from the lab to field of jitter is a long road for some lasers and some engagement geometries.

Not necessarily easy to spoof, many many scenarios involved.
But governmment weinies (NOT MIL incl) have no training and just want big laser viagra programs, often no chance to work.
Need rockets too.

Lasers will be developed by other countries.

The euros are beating us in space, transferring bigger images and faster

[webstersII]

"I bet it would be good for anti aircraft and anti missile."

Maybe, but you have to keep it trained on the incoming threat for long enough, a difficult task if the threat is coming in at +Mach numbers.

The targeting systems are the main weakness in the SDI scenarios for ICBMs, although considerable progress has been made since Reagan first coined the term "Star Wars".

[Laserman]

Actually the COIL is SHORTER wavelength. The problem with making COIL larger is a plumbing problem- very nasty chemicals and complex mixing processes, especially to fit into an aircraft.

[inPhase]

yep is 1.3

wrt plumbing

df is doing ok at HP

but there are no HE coils

strange
maybe they thought would be more compact?

but abl 14 mod would be heavier bigger than thel

[Laserman]

Actually, for SDI type systems the ATP (acquisition, tracking and pointing) and Fire Control are on the same order of difficulty as the laser device itself, unless you consider full blown scenarios with 100's or 1000's of simultaneous launches and deployment of 10,000 midcourse objects. Then ATP-FC is THE challenge. The laser device problem is how to either put many (10-30 or more) huge lasers into space and keep them running, or how to relay a ground generated beam to the target via big space mirrors. Both are tough problems.

[Yeti]

I hope they have a coherent plan.

I think I'm the only person who got that one, so I guess it falls on my shoulders to break it to you that it wasn't very funny. But, don't feel bad: they can't all be masterpieces.

[Laserman]

The attraction of COIL is both the wavelength (thus smaller optics), and the beam quality (allows easier/cleaner propagation). Powers similar to HF/DF have not been achieved yet. But then some of the biggest lasers ever were CO2, but because of their even longer wavelength and large size, they too did not cut it. Looks like solid state lasers, fiber lasers and maybe some new electric gas lasers may be where it is at for the future.

[inPhase]

no
many people know, there are many physicists here

just obvious that "they" do not have coherence when they phase their systems being discussed
ie BQ

[Laserman]

Fortunately, we have our birghtest working on the problem!

[inPhase]

but COIL is not new

fiber lasers need phasing together

although German trumpf (5KW reasonable BQ SSL) and southhampton uk are ahead (fibers 600 mW polarized and 1+kW non pol both single single mode)

[Laserman]

Thermal blooming develops in a fraction of a second. Fortunately, for moving targets and slewing shots the clearing time is sufficient to mitigate much of the effect/loss. When a target is coming right down your beam, especially for a ground system, the TB problem can be significant, and AO can ony correct a portion of it. Pulsed lasers can do better, but the best is having two systems for mutual defense.

[Laserman]

Phasing fiber lasers is coming. Sounth Hampton's work looks very promising.