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Many laser mirrors are front coated mirrors that do not cause distortion of the beam by the glass or quartz material that the coating is applied to.

Very interesting, but a little flat for a "Laser of Death" thread.

NOW we're cooking.

I knew we could count on you. I figured they would be some other sort of mirror, because glass causes so many problems, but do these mirrors work on any kind of laser and does the reflected light 'suffer' any loss from being bounced off of mirrors?

Would a laser simply burn off dust on the mirror's surface? And would a powerful laser be more likely to react to blemishes and imperfections in a mirror- if, for example, the mirror was scratched or pocked? Would it then reflect off of the 'good' parts of the mirror but burn into the flaws, possibly warping or destroying the mirror?

I would figure that in order to use a mirror as a 'defense' the mirror would have to completely cover the area you need to protect, otherwise you may be dead before the laser hits the place where you put your mirror... you don't know exactly where the thing is going to be aimed. To use the mirror to actually turn a laser against its operator, you'd have to to hit the plane carrying the laser, not neccessary the exact point where the laser is emitting, nor neccessarily at the same 'power', but at least with enough intesity to blind the aircraft and its crew. But you would also have to have the mirror (or mirrors) aimed at the plane before it fires, because there won't be time when it fires. And you'd have to have your own weaponry in case the plane turns out to be conventional and drawn to your highly polished reflective shell.

It might be easier just to build your own laser and hope you get to fire first.

Hi RA! Long time no see (sort of). Interesting thread. If the beam of light is at 1.315 micrometers, that is 1,315 nanometers in my book. That means the beam is in the infra-red region of the EM spectrum and thus not visible to the human eye (bummer).

When I lived in San Diego, some nights at the beach you could see two very strong green laser beams eminating from a scientific park near Miramar NAS, and shooting out over the Pacific ocean. They appeared to be roughly parallel to the Earth's surface, and parallel to each other, but appeared to intersect at the horizon. I always assumed that the intersection was an illusion caused by my perspective. The beams also appeared to curve around the Earth thus maintaining the same altitude. Again, I don't trust the visual info my eyes were reporting. This would have been around 1987 or 88 . Do you know anything about these green beams?