Loverly pix in the link I supplied too: Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL) Program
Since I realized that it looked like I was trying to detail everything that wasn’t wrong, I’m going to be a picky nerd and add these that were right:
Missiles are very effective at ‘just get close’ destruction. Missles aren’t line of sight. They and bullets don’t care much about the weather, whereas lasers do.
And I pointedly said that lasers need to hit the same spot for “more than a fraction of a second.” Which you admit that they usually do.
There’s another rather serious logistical hurdle that remains to be crossed…
namely, attaching these frickin’ lasers to the heads of sharks. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
I would imagine a fairly simple system built into something like night-vision goggles would cover this base though, because a simple limiter would prevent blinding lights. And since many of the higher tech armies out there are looking at having soldiers geared up with HUD goggles anyways, it wouldn’t be much of a hardship to handle lasers as well.
Besides which, a conventional spotlight could blind a lot more people quicker and cheaper than a laser cannon. Or just a big mirror during daylight. Not everything requires a high tech solution.
“Amplify” might have been the wrong word since it seems to imply some kind of analogy with transistor amplifiers and there are night vision scopes that actually employ photomultiplier tubes and such that really do amplify very dim light. These are the “starlight scopes” of the military. But a normal binocular has a huge light gathering area compared to a human eye and does amplify light in the sense of making dim objects brighter. This is why you can see many more stars with even cheap binoculars than with the unaided eye. It is also why a laser pulse that wouldn’t hurt you if saw it unaided could damage your eye if you stared at it through binoculars. When you say the light is “spread out” by binoculars I believe you are referring to what optical physicists call “vergence”. Oh, we had so many bad jokes about that in optics class…
Well, notice I didn’t say I was right about the “spreading out” bit. That was just wrong, as I noodled it out mentally, uh, wrongly.
I’m still trying to picture it: If the wide area’s light is focused down to a very small area so it can all enter your pupil, then… you’re able to see a wide area at once. Which doesn’t get it across to me why that makes things look bigger. I really did understand this once, and I’m known as something of an amateur science nerd, but it’s slipping by me.
Magnification does increase the vergence of the light. It spreads it out more, that was right, but the binocular also has vastly more aperture area than the eye to gather light. The effect is that things still look brighter. In particular things like stars and lasers which have their light collimated (beams are parallel) are always focused to a point if the device is in focus regardless of magnification. So the energy density on the retina will be increased according to the ratio of the binocular’s aperture area with that of the eye.
Well according to my motheaten old copy of “The Armory”, the British Vickers light machinegun could be fitted with a sight allowing fairly accurate indirect fire out to a distance of several kilometers.
But that’s got nothing to do with lasers.
I have a ‘volley sight’ on my Lee-Enfield No.1 Mk.III. The concept was that an entire rifle company would aim at a common target (tree or whatever) through the volley sight, which would have them pointing their rifles up at some 45 degrees or so, lobbing a volley of fire some kilometers away, without the threat of return fire. Until, that is, the Hun came out with their own devestating volley sight. Drat the Hun, and his cunning ways!
Complete failures of course, and never used in combat, as far as I know. Still, bullets are ballistic, whereas lasers yield only to the curvature of space-time. (And mirrors. Real Genius taught me all I need to know about lasers…)
You may find US Army Field Manual FM 8-50 of interest: “Prevention and medical management of laser injuries”.
I said nothing of the sort. Do not make straw man agruments & expect to get away with it.
We are discussing lasers as weapons. There are 4 types being considered–[list=a]
[li]Targeting devices. Commonly available.[/li][li]Blinding devices.Available tomorrow, with off the shelf parts, if we want them.[/li][li]Burst weapons, in which a burst of laser light, lasting less than a second, vaporizes the surface of a target in one violent event. This is effectively an surface-contact explosion, & has properties similar to that of a shaped charge–a large part of the blast force travels inward. The damage is not thermal, as you suggest, but concussive, with minor thermal effect.[/li][li]The last type of lasr weapon uses a laser beam to carry an electric charge to target. This offers the possibility of the science fiction “stun gun”. Also, the chance to destroy electronics.[/li][/list]
Why buy parts? Here’s a nice little 15 mW green laser pointer available for $349 At class IIIB, it poses an acute hazard to the skin and eyes from direct radiation.
You’re saying that lasers have a concussive effect? They’re photons. Photons have no rest mass (I know they’re not at rest). I can’t imagine that they have any effect other than heating things up. What amount of photons could possible deliver a blow equivalent to even a punch?
Also: I don’t appreciate your tone. I have admitted where I was wrong, but you have persisted in having a very attacking and snarky attitude in GQ. You stated that I was wrong in every single point, it has been shown that was not true, and you have not admitted that you went overboard.
That’s what I’m referrring to with your “admitting” that lasers can need more than a fraction of a second. My point, made perhaps vaguely, was that lasers don’t instantly go through things like in Star Wars. So I was taking your “less than a second” to be more than “a fraction of a second.” You’re really worked up over this tiny thing.
I don’t care much for his tone either, but when a laser is of sufficiently high power, it does produce a ‘blast-like’ effect when it hits (and more importantly, heats to very high temperatures, very quickly) a solid object. Of course, such power levels are not to be found in a couple of AA-batteries, so for the forseeable future, our troops will have more to worry about from AK-47s and RPG-7s than from lasers. 
Cardinal --nobody said that photons did impact damage. Go back & re-read the thread.
And look up what a Straw Man Argument is while you’re at it. :rolleyes:
Here is a TechTV article describing some of the previously mentioned THEL and ABL projects.
http://www.techtv.com/news/culture/story/0,24195,3383727,00.html
Also, they have a video of a successful demo of a Missle Killing Laser!
I know exactly what a Straw Man argument is, Mr. Snarky. I already explained the point of difference about the timing. You said less than a second, and when I said fraction of a second, I meant “basically immediately”. Do you get nosebleeds from the pedestal you’ve erected for yourself?
Concussive: A violent jarring; a shock. See Synonyms at collision.
So you did say that they had essentially a physical impact. And it turns out you were right, I am informed. Notice I’m willing to admit when you’re right.
You’ve still not admitted that I wasn’t wrong on every single point.
Why?
A nitpick here – although no one suggests using laser beams to knock things around, photons do carry momentum (even though they have no rest mass). Light pressure isn’t very strong, but laser light pressure is pretty concentrated, and can levitate things in the laboratory.
An even more impressive show of force results when lasers are used to ablate material from a surface, in which case they can pack a wallop. I used to work on Laser Propulsion – Arhtur Kantrowitz’ dream was to send payloads friom the Earth’s surface into orbit using the punch from laser ablation. We used to knock pieces of plastic around the lab. Leik Myrabo of Renssalear is still using laser propulsion to send models of his Apollo Lightship up quite a distance out in the deserts of the west.
So, yeah, laser light can deliver a force. One professor I talked to even calibrated his laser/surface system so he could give you a hit of known impulse.
But laser weapons used local heating and absorption, rather than this imparted impulse, to do the damage. But they’re REALLY BIG lasers you couldn’t carry around.
It’s true that there’s a lot of talk about Laser Dazzling and Laser Blinding. Thjese didn’t seem to be what the OP was about, so I didn’t cover them. Scary stuff, but I’ve met people who would willingly work on them, and rationalize it as a “nonlethal weapon.”