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Thread: Laser weapons use

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
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    Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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    Default Laser weapons use

    I think with the recent improvements in laser diode efficiency there's a real possibility that some war monger is going to develop a field weapon that is quite capable of blinding ground personnel at sniper range. For example Jenoptic now can provide fiber coupled laser diodes at 100 watts . If you pulse these lasers you can push them to 200 watts. If you make a DPSS laser with a high speed Q-Switch your talking serious pulsed power levels at kilometer ranges. All of this could be made portable using a 40 lbs pack today in my opinion.
    I'm sure the US military, China, Korea, Russia, India, Pakistan, Isreal are all playing with those dangerous toys

    What are your opinions.

    Rick
    Profile Redacted by Admin @ 04.24.2010

  2. #2
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    Mar 2006
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    Default

    I think that goggles might be issued cheaply. Also, that a few retroreflectors might be enough to return enough energy to damage a cavity, or incapacitate the operator if they were not also wearing goggles. As goggles with a high OD are required for the operator if a retroreflector returns the pulse, this is unlikely if they are going to be able to see well enough to aim. They could just close their eyes when firing, but that won't protect all the other soldiers watching the enemy target at the same moment. Wavelengths also matter. Long waves diverge more for a given beam width, so the only effective way to send an invisible beam with low divergence is to use UV, and that's easily blocked by air pollution. Lasers will mostly be an inconvenience, an annoyance, (possibly to both sides) and weapons will still be based on projectiles. Lasers might mostly be used like flashbangs, as a serious distraction, and with more unpredictable risks to those who use them so they might not be used much.

    Small YAG range finder lasers can make pulses with peak powers in kilowatts and more, these are already well established, the risks known, but not very severe at long range. Even so, they are apparently being replaced with lasers using longer wavelengths that can't penetrate the cornea. So-called 'eye-safe' lasers.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
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    Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by The_Doctor
    I think that goggles might be issued cheaply. Also, that a few retroreflectors might be enough to return enough energy to damage a cavity, or incapacitate the operator if they were not also wearing goggles. As goggles with a high OD are required for the operator if a retroreflector returns the pulse, this is unlikely if they are going to be able to see well enough to aim. They could just close their eyes when firing, but that won't protect all the other soldiers watching the enemy target at the same moment. Wavelengths also matter. Long waves diverge more for a given beam width, so the only effective way to send an invisible beam with low divergence is to use UV, and that's easily blocked by air pollution. Lasers will mostly be an inconvenience, an annoyance, (possibly to both sides) and weapons will still be based on projectiles. Lasers might mostly be used like flashbangs, as a serious distraction, and with more unpredictable risks to those who use them so they might not be used much.

    Small YAG range finder lasers can make pulses with peak powers in kilowatts and more, these are already well established, the risks known, but not very severe at long range. Even so, they are apparently being replaced with lasers using longer wavelengths that can't penetrate the cornea. So-called 'eye-safe' lasers.
    * Those small YAG rang finders you refer to that end up on Ebay are surplus units that used flash lamps and mechanical low speed q-switches and produce 1064 nM kilowatt peak pulsed power. Now Imagine a 200 watt pulsed diode using a q-switch that runs at 100 KHZ or 1 MHZ or faster so you get pulse lengths from say 10 microseonds to say 100 nanoseconds. Do the math and you get extremelly high peak pulses quite capable of blinding ground personel within sniper range even with atmospheric attenuation in mind. Any initial use will be with unprotected soldiers who are camouflaged and certainly don't want reflective devices to possibly give away their location. A sniper laser rifle could easilly be designed to protect the operator. For that matter there's no reason why such a device could not be operated using a heads up display and or remote telemetry via automated robot control. Don't kid yourself, these weapons are very likely being secretly field tested by the military.
    Why do you think the FDA and US Homeland security have grown so paranoid and have gone to extremes to control laser exports now.
    Rick 8)
    Profile Redacted by Admin @ 04.24.2010

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
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    Florida
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    Default

    It's not really a secret anymore. Check this out..

    http://photonlexicon.com/forums/view...ght=mthel#9217

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