The fighter interceptors were to be above the clouds in thin air.
No rain. Fighters and all military are rated to take off in adverse
weather. You can see the extreme with the hurricane hunters. Flying
through a wall.

The first go that we gave away was anti-missile missile - pre "Star
Wars" tag and before Regan .

The missile would fly in the region and explode itself - throwing
its payload and itself at the incoming up in the apogee area where
the arc is narrow. Have the incoming wipe themselves up.
Then there were the lower defense missiles that were directed to each
war head that had the characteristics of a real bomb not just shape and
weight. All sorts of advanced radar work and physics out your ears on
that. So the short fast (real fast) missiles would destruct them
raining their trash in a small region of entry, but no 50 MT bomb boom.

It was neat to see the pictures of our Sea Air Rescue (flying boat)
bombing with 5 pound flour sacs on the decks of Soviet subs filming
operations. They could not say anything since they were in violation
of treaty... Think sticky flour all over you with limited shower
facilities.

Martin

On 9/28/2015 4:59 PM, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Mon, 28 Sep 2015 14:37:47 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Sunday, September 27, 2015 at 3:37:38 PM UTC-4, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Sun, 27 Sep 2015 15:15:06 -0400, Joe Gwinn
wrote:

In article , Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Sun, 27 Sep 2015 11:06:54 -0400, Joe Gwinn
wrote:

In article , Martin Eastburn
wrote:

Well you are looking at baby lasers.

In the 70's - late - I saw a 8 'barrel' cut 1/2" steel plate like butter.

Lasers are for Engineering and Research are different than the
table top lasers used to study lenses.

All it has to do on an ICBM or MIRV is to create a bump or snag.
A high energy pulsed machine gun type would cause massive friction
burns that melt down by friction any ICBM or MRV.

This isn't new technology. The magic in this stuff is shoot
an ICBM with a shotgun and it kills itself.

Unless one is well-placed over enemy territory, the launch rocket is
out of reach. At the target end, it's raining reentry vehicles, each
of which is equipped with a very good ablation shield to survive
reentry. It takes a very large laser to drill that shield.

Joe Gwinn

The lasers Martin is talking about were the chemical lasers that were
pumped with a chemical reaction, and that could put out a continuous 1
MW beam. They've been abandoned as weapons for several reasons. They
just aren't practical.

The laser types being developed now are solid-state, mostly
diode-pumped fiber lasers developed from industrial cutting and
welding lasers.

There are other types of lasers under development that hold promise
for weapons. Right now, in industry, we're all waiting for high-power
direct-diode lasers. There are some prototypes working now. They could
make extremely compact weapons.

Yes, but megawatts are really not enough - everything is too critical
to carry off under battlefield conditions. Needs to be tens of
megawatts, and a hundred would make this a duck shoot against all but
reentry vehicles (which will spin and have mirror finishes by then).

These issues and stories come up in Aviation Week from time to time.

Joe Gwinn

Well, how much you need is a matter of what you're trying to do. Right
now, fiber laser bundles putting out on the order of 30 kW are able to
shoot down drones and disable speedboats. They apparently can shoot
down small rockets, like the ones Hamas and Hezbollah shoot at Israel.
The Israelis want a bunch of them, fast.

At 100 kW, you have a pretty useful battlefield weapon. They'll have
that soon. At 1 MW, you're able to burn through some armor.

For the shorter ranges they're working with now, it's more a matter of
focus (BPP, if you're into lasers) and tracking. The beam(s) is
focused with lenses; it doesn't depend on the parallel beams
themselves. The tracking must be absolutely amazing to place a steady
laser spot on a flying drone for a few seconds and shoot it down, but
that's what the shipboard systems can already do.

Star Wars is still a ways off.

Again, that's because since the Spanish American war and the time of Nicola Tesla the US military has financially focused in on metal and chemical fashioning side of the military (that benefitted fossil fuel concerns) and relatively nothing went toward military electrophysics or electromagnetic research and production.

You seem to have a belief that the military could create magic if they
just knew what technologies would be available 50 years in advance.

As for long-range Star Wars lasers to knock out ICBMs, what do you do
if it rains?