Re: Airborne lasers

From: Pat Flannery (flanner_at_daktel.com)
Date: 11/14/04 

Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 22:36:50 -0600

Peter Stickney wrote:

>Pat - I've seen some publicly available videos of the Army's
>ground-based laser (Which is smaller than the ABL's leser by a fair
>piece) toasting a 155mm artillery shell in flight. 155 shells aren't
>beercans - 85% of their weight is steel - they have to withstand the
>shock of firing. burning through the shell's nose enough to detonate
>the initialtor in the fuze took about a second and a half. Now, mind
>you, this was at fairly close range - miles, instead od hundreds of
>miles, but it was also at ground level.
>

True, but the kill mechanism that they are talking about for the ABL is
heating Scud-type missile tanks while the missile's motor is burning.
They still haven't addressed the problem of how they deal with something
that's motor has stopped firing by the time the laser can engage it. The
warhead is going to have a heat shield on it to help it deal with its
reentry heating anyway, and that can probably be increased in
capability to make it laser resistant...assuming that you _do_ have the
capability to destroy the missile's warhead itself, then shooting at it
at the beginning of it's flight is not the ideal way to attack it; the
higher it gets, the less atmosphere between it and ABL, and the more
powerful and less dispersed the beam is. Besides which, it is now in an
unpowered ballistic trajectory, and a lot easier to achieve a targeting
solution on. Less atmosphere also means less air flow over the target,
and less dispersion of the laser's heat via convection.
To me the thing seem specifically designed to kill Scuds or Scud clones,
but that's 1950's missile technology, and won't be around forever.

Pat

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