On Tuesday, 10 July 2018 3:19:48 AM AEST Trent W. Buck via luv-talk wrote:
Maybe handheld devices can't be aimed that well, but:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1
It was a 747 with an --- as they say --- "frickin laser beam attached to its head", and it lased ballistic missiles, and it was a Real Thing.
(I think it was defunded because the USA only attacks poor people, who can't afford the expensive toys YAL-1 was designed to counter.)
The Wikipedia page quotes the SecDef as citing the fact that it is designed to target the boost phase and therefore can only be used near the launch site. That would require more than a few of them to cover the Middle East, North Korea, and wherever else trouble might come from. Also they wouldn't be able to do anything about submarine launched missiles so it would be a lot of expense for less effective results.
Oh, also, ASW searchlights were A Thing, although I think they couldn't be "aimed" independently of the aircraft's axis of travel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leigh_light
That's interesting. I wasn't even aware that there was a minimum distance for radar before reading that.
For comparison, M24 acceptance requires 0.8 MOA, which translates to reliably hitting about a 2.3cm target at 100m. I dunno how to math that out to 600m range, but I guess it'd be about man-sized, so if your beam is that wide, at that distance, a trained human should be able to keep it on-target. (As opposed to their arm muscles making it wobble too much.)
Apparently a battery powered LASER pointer can burn a hole in the retina almost immediately if operating outside of Australian safety standards (people have been hospitalised for this). If you were designing a LASER weapon you wouldn't use hearing-aid batteries or AAA, you would use something a lot bigger. A 6V lantern battery would provide a lot more power while still fitting into a jacket pocket and a car battery wouldn't be ruled out for a portable weapon system (soldiers carry heavier things as parts of weapons). A quick scan of Wikipedia suggests that something less than 1W/cm^2 can give a 50% chance of damage in a millisecond for some frequencies. A 2.3cm target at 100m would be a 13.8cm target at 600m which is about 150cm^2. So 150W of LASER light (a small fraction of the power a car battery can provide even when considering LASER inefficiencies) would allow serious eye injury (maybe not permanent but definitely enough to stop someone flying a plane) in 1ms. To make an effective weapon you would probably want more power and a wider beam so that accurate aim is not required. Also with a 1ms damage time it shouldn't be difficult for the soldier to just wave it around until it gets a hit, should be much easier than aiming a machine gun. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/