OT Interesting news item

[narf poit chez BOOM]

/me collects all the shiney, shiney missiles...

[Phoenix-D]

Kamog said:
If they put shiny mirrored surfaces on the missile, the lasers would reflect off.

Very briefly, and then the laser burns through the mirror and POOF. Mirrors aren't totally reflected, and that .01% is a !%$ when you're talking about stopping a weapons-level laser.

Doesn't count the difficulty in finding IR-reflective stuff, either.. It is possible, just not as common.

EDIT: Speaking of lasers, I read a nasty idea for a weapon a while back.

You take a powerful laser, and set it up so it gets split into many relatively weak beams. Then you shine a normal light into the same arrangement. Now, the laser won't be visible from a distance unless you're looking at it straight on..but the regular light will scatter more, and will be.

The human eye is instintively drawn to look at the shiny light, and the instant it does it also look straight into the laser.

Instant blindness for almost everyone within LOS of the disco ball of doom..

[Caduceus]

El_Phil said: They work so hard at contrived acronyms there, the poor lambs.

OT in an OT thread... It irritates me recently that medical studies are doing this too. I can't think of a good one off the top of my head, but various drug companies are doing trials like STAR and PROTEC and others to make them "catchy" so that if they pan out, they have a good name to refer to when they try to corner the market in hypertension (or whatever). Of course, if it busts, you never hear about it

[Xrati]

What I do know is that when this country releases some 'Top Secret' craft, weapon or project, they generally have something better that they are working on!