Re: Further thoughts on hitting with lasers

Jerry spake thusly upon matters weighty: 

 Though, there are systems that can take a 
> 'snapshot' of a target, and follow it down.  Maverick and several
> other Electro-optical guided missiles/bombs are examples of this.
> 
> Actually, would anybody know what the tolerances on these systems are?
> (And if so, could they actually tell us?  (8-) )

I assume to some extent, and based off Mr. TV, that these systems us 
IR tracking as well as optical, and use high speed sampling rates and 
a technology similar to anti-jitter technology used in hand held cam 
corders - the high speed imaging grabs two sequential frames, and 
looks for changes. In the case of the anti-jitter - it takes out 
small vibrations. In the case of tracking, it  probably moves the 
array and recentres on the new centre. If the array can track as fast 
as the target is moving, and if it has a high enough rate of 
acquiring frame data (ie it doesn't take five minutes to build a 
frame hence observations about movement are near meaningless), then 
it should track okay. Mind you this style of tracking is an 'after 
the fact style' - where the target WAS a little piece ago (1 frame 
back). It isn't (but probably could be made) predictive - it won't 
guess where the target is going. It could, and if it did, you'd be 
stuck with the quality of the 'guesses' your software made and the 
longer the lag between frame acquisition, the more problematic this 
would become. 

Here's another one - interesting scenario for FT - one force heavy, 
the other force light. The light force catches the heavy force in the 
middle of shakedown on new SW or HW which is problematic - as a 
result they perform with enough penalties to let the light guys have 
an advantage or at least so things are even. (ie "Dammit Jones, those 
NSL destroyers are coming in! Get that targeting array online or 
we'll have to fire by Eyeball Mark One!" "I'm trying captain, but 
every time I try to target something, I get a blue screen with 
register information and a Contact Your Software Vendor message....")

Tom. 
 
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Police Communications Systems
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