Re: Nuclear Pumped Laser Missiles

Oerjan Ohlson writes:

@:) I find needle missiles mighty strange. To fire a needle beam, you
@:) need lots of scanner capacity (ie, they require a dedicated
@:) firecon). How, then, can a mere missile carry scanners powerful
@:) enough?

  By the time it gets to its destination (this will sound painfully
obvious) the missile is extremely close to the target.	One can
imagine that the sensors required to locate and attack a system from
100 meters would need to be much less refined than those required to
attack the same system from 100 kilometers.  (Multiply these figures by
whatever you think FT ranges are.)  In order to hit its (tank-sized)
target, the Maverick missile uses the super-high-tech expedient of
... a TV camera.  No fancy scanners there.

-joachim