Lasers can't be defended against?

Brian Q, did I hear you say that lasers were hard to screen? Hmmm.

I read the brilliant lances design notes someone posted (great URL) and
their point about the only two ways to liberate a practical amount of
energy onto a given hull segment via lasers was well taken: bomb pumped
(missile warhead) or via a hit that tracks the target for some time.

If this is so, then missile laser defence is impracticable (in any kind
of active defence) but ship laser defence isn't. When you detect an
incoming beam, lay out a cannister of reflective dust (and BTW, the
target has just given you a lovely vector on himself too) to destroy the
coherence of the beam. I'm betting even a small keg sized charge could
really mess up a lasers coherence (think depth charge size or small beer
keg). Or emit CO2 or some other gas - in Knight Hawks, they used a
Masking Screen made of water. So you have Sandcasters and Masking
Screens, and Ablative Armour if you don't like screens. The Masking
Screen is effective for a time or until you thrust. The Ablative armour
would work for a time, and if you could keep rolling the ship, it'd be
more effective. It could even be a good retrofit for older ships to make
them beam resistant. Not to heavy, fits on the outside of the hull.

>From a "screens" PoV, if you followed the math in the brilliant lances
discussion (someone can repost the URL, I've misplaced it), in order to
hit at ranges in the thousands or tens of thousands of km, you need
gravitic focusing. If you assume null-G, grav vehicles, and
grav-focusing, why not gravitic screens? Quite detectable once active,
but they'd impede lasers and kinetic projectiles and plasma balls and
pretty much anything that shot at them. A laser could even be bent a few
degrees or scattered by some form of focused gravitational lensing. I'm
reasonably certain this type of screen would also screw up particle
beams.

Just some thoughts. If you're going for "realism", they you might want
to avoid "High Science" like grav shields, but then masking screens,
sandcasters, and ablative armour make sense. If you have long ranged
lasers (or we assume particle beams since focusing them on a target
can't be much easier), then we have to presume gravitational control on
a localized level. Grav shields aren't that much of a stretch.

If we can fit anti-missile charges on our tanks, why not on our ships?
(Maybe that is subsumed into a PDS system). The anti-laser system would
include quadrant or arc based warners hooked to
sand/mist/chaff/screening plate launchers - very much like we have such
systems for planes nowadays (on the good planes) that automatically
detect IR locks and start tossing flares BEFORE the pilot can react most
times...

--
---------------------------------------------------------------
"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun." - Ash, Army of Darkness

Homepage: http:\\fox.ntsn.ca\~kaladorn\index.html
ICQ: 58316640 (Tomin8tor)

"Ah. I see. Inform me if there is any change in his condition."
<hangs up the phone>
"How is he?"
"He's dead."
-- The movie Top Secret