
Yemen coast a ‘live fire laboratory’ for firing lasers - apotheothesomai
https://www.defensenews.com/news/your-marine-corps/2018/03/08/yemen-coast-a-live-fire-laboratory-for-firing-lasers/
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borkt
Another area where my materials science research took me! A decade ago I was
working on the problem of countering active laser threats to sensors and the
clear solution to at least the primitive offensive laser weapons was to place
a sufficiently non-linear optical material between the threat and the sensor.
By properly engineering the material for the application, you have the ability
to place a material between the sensor and the environment such that standard
environmental light will pass through at a near zero refractive index.
However, as the intensity of light shifts towards that of a high powered
laser, the material will act with a much higher refractive index and "bend"
the intense light away from the sensor such that it cannot be disabled.

Really interesting project and most likely what they for some reason are
leaving out of this article. BAE systems has enough detail on their site that
I can assume this information is out there for anyone who is looking for it,
so not sure why the article doesn't atleast mention this. I would have enjoyed
taking this work into grad school, however 2009 didn't feel like a good time
to go into research.

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apotheothesomai
The omission does seem strange, especially because it's a defense industry
site and usually talks about the companies who manufacture the goods.

I think the focus of the article has much to do with the author, who is more
of an in-action writer. He's a Marine writing about Marines.

Thank you for the deeper information on the technology and reference to BAE. I
will look it up today. Exciting stuff.

