I have a bad bedside manner. I also have a thick hide. It just struck me as interesting...kind of an impeachment of the otherwise unimpeachable anon ethos, where confirmation bias is stronger than curiosity and truth-seeking.

But, to your questions. I gave one to "needmorecovfefe" elsewhere in this discussion. Maybe I can try to do more. Laser engineering is like any other engineering: you have to learn the basic principles before you can begin to understand the technology and phenomenology. Think what happens when something involves flight and people comment without knowing aerodynamics, propulsion, or aircraft structure. With lasers, the basic science is quantum mechanics.

Clouds are bad mainly because (1) they prevent the laser from seeing its target, and (2) they scatter the beam, and sometimes (3) if they are water, they absorb the beam. Even sea aerosols are bad, which is why maritime lasers are mounted at least deck high or on the superstructure to get above the seawater aerosols (droplets and salt particles). Refraction is something that can cause the target image (and beam path) to jitter over long distances. This is why low altitude applications are not usually promising, unless they are shooting upwards (air defense). Diffraction is a property of the beam and has to be dealt with by design or operation. In our weapon design work, we normally took it for granted that an airborne weapon would have to operate above the cloud deck (say 30,000 feet) shooting maybe co-altitude and upwards. Such weapons are so expensive and complicated, it hardly makes much sense to divert them to such trivial things as lighting fires. (Oh, it was talked about, but it wasn't worth much more attention than that.)

These weapons do not have an unlimited operational duration; either they have a finite supply of reactants, or of coolants. Current work is concentrating on electric lasers and internal cooling systems, but their power is well below the megawatt level. I will be interested to see how they propose to go to higher power levels without resorting to disposable coolants. We were originally working with the electric discharge carbon monoxide laser, emitting at about 4 microns wavelength. The quantum efficiency was about 40% or slightly better, the highest on record, and our designs had to use large quantities of liquid ethane as storable coolant to soak up the waste heat.

I keep on mentioning my Last Hurrah, the YAL-1A airborne laser, which successfully engaged and destroyed a boosting ballistic missile in 2010. If you read the Wikipedia article about it, you can pick up a lot, and get pointed to contributory topics.

Oh, and the fellow is not "talking shit" exactly, but he doesn't quite know what he is talking about. The weapons are studied and designed at AFRL at Kirtland AFB (or Space Force Base). Component technology and phenomenology against space targets are logically conducted at the Maui facility on top of Mt. Haleakala. Guidestar lasers are used to provide optical correction to telescopes, not as weapons. All the optics there are looking up, not down at forests.

I have a bad bedside manner. I also have a thick hide. It just struck me as interesting...kind of an impeachment of the otherwise unimpeachable anon ethos, where confirmation bias is stronger than curiosity and truth-seeking.

But, to your questions. I gave one to "needmorecovfefe" elsewhere in this discussion. Maybe I can try to do more. Laser engineering is like any other engineering: you have to learn the basic principles before you can begin to understand the technology and phenomenology. Think what happens when something involves flight and people comment without knowing aerodynamics, propulsion, or aircraft structure. With lasers, the basic science is quantum mechanics.

Clouds are bad mainly because (1) they prevent the laser from seeing its target, and (2) they scatter the beam, and sometimes (3) if they are water, they absorb the beam. Even sea aerosols are bad, which is why maritime lasers are mounted at least deck high or on the superstructure to get above the seawater aerosols (droplets and salt particles). Refraction is something that can cause the target image (and beam path) to jitter over long distances. This is why low altitude applications are not usually promising, unless they are shooting upwards (air defense). Diffraction is a property of the beam and has to be dealt with by design or operation. In our weapon design work, we normally took it for granted that an airborne weapon would have to operate above the cloud deck (say 30,000 feet) shooting maybe co-altitude and upwards. Such weapons are so expensive and complicated, it hardly makes much sense to divert them to such trivial things as lighting fires. (Oh, it was talked about, but it wasn't worth much more attention than that.)

These weapons do not have an unlimited operational duration; either they have a finite supply of reactants, or of coolants. Current work is concentrating on electric lasers and internal cooling systems, but their power is well below the megawatt level. I will be interested to see how they propose to go to higher power levels without resorting to disposable coolants. We were originally working with the electric discharge carbon monoxide laser, emitting at about 4 microns wavelength. The quantum efficiency was about 40% or slightly better, the highest on record, and our designs had to use large quantities of liquid ethane as storable coolant to soak up the waste heat.

I keep on mentioning my Last Hurrah, the YAL-1A airborne laser, which successfully engaged and destroyed a boosting ballistic missile in 2010. If you read the Wikipedia article about it, you can pick up a lot, and get pointed to contributory topics.