Welcome • User Guide
ToS • Privacy • Canary
Donate • Bugs • License

©2025 Poal.co

This fellow breaks down what would be needed for an effective orbital DEW as well as the challenges that would need to be overcome.

Spoiler: Laser based weapons are doable but, he doesn't think this was done in Hawaii.

Personally, I'm not sure DEW was used in Hawaii but, I do know that the government is hiding something and likely have weapons tech beyond the parameters discussed here. The limitations however are due to the nature of the universe so even if the gov has better this video should still apply. The question becomes how did they overcome the limitations and to what degree.

This fellow breaks down what would be needed for an effective orbital DEW as well as the challenges that would need to be overcome. Spoiler: Laser based weapons are doable but, he doesn't think this was done in Hawaii. Personally, I'm not sure DEW was used in Hawaii but, I do know that the government is hiding something and likely have weapons tech beyond the parameters discussed here. The limitations however are due to the nature of the universe so even if the gov has better this video should still apply. The question becomes how did they overcome the limitations and to what degree.

(post is archived)

You are currently inside a comment thread.
Click here to see all the comments (36).
[–] • 1 pt

So your comments about the laser beam are saying that you can't focus it at a distance and not still lose power due to uncontrollable divergence?

Lens theory doesn't apply properly to laser output because of the Gaussian distribution of the light and power density. The highest power is in the centerline of the beam and it runs through the lens where there is no curvature to focus it. The lower power rays that do get refracted are also distorted by spherical aberration such that they don't converge with the other rays and produce a messy area of multiple focus zones but there isn't a single point where all the rays converge giving you the full power.

I thought that a laser beam was special in that it didn't follow the inverse square law. Is this true, but not true once it's in a medium of varying refractive index, which messes up the coherence of the beam?

Gaussian distributions are already limited by the Inverse Square Law but it still has secondary effects when you focus or collimate the beam. Divergence will always apply which will make the Gaussian distribution effect more noticeable and reduce you output power more significantly. Parabolic mirrors and meniscus lenses don't really help much either because of that distribution still causing aberration. There is no perfect lens or mirror geometry to focus a laser to a single point. We're trying hard to minimize the losses though and there have been breakthroughs but these do not scale to DEWs.

[–] • 1 pt

Just to add to what was said, no material has a perfect transmission rate either. Some light will be absorbed by any lens or mirror. When you get into some of the upper power ranges of some lasers they actually start to destroy the optics and even the lasing material itself too after a time.

[–] • 1 pt

Just to add to what was said, no material has a perfect transmission rate either. Some light will be absorbed by any lens or mirror. When you get into some of the upper power ranges of some lasers they actually start to destroy the optics and even the lasing material itself too after a time.

Absolutely. There are so many problems with materials and lasers that it seems like we've hit the limits of easy lasing. While I haven't had much works with solid lasing mediums, I have seen Nd:YAG laser rods that were destroyed because the edges of the rod which were ground to a Brewsters angle were slightly chipped and the flash pump tubes caused such a thermal shock in them that they literally exploded. I have also seen gallium arsenide optics get cracked and pitted by CO2 lasers that were driven too hard outside of their operating range. Also saw a fiber laser get destroyed because someone got the fiber aperture dirty with grease. Damned shame because it wasn't very old and was expensive to repair.