China fires lasers at US satelites

Originally posted by Heckman
It is also my understanding that a "wide beam" is used for sat blinding. With a powerful laser there is no need to keep it focused to a small beam when simply trying to blind the satellites.

Exactly, they just need to overload the CCD camera. The same technique is used with the laser they "bounce" off the moons reflector....by the time it gets there the beam is 4 miles wide.


Edit: 2 miles to 4



[edit on 29-9-2006 by kinglizard]

I don't think there is any reason to think this claim untrue as i have seen so much to indicate that this has in fact been more of a norm in the cold war than most would readily imagine....

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Pretty long list which i believe would get most of you on the same page.

Stellar

Originally posted by Thousand

Originally posted by sardion2000
Also, to my knowledge, there is no way to detect laser attacks unless it's shining through particulate heavy atmosphere.

A sufficiently powerful laser, such as any type that is powerful enough to cause sustained burning or one that is used to beam into space will most likely be visible to the naked eye. There are pen lasers commercially available with beams that are visible at any angle.

Yes, pen lasers are visible, but many powerful lasers operate in the infra-red spectrum which are NOT visible to the naked eye, and thus all you will see is the vaporizing target. Just wanted to throw that out in the open.

Oh, in addition, pen lasers which are visible are created with an LED lightsource where more powerful lasers utilize a lightsource, highly excited gases, gemstones, and lots of electricity.

Thanks kinglizard, this was the question I asked in my second post, do you need an "all-powerfull" laser to blind a spy satallite rather than destroy it, as the equipment on board is extremely sensitive. I thought that maybe a chemical ground based laser would be enough to at least cause a loss in image quality to such sensitive equipment onboard. You don't need to disable the satellite just merely distrupt its intel gathering.
Does any one else have any thoughts about this??

[edit on 30-9-2006 by Kurokage]

Originally posted by Tetragrammaton
I would think that a laser would be bending by the magnetic fields of the earth thus making targeting very difficult, unless you had some receiver to point in on. Hence, I would think that in order to hit a satellite with a laser from earth you would have to have had or have access to its transponder.

You have to remember that laser does not act like radio waves, laser is concentrated photons in one specific spectre (mostly red or blue,) and like everything else they are influenced by many factors like magnetism and gravity.

You don't know what you're talking about. The propagation of electromagnetic radiation in vacuum is unaffected by electromagnetic fields and practically unmeasurably by gravity unless by massive objects like stars and black holes.

Alright, without getting all "technical".. let the chinese blind these satalites.. Do you honestly think that that is the only way for the US to get information? By satalites? Countrys spy on each other all the time.. # happens.