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A laser this scale would mostly be an annoyance to infantry. Drones are mostly black plastic that immediately burns. Humans are mostly water and if you got hit

by edrxty 4y ago

A laser this scale would mostly be an annoyance to infantry. Drones are mostly black plastic that immediately burns. Humans are mostly water and if you got hit with this, it would suck, but it wouldn't kill you and you'd have plenty of time to find something to hide behind before it got bad enough that you'd lose a limb or something. It would be roughly equivalent to being poked with a branding iron. Also, expect that if said infantry finds you, you're gonna have a bad time.

TeMPOraL 4y ago
> Humans are mostly water and if you got hit with this, it would suck, but it wouldn't kill you and you'd have plenty of time to find something to hide behind before it got bad enough that you'd lose a limb or something. Complication: if you got hit with this, or even saw something far away being hit with this, chances are it would be the last thing you'll ever see, making finding something to hide behind that much more difficult.
- creato 4y ago
  If this were a real threat, laser safety goggles would be standard issue.
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    They're not, because so far powerful enough lasers weren't used in the battlefield, in large part due to international ban on such use. Anti-infantry lasers will likely continue to be banned for a while, but as anti-air and anti-armor ones get introduced, the risk of soldiers getting blinded off beam scatter will rise fast, so laser safety goggles might just become standard issue. Or not. The problem is that laser safety goggles and screens are built to be opaque to specific frequencies. There may not be a way to have the goggles protect you from every laser frequency you're likely to encounter on the battlefield.
    - edrxty 4y ago
      Typically these burning lasers are in the infrared spectrum and it's pretty easy to block the entirety of that. Visible lasers, particularly very powerful ones, tend to only fall in a handful of wavelengths due to the way they work so it's less of a problem than it sounds like it is.

by edrxty 4y ago

TeMPOraL 4y ago

> Humans are mostly water and if you got hit with this, it would suck, but it wouldn't kill you and you'd have plenty of time to find something to hide behind before it got bad enough that you'd lose a limb or something. Complication: if you got hit with this, or even saw something far away being hit with this, chances are it would be the last thing you'll ever see, making finding something to hide behind that much more difficult.

creato 4y ago
If this were a real threat, laser safety goggles would be standard issue.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  They're not, because so far powerful enough lasers weren't used in the battlefield, in large part due to international ban on such use. Anti-infantry lasers will likely continue to be banned for a while, but as anti-air and anti-armor ones get introduced, the risk of soldiers getting blinded off beam scatter will rise fast, so laser safety goggles might just become standard issue. Or not. The problem is that laser safety goggles and screens are built to be opaque to specific frequencies. There may not be a way to have the goggles protect you from every laser frequency you're likely to encounter on the battlefield.
  - edrxty 4y ago
    Typically these burning lasers are in the infrared spectrum and it's pretty easy to block the entirety of that. Visible lasers, particularly very powerful ones, tend to only fall in a handful of wavelengths due to the way they work so it's less of a problem than it sounds like it is.