Hardening sensors against diffuse lasers?

[Feil]

Suppose I have a space ship with an laser on it - maybe a specialized weapon, maybe a defensive tool against meteorites, maybe a propulsion device, whatever. What is stopping me from pointing it at your space ship or your missile from way outside my effective range, where my laser beam has a cross section a meter wide, and just crisping all the sensitive bits you've kindly left in places where they are exposed to radiation since burying them under layers of reflective and conductive armor makes them useless? Would all space fights between laser-armed space ships end up with both vessels blind, deaf, and dumb by the time they entered firing range?

[spaceviking]

I suppose one could build a ship with a great deal of sensor redundancies. Some sensors could be placed on nearby drones. Others could be under armor until the primary sensors are disabled.

Also I think there is probably methods to harden sensors to attack without completely negating their effectiveness.

[Lord of the Abyss]

What is stopping me from pointing it at your space ship or your missile from way outside my effective range, where my laser beam has a cross section a meter wide, and just crisping all the sensitive bits you've kindly left in places where they are exposed to radiation since burying them under layers of reflective and conductive armor makes them useless?

I recall reading quite a few years ago in Scientific American about a crystalline material that blocks laser light but passes everything else. IIRC the coherent light sets up some sort of internal resonance in the crystal that renders it opaque (I don't recall if it is opaque to just the laser or to everything though; it's been years) while normal light doesn't set up the resonance and passes. One suggested use was in anti-laser protective goggles.

[Sea Skimmer]

It’s a straightforward enough matter to mount redundant optics and only unmask the minimal number required to prevent yourself from being blinded; not to mention that as you approach unless the enemy approaches on widely spaced converging axis he will only be able to blind at best one side of the ship. The largest optics you would reasonably need for any purpose would be a few meters across, most would be far smaller so moving covers and field replaceable lens caps are very feasible. This just drives up the cost of the ship, but who really expects a long range space warship of the most minimal capabilities to be less then a 30-50 billion dollar item anyway?

You could also literally put tape on part of the optic glass, as much as you can get away with, and if the uncovered part gets damaged, peel off the tape on the other parts. This is what US Army field manuals actually tell you to do to protect weapons sights and imaging devices from modern day laser blinding.

[someone_else]

You can also use Photonic laser thrusters To make a huge formation of mirror spacecraft and detector spacecraft.

If you have your mirrors small enough and set apart enough, there is no way the laser could dump enough energy into the detector to blind it.

Radars are easier to harden, just use a metallic mesh instead of a metal plate as a receiver. Must be bigger, but will laugh at wide-beam lasers.


This is usually a reason why I have spotters relying info to blind drones that actually get into firing range and do the fighting.