While the Pentagon is busy developing laser weapons, a small California company claims it has discovered a type of plastic that acts as armor against lasers:
Mr. Harlamor’s company developed the material, now trademarked “Laser Shield,” while searching for a plastic that could be shaped by machine tools yet withstand the stress of aerospace applications.
Researchers first knew they had something unusual when they tried to inscribe the new machinable plastic with an industrial laser-marking system. After 10 passes with this relatively low-power laser, the plastic was unscarred.
“There was no penetration,” confirms Gerhard Marcinkowski, sales manager of A-B Lasers, which carried out the marking test.
Laser Shield’s internal structure apparently acts as if it were made up of many tiny lenses. These internal “lenses” can scatter laser energy in a harmless, diffuse pattern.
That was a most peculiar article; if for no other reason than the present-tense references to the Soviet Union.
The effect they describe, that of internally diffusing the energy of the incident beam, while making it very difficult to laser-scribe the material would not tend to decrease the damage caused by a weapons-grade laser. Laser weapons do their work by rapidly depositing large amounts of thermal energy into the material, usually in an area of at least several square centimeters (in contrast to the much smaller area of incidence for a scribing laser).
Unless the material can diffuse the energy on a similar scale (very unlikely), then it wouldn’t result in any degradation of the damaging effect.
The article dates back to the end of the Cold War; it’s from 1988. I suppose I should’ve mentioned that…
I haven’t run the numbers, but wouldn’t the same kind of heat shield used on reentry vehicles protect a missile from most laser attacks?
Yes, but at an enormous penalty in weight compared to the relatively thin aluminum body of modern missiles. And if you armor just the nosecone the missile will remain vulnerable to side-on shots. It’s important to recognize that modern naval anti-aircraft/missile defenses are all about multiple overlapping fields of fire.