On Mar 10, 6:01*pm, Typhoon502 wrote:
On Mar 10, 8:27*pm, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:





On Mar 10, 4:03 pm, Jim Wilkins wrote:

On Mar 10, 1:56 pm, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:

...
How would lasers mounted on the AWAC affect the dynamic?...
Ken-

Ever been on an AWACS? They are quite full of people watching
terminals, not much room for megawatt laser power supplies.
jsw

Here's a recent report about mobile LASER capability,http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4926840
where we'll be in 5-10 years together with better electronics is hard
to say. It's reminds of a B-17 type turreted gunship using LASER
pulses in place of bullets, it's (reportedly) been demo'd.

Hard to say but easy to assume that AWACS platforms won't be getting
any bigger, so it's not like there will be all this spare space and
power capacity. AWACS will continue to be dependent on fighter cover;
any self-defense capability will probably come from heavy focused
beams of microwave frying Red Force avionics (or injecting code bugs
into them...I've heard about that more than once from informed
sources).

AWACS stay out of the battle. Their purpose is to stay out on the
fringe and let the sensors work from afar. This distractive argument
has no real weight in the discussion. They don't plan or intend to
get into the battle.
If the bad guys leave the main battle to go after the sensor
platforms, they leave the primary targets undefended. "Oooh, we took
out your AWACS haha, sure you then went on to take out all of your
primary targets but we got your AWACS which now that we have lost all
our defenses you don't really need anymore..."

BB