Armaments are always evolving... The laser guided bomb has become so devastating that surely many are working on ways to defeat it. I was curious as to the kind of laser signal it homed in on, I had a pretty good guess, (the signal was almost certainly in the near IR, and the special forces troops had to be able to easily carry it to "paint" the target...). I was sure that I would not be able to find out ANYTHING public in these lasers, but I decided to try....

AND to my SHOCK 1 google search later I find a site with FULL specs on the things! I looked up laser designators on google and found this site:

http://www.littonlaser.com/ext/products/alats/alats-laserdesignators.htm

sure enough it is a small un-doubled Nd:YAG laser (1.064 micron, near IR <invisible>)that is hardened for the elements. Runs on rechargeable 24 V batteries, and can be used to find range to target upto 20 km away, or be used to "paint" a target for a bomb at a distance of 5 km. <It is an eye hazard BTW with an 80mJ pulse and beam diameter of 5 mm.> It weighs ~12 pounds....

Now getting all this info shocked me.... I started thinking "these lasers are not THAT expensive....if I wanted to reduce the chances of my building getting hit then I would shine a bunch of them on walls and hills around me all the time and maybe the bomb would go for the fake spots..." It CANT be that simple... The key, I believe is that the laser is pulsed... note that on the page it says of the pulse repitition frequency that it is "Pulse Repetition Frequency: NATO Stanag Band I/Band II or Programmable ". <STANAG, MEANS Standard agreement> So NATO has decided on a PRF for laser designators, 2 standards apparently...I will bet that the laser guided bombs are programmed to ONLY go after the proper pulse format... You can bet anyone with a good spy service could know these frequencies so they made the designator programmable too so they can change it on the fly if they think they need to....

That would be DAMN hard to defend against....or fake out! Pretty ingenious....I can only think of 1 defensive measure, that is to surround the building with sensors that look for 1.064 micron spots, that would give you a minutes warning to try to escape or to kiss your ass goodbye. Not a lot of time to get out of the blast radius....I can think of one other, but it would be highly expensive and require HIGH tech. The offensive measure against it the same can be said...

Just thought it was interesting all that info is public and there still isnt a damn thing <that I can think of> the enemy can do to stop it...Any boby have ideas? <Dont worry guys we are not gonna come up with an idea the enimies havent already- all we are trying to do is figure out the next inevitible evolution in weaponry>
Besides, I heard that Saddam has been too busy to check out the HZ as often as he used to....;)