...:: Days of Our Future ::...

Real-life plasma shields to protect soldiers are only the beginning.  The technology — which use a laser to create a curtain of miniature plasma explosions like firecrackers to turn away an enemy — could be adapted to turn it into a physical shield, capable of warding off projectiles.

Unlike existing defenses only hit incoming projectiles a few meters away.  The Plasma Acoustic Shield System (PASS), on the other hand, has a range of a hundred meters.

PASS can put a series of small plasma explosions in the path of an incoming rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), bullet or other projectile. These are only very small explosions, but since they can be precisely placed on the nose of the missile, this is not a problem. (Tracking a missile nose with a laser is exactly what laser infra-red countermeasures do at the moment).

An RPG is a shaped-charge or HEAT warhead: basically a conical explosive charge lined with metal. When it detonates, the metal is blasted into a narrow, high-velocity, armor-piercing jet. If the round tumbles and is facing sideways or backward it will have little effect on any sort of armor.

A Plasma Shield producing a hundred detonations a second could put thirty of them in the path of an incoming RPG round if it’s going at 300 meter per second.

A similar rule applies to bullets: if it’s going sideways when it hits you, even a tungsten-cored round is not going to make it through a Kevlar.



The Russians work on plasma aerodynamics


Their action is based on focusing beams of electromagnetic energy produced by laser or microwave radiation into the upper layers of the atmosphere.
A cloud of highly ionized air arises at the focus of the laser or microwave rays, at an altitude of up to 50 kilometers. Upon entering it, any object–a missile, an airplane, is deflected from its trajectory and disintegrates in response to the fantastic overloads arising due to the abrupt pressure difference.
What is fundamental in this case is that the energy aimed by the terrestrial components of the plasma weapon–lasers and antennas–is concentrated not at the target itself but a little ahead of it. Rather than "incinerating" the missile or airplane, it "bumps" it out of trajectory.

The Russians refer to such balls of plasma as plasmoids. Although there is some speculation that their high-power radar could produce plasmoids in the upper atmosphere for defensive use, this has not been proven. But the laser system used in PASS has been proven.

The technology which produces small plasma detonations in PASS could put larger plasmoids in the path of missiles and aircraft high in the atmosphere. Rather than using massive amounts of energy to burn through the missile’s casing, just a small amount of laser-created plasma could turn the missile’s own speed against it, tripping it up in a piece of cosmic judo. A small, low-energy pulse laser may turn out to be more effective for missile defense than the giant chemical laser in the $7.3 billion ABL.

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