Thanks to One Hand Clapping for the links.

IRAQ

If I controlled the American military and were attacking Iraq I would:

1. Destroy all remaining air defense assets using airpower.

2. Destroy Iraqi command, control and communications assets using airpower directed by troops on the ground.

3. Destroy the Republican Guard. Remember, the vaunted RG hid out during the last battle of this war only to arise and put down the nascent rebellion in the South. Airpower with ground-based observer/directors would do a pretty good job on this.

4. Destroy Saddam's personal forces and all his known "palaces". Mixture of air and Special Operations.

5. Take control of the northern and southern parts of Iraq using ground forces. Here is where the coalition will be welcomed by the majority.

6. Give the Iraqi Army the choice of surrender or destruction. Have a lot of Military Police and Civil Affairs ready.

7. Wait for the people of Baghdad to finish off Saddam.

8. Remember that Saddam has helpers in his evil. Don't play the post-WWII Nazi fugitive/refugee game.

I have been trying to determine the "Center of Gravity" of Saddam's Iraq and I think it is his ability to enforce terror on Iraqis and the world. To defeat him, we must take away that ability.

I have added a link to Blaster's Blog because he sounds like an Exposive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) guy. I have always admired EOD guys and never met one I didn't like because to a man, they have been crazy. Besides, I liked the posts I read.

Tactical High Energy Lasers

I am a logistician at heart having spent most of my career as an Army maintenance officer. Whenever I hear about a new weapon system, I immediately think about how to support it on the battlefield. For example, an M1 tank requires enormous quantities of fuel each day and keeping battalions of tanks fueled takes several large tankers to deliver the thousands of gallons of fuel consumed each operational day. The primary reason for the Army’s Transformation effort is to decrease the logistics tail. An M1 is a very effective weapon system, but the logistics tail is large. Logistics includes getting the weapon to the area of operations and supplying its needs once it is there. Make the tank smaller, lighter and more efficient and you decrease the logistics tail.

A quick look at the logistics of high energy lasers (HEL) finds that the deuterium-fluorine laser (DF) has a much larger logistics tail than the solid state laser (SSL) since the DF laser uses fuels not normally found on the battlefield. If you know anything about fluorine, then you know that it is maybe the best oxidizer there is. Fluorine combines with anything it touches. Combine pure oxygen with stainless steel, apply an ignition source and you may get a fire that consumes the steel. Combine fluorine with stainless steel and you get a fire that consumes the steel, no ignition source required. To make fuels handling easier, most large DF lasers use nitrous-trifluoride that is combined with a fuel such as ethylene to get free fluorine which when combined with deuterium produces photons that after some optical manipulation produce a laser beam. NF3 is not a user-friendly substance. It needs careful handling by specially trained personnel.

The SSL uses electrical current to produce the laser beam. The electrical current can be produced on the laser weapon platform or by a supporting power source. The logistics footprint of the SSL is therefore smaller than that of the DF laser or any other chemical laser for that matter. The fuel for the power source would be diesel or jet fuel.

Purely from a logistics perspective, the SSL is the logical choice for a ground-based laser. The logistics case is not as clear for air and sea borne platforms since re-supply can be done away from the battlefield.

On the technology side, the DF laser is more advanced than the SSL. DF lasers have been built that produce hundreds of kilowatts of energy while the SSL has produced only tens of kilowatts. Of course, if the military utility case can be made for tactical lasers, the warfighter will take what he can get so we have a mobile Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL) Program that leans toward using a DF laser and we have a technology program aimed at developing an SSL for future THEL systems.

Say we have a THEL system ready for deployment. How could the Army use it? Donald Sensing at One Hand Clapping here has said that lasers are incapable of defeating a massed artillery attack. He is right. Theoretically, we could build enough systems to do the job, but practically and fiscally, it is not going to happen. First, we do not have enough soldiers to operate the number of systems required for that task, second, we do not have the money to build the systems and, third, we could not logistically support a large deployed laser force. If you can’t get it to the battlefield and support it once it is there, it has little military utility.

It seems that if tactical high-energy lasers are to be used by the US or any force, they will be used by a force that is much different than those we know today. THELs have the potential to transform a battlefield such as the one in Afghanistan. A directed energy weapon operates at the speed of light. It can destroy kinetic energy projectiles in flight. In a theater of operations not characterized by large mechanized forces, a THEL could be a very effective means of protecting command, control and communications (C3) assets, logistics assets and geographic areas of interest against low-volume mortar, rocket and artillery attacks.

The question is: Can a THEL system pass a cost and operational effective analysis (COEA)? My guess is no for a DF laser and probably yes for an SSL. We’ll have to wait to see.

An addition to my previous post
In my previous post I wrote about laser wavelengths as if everyone knew as much as I do about lasers. Actually, that is very likely except I had the privilege of working around some very bright laser guys for several years and a little rubbed off. I changed a spelling in my previous post. It should have been deuterium-fluorine rather than floride. Sometimes the spellchecker is right even if you type the wrong word to begin with.

Since I skipped over any discussion of wavelengths other than to say they exist, I thought I would go back and write a little on the subject. The wavelength at which a laser operates depends on what is used to produce the laser beam. Different materials produce different wavelengths. For example, a Deuterium-fluorine laser produces a beam at a nominal 3.8 microns while the hydrogen-fluorine laser operates at a nominal 2.9 microns. A micron is 10 to the -6 meters. The wavelength of a laser determines how it will interact with different materials. For example, the surgical lasers interact or couple well with certain organic materials such as the lens of the eye or human skin. A good military laser will couple well with the materials that make up targets of military interest. The lasers I wrote about in my previous post generally have this desired characteristic.

One of my correspondents wrote that he worked on a project to simulate the effects of lasers on electro-optics and human eyes several years ago. They talked "temporary" blindness. Temporarily blinding electro-optics is feasible, but I am not sure about "temporarily" blinding a soldier. I suspect it would be permanent. In the mid-1990s, the International Red Cross raised a stink about some US laser programs they said were designed to blind enemy soldiers. At least one Army project was cancelled just before it would have gone into production. I believe US policy is we will not use lasers in a mode intended to blind an enemy soldier. Militarily useful high energy lasers (HEL) are much too powerful to worry about blinding someone.

The wavelength of a laser also determines how well it propogates through the atmosphere. If it couples well with the elements normally found in air, the energy will be absorbed and will not reach the target. Even with wavelengths that do not couple well with the atmosphere, a too high power level will heat the air and result in a phenomena known as "thermal blooming" in which the air is heated and begins to act as a lens distorting the beam and reducing the energy delivered to the target.

HEL power is normally measured in kilowatts (KW). A one KW free electron laser has been demonstrated by different Defense and Department of Energy Labs. " Wait", you say. "One kilowatt is not much energy." Remember, the energy from a laser is focused and can be on a very narrow beam. One KW on a square centimeter is a lot of energy. Think about the energy of ten 100 watt light bulbs concentrated on your pinkie nail.