Laser Technique Applied to Defence Problems

The discovery of the optical laser has given arise to a number of important military applications which use of the highly coherent, monochromatic and directional beam coming out of it. The enemy targets can be located far more accurately than by the microwave radar because laser beam offers greater angular resolution and directionality. For communicating a large number of messages between the different units of the army, the vast bandwidth available at the optical frequencies of the laser can accommodate far more information than is possible with the conventional microwave and radio frequencies. A number of other defence applications like aerial reconnaissance, under water surveillance etc are being tried with laser beams. A review of these applications is made in this article