Page 190 - MY STORY

My turn in the hot seat arrived as I was leading the high

energy laser (HEL) countermeasures crew, and I was
going to provide a brief on our latest contracted activity.

The early portion of the brief went like this:

>Me: I began to describe the HEL threat quantitatively,

by noting the deposited laser energy on a satellite at 400
nautical miles above the earth being irradiated by a
hypothetical high power ground-based laser weapon.

Deposited laser energy was expressed in Watts per square
centimeter (W/cm2). The numerical value is classified.

>Irv: “I don’t really understand what the number for
deposited energy means. Can you explain that better so I
can understand it?”

>Me: Figuring this will be easy to explain to someone

with a technical background. “Well, consider that the
deposited energy of the sun on earth, at high noon on a
clear sunny summer day in Texas, is about 0.1 W/cm2..

So Irv, you can see that the laser threat level is orders of
magnitude above that?”