Frequency of Adverse Weather Conditions Affecting High Energy Laser Systems Operations

• Main Authors: Goroch, Andreas K., Brown, Terry
• Other Authors: NAVAL ENVIRONMENTAL PREDICTION RESEARCH FACILITY MONTEREY CA
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1980
• Subjects: Meteorology; Lasers and Masers; Military Operations; Strategy and Tactics; *WEATHER; FREQUENCY; PERSIAN GULF; LASERS; HIGH ENERGY; LIMITATIONS; STATISTICAL ANALYSIS; UTILIZATION; SOUTHEAST ASIA; CARIBBEAN SEA; NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN; KOREA; VISIBILITY; RAIN; METEOROLOGICAL DATA; RATES; DATA PROCESSING; HIGH ENERGY LASERS; PE63754N; WU6312; Kamchatka; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA098031; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA098031

The planning of high energy laser system operations depends on a knowledge of possible environmental parameters likely to affect the system. Most basically, the planner needs to know the probability that the system will be usable because of adverse weather conditions. The most fundamental environmental conditions inhibiting laser use are high rain rates and low visibility due to fog, haze or dust. This report calculates the frequency of occurrence of these conditions as a function of geographic location. The geographical locations chosen were those which may have possible laser operations, and include the Persian Gulf, North Atlantic, Mediterranean, Southeast Asia, Korea, and the Caribbean Sea. With a limiting 3 hour average rate of 3 mm/hr, the frequency of occurrence of the rain limitation is no greater than 3%. This depends on latitude - higher latitudes having lesser rain rates - as well as time of year. The limiting visibility condition was considered to be 1 km. Visibility less than 1 km was generally related to fog and as such is also related to latitude. In the tropical areas the visibility limitation occurred less than 1% of the time regardless of time of year. In polar and subpolar locales, limited visibility occurred over 20% of the time (Kamchatka, in July). Errata sheet inserted.