But that means you need to have a different laser pointed at every single individual aircraft right? Doesn’t really scale.

amelius 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I suppose you can do time-sharing. And use mems-mirrors to quickly move the beam between different targets.

	▲	esseph 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Laser TDMA! :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-division_multiple_access

eqvinox 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You can probably do phased arrays. (It might already be a phased array.)

Pretty sure phased array LASERs are not yet a thing.

	▲	buildbot an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I was not sure, but they are! https://cga.anu.edu.au/research/activities/laser-beam-steeri... https://www.darpa.mil/research/programs/excalibur I guess in some ways even the fancy multi diode fiber lasers are phased arrays, just with the single goal of higher output power.
	▲	aidenn0 an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Lasers are coherent emitters; you can definitely make interference patterns with them, so I don't see why LASER MIMO wouldn't be possible, in theory.
	▲	eqvinox an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yeah but this is research, if they're to come up somewhere, where else would it be?

If starlink satellites get laser downlink, it might work :P