USAF’s Ultrawideband Laser Networks

The US Air Force is not only experimenting with lasers to kill missiles. They are now using them to transmit data from planes and drones at 35km and enabling quantum encryption. They did it with adaptive optics.

When you transmit information through turbulence—motion in the atmosphere caused by turbulent cells or “wind”—it’s distorted just like the information coming from the light reflected off a distant, twinkling star to your eye. It’s fuzzy. You have to overcome that by using adaptive optics to rectify the distortion and get a better quality signal.

That’s what Dr David Hughes, from the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research, says. He claims that the technology has been tested successfully with both stationary and flying situations, which means that they can easily implement it in the battlefield, with not too much effort. [The Register]