Yemen coast a ‘live fire laboratory’ for firing lasers (opens in new tab)

Another area where my materials science research took me! A decade ago I was working on the problem of countering active laser threats to sensors and the clear solution to at least the primitive offensive laser weapons was to place a sufficiently non-linear optical material between the threat and the sensor. By properly engineering the material for the application, you have the ability to place a material between the sensor and the environment such that standard environmental light will pass through at a near zero refractive index. However, as the intensity of light shifts towards that of a high powered laser, the material will act with a much higher refractive index and "bend" the intense light away from the sensor such that it cannot be disabled.

Really interesting project and most likely what they for some reason are leaving out of this article. BAE systems has enough detail on their site that I can assume this information is out there for anyone who is looking for it, so not sure why the article doesn't atleast mention this. I would have enjoyed taking this work into grad school, however 2009 didn't feel like a good time to go into research.