tadchem wrote:

On Dec 13, 11:18 am, Peter Fairbrother wrote:

Not so, actually - an Airbus weighs about 400 tons, call the exposure 1
kW/kg, or perhaps 1 degree C per second, so it would take several
minutes, not milliseconds, before the Airbus might start losing
structural strength. If it was flying rather than parked, the air would
cool it so much that it wouldn't be affected at all.


How long would the Airbus' avionics last in a 400 megawatt microwave
beam?

You can't fly those crates by the seat-of-the-pants. Knock out the
electronic fly-by-wire systems and the plane becomes a brick.

As Peter said, a microwave energy beam would be spread over an area
in the square kilometre range. This is not really for security's sake
it is because of basic physics making it impossible to focus a microwave
beam very tightly over long distances. The beam would be survivable
by an unshielded human being (or more likely by a bird flying through
it). The electronics in the jetliner are shielded by the hull of the
plane and will survive the beam even more so than the human wandering
into the beam. This is not a problem.


Alain Fournier