On Saturday, October 1, 2016 at 6:23:06 PM UTC+13, Steve Koerner wrote:
That said, bugs are pretty small and radar and lidar operate to an r^-4 law -- a tough nut to push against.

Yup. There's the problem. If you can scan the laser around, then the detection side is 'only' an r^-2 challenge but even so.. We already have lasers which are powerful enough but the big issue is detecting enough light from dust/bugs set against a bright background at a big enough distance (1-2km) and in a short enough time (100ms) to be useful. The people using LIDAR to map air currents around wind turbines use big-aperture (30 - 40cm) reflecting telescopes to capture enough incoming light. Wing pod, anyone?

Then imagine if every glider had them and imagine the cross-talk issues from all those lasers frantically scanning. Having said that, the vehicle lidar could be set up quite easily to detect big objects in a themal, like gliders circling within 1-2km and it could then give a warning on a HUD... oh, wait...

DH
TX