Ultra-short duration pulse lasers

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Anthony

That's talking about penetrating atmosphere, not penetrating armor. And in fact they still have to let the channel evacuate, plasma at the density of room temperature air will still block them pretty effectively (the difference is that plasma at 1% of the density of room temperature air will block visible light but won't be super effective against the shorter wave radiation).

No, it clearly isn't. The fact that it isn't is the entire point of that page and its reason for existence.

Here's the entire paragraph that the latter sentence I quoted is in:
"Air is transparent to the light of blasters, but the plasma the blaster pulse creates when incident upon condensed matter is opaque to their light. As a result, a thin layer of plasma absorbs all the light and then violently explodes. Ray beams have the opposite issue. They easily penetrate the energetic plasmas they create, allowing the beam to pass through and drill deeply. However, non-ionized matter of all kinds is essentially opaque to these radiations - including air. Consequently, the ray beam has to "burn" through air, ionizing it to a plasma state in order for the beam to penetrate."

"Pass through and drill deeply" is plainly talking about what happens at a surface, in contrast to the immediately preceding description of what happens to a 'blaster' at a surface.