Military fiber-optic links - Can they take the heat

Computations show that a fiber-optic communication system 10-m long with a link margin of 28 dB will be degraded to a margin of zero in about five minutes when exposed to nuclear radiation. If the link margin were only 15 dB the lifetime of the system would be only two minutes. Thus, a relatively short fiber-optic system is highly susceptible to failure in a single pass of a vehicle through a decaying radiation belt. Attempting to improve the radiation resistance of the fiber optics by adding mechanical shielding will only negate the advantages of the fiber optics (i.e., light weight) compared to coaxial or shielded-wire cables.