  Recent models of soft diffraction include a hard pomeron pole besides the
usual soft term. Such models violate the black-disk limit around Tevatron
energies, so that they need to be supplemented by a unitarisation scheme.
Several such schemes are considered in this letter, where we show that they
lead to a large uncertainty at the LHC. We also examine the impact of
unitarisation on various small-t observables, the slope in t of the elastic
cross section, or the ratio of the real to imaginary parts of the scattering
amplitude, leading to the conclusion that the existence of a hard pomeron in
soft scattering may be confirmed by LHC data.
