Warships May Get Lasers For Close-In Defense 482
King Louie writes "Raytheon and the US Navy have successfully tested a ship-borne laser capable of shooting down aircraft. Video at the link shows the 32-kilowatt solid-state laser shooting down an unmanned aerial vehicle. The technology is apparently mature enough to be deployed as part of ships' short-range missile defenses, a role currently filled by the Basic Point Defense Missile System (based on the Sea Sparrow missile) and the Close-In Weapons System (based on a 20mm Gatling gun)."
One Question.. (Score:5, Funny)
Is it shark-mountable?
Re:One Question.. (Score:5, Funny)
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We're going to need a bigger shark.
That's necessary just to get the larger sized cooling fins of course. I understand those things can get toasty warm even when water cooled.
Re:One Question.. (Score:5, Funny)
Don't know if we're just fishing for gaffs or trolling for comments, but some people sure have a whale of a time with their puns around here.
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Here you go, the Shark 2000! [flickr.com] And yes, you could mount a laser on this puppy easily.
Re:One Question.. (Score:5, Funny)
Is it shark-mountable?
Now there's a stupid question. Where do you think the lasers COME FROM? Obviously the shark tank.
Re:One Question.. (Score:5, Funny)
Will you guys stop messing with my head? Literally...
Re:One Question.. (Score:5, Funny)
Is it shark-mountable?
Probably, but it would burn the hell out of the shark's groin.
Re:One Question.. (Score:5, Funny)
WARNING: Do not look at shark with remaining good eye.
Powered by wind (Score:4, Funny)
The best part is the Siemens Wind Energy Advertisment before the video. Apparently a with a few Windmills and a laser. Pew, Pew, Pew, we can finally have a green war!
32 kilowatt!!! (Score:5, Informative)
32 kW, not MW, thats kilowatt, not megawatt.
Re:32 kilowatt!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullets and lasers deliver this energy differently - the bullet's energy is transferred to the target in a much shorter time (milliseconds, I assume) which produces more chaotic results than the laser (for the same energy), which is waiting until the target ignites or a hole forms, wrecking the aerodynamics. Even so, I was curious how the energy payloads stack up.
A 32 kilowatt laser delivers (not surprisingly) 32kJ during a one-second pulse. I'm not sure how long this laser pulses, but from the video, it appears to be several seconds.
By way of comparison, a .50 Browning has a muzzle energy of 15kJ, which is about the same as a half-second exposure to the laser.
The Phalanx gun which this the laser purports to replace, on the other hand, shoots 20mm rounds - these could weigh 100g [wikipedia.org] each, for a muzzle energy of 30.25kJ, comparable to the one-second pulse. Of course, the Phalanx shoots 50-75 rounds a second [wikipedia.org], for a total muzzle energy/second of firing of a whopping 2269kJ.
By coincidence, this is the same as the food energy in two Big Macs.
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That would, of course, cause power to be diverted from all other systems, but who among us wouldn't love the idea of being present in the control room and having the lights dim as the ship fires it's ultimate weapon.
Insightful indeed. (Score:5, Insightful)
While energy weapons are gosh-wow sexy, their effects depend on maintaining the beam on the incoming missile for some undetermined length of time, until it either ignites the fuel or destroys the guidance systems. As modern ship-killer missiles tend to be supersonic, keeping the beam focused on a particular spot on an incoming missile is far from trivial, and of course will vary from missie to missile, so the defensive sytems have even more variables to account for. Phalanx and other gun systems use radar to track the incoming missile as well as the stream of outgoing rounds, and adjusts the aim until the tracks intersect.
Another problem is that destroying the missile's guidance system alone won't cut it. If it's already locked in the terminal phase chances are it will be blind, but still hit the target. This is the major reason that CIWS tend to use multi-barrel cannon with extremely high rates of fire (20mm/6,000 rounds per minute in the case of Phalanx, 30mm/4,000 rpm in the Dutch Goalkeeper system, which is built around the gun used in the A-10 aircraft). The intention is to cause as much structural damage to the incoming missile as possible, either destroying it or rendering it incapable of remaining on course, and with a missile like the SS-N-19 Shipwreck, which masses 7,000 kg and travels at Mach 2.5, even if the guidance systems and warhead are nullified, impact, even from large fragments, can still cause catastrophic damage to the defending vessel.
Then there's the energy requirements of a powerful laser, along with the transmission and control systems, massive cabling, fire-suppression, safety etc., versus self-contained units like Phalanx or Goalkeeper which basically just plug into a hole in the deck (oversimplification of course, but not by much). I am not a weapons expert, but personally I don't see the advantage of energy weapons over traditional gun systems for close-in defense.
Tracking and ballistic calculations (Score:5, Interesting)
Bullets and lasers deliver this energy differently
Completely true but there are other factors to consider, the most important of which is actually hitting the target. The most important advantage lasers have is target tracking. With bullets you have to consider two trajectories (the bullet and the target) neither of which is likely to be perfectly straight. With lasers you simply aim directly at the target which is a much simpler tracking problem to solve, especially with modern sensors and vision systems. No need to consider the effects of wind, gravity, aerodynamics, bullet speed, etc. This doesn't make it a trivial problem to solve but it does have advantages.
I think the speed of targeting will be especially interesting and important against hypersonic cruise missiles. I'm curious how long it would take to destroy a missile approaching at 2000 m/s (mach 6). From the time the missile appears on the horizon a close in defense system would have 3-8 seconds to destroy a missile traveling at those speeds depending on how high it was mounted.
Not to say that bullets/shells don't have advantages too. Tricks like proximity fuses obviously aren't possible with lasers.
Of course, the Phalanx shoots 50-75 rounds a second , for a total muzzle energy/second of firing of a whopping 2269kJ.
Only relevant if all the bullets all hit, which they pretty much never do.
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And therein lies the major problem with this laser. It took several seconds to blow up a drone, which presumably isn't optically shielded (ie. shiny).
"Shiny" materials typically provide zero defense against high powered lasers. They need to be specialized materials to become effective.
Not to mention that the faster the missile travels, the greater the atmospheric cooling.
That's true to a limit. Given that most anti-ship missiles travel at multiples of mach, the friction generated at this speeds typically, considerably heats the missile's surface. Furthermore, minor deformations at such speeds can cause catastrophic aerodynamic stresses and failure.
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I'd be very curious to know the output of the units on a nimitz class carrier.
and after a quick wiki article..
two 104 MWe units. Very nice.
Re:32 kilowatt!!! (Score:4, Informative)
And why don't we deploy those kind of units in the municipal power grid?
Actually they do just that in case of an emergency. There are connectors and such that can attach to a power grid in times of emergency so that the ships can provide power to emergency services and so on. I believe they've actually used them a few times.
As to why they don't make these types of units a regular part of the grid it's because they have much different requirements than a land-based power plant. The price per watt is much higher for a power-plant on a ship than one on land due to size, weight, combat-worthiness, and many other factors.
Fricken ships! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Fricken ships! (Score:5, Interesting)
Laser beams AND rail guns. The USN is on the verge of becoming a very "SciFi" weapons platform. If everything takes twice as long as planned then by 2020 you're going to see USN ships equipped with both weapons systems. Rail Guns firing projectiles at OTH targets at 5600MPH and handling close in threats with Phalanx CIWS upgraded with LASERS.
This IS the future.
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But completely useless against low tech diver and C4.
I love sci fi weapons as much as the next geek but seriously. I wouldn't say "This IS t
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But completely useless against low tech diver and C4.
Even more pertinently, it's completely useless against a diver with some C4 who's blowing the hull out of some cruise liner full of rich fat people. Destroyers, aircraft carriers, submarines - they're all great for fighting another country, but we're rapidly reaching the point where no country could practically declare war on another without economically crippling itself.
The future of warfare is between governments and small, mobile rebel groups. Terrorists, guerrillas, freedom fighters, depending on your
The Navy should be warned before deployment (Score:2, Funny)
Pointing lasers at aircraft might get the navy arrested.
Re:The Navy should be warned before deployment (Score:4, Funny)
Pointing lasers at aircraft might get the navy arrested.
By you and what Army?
Numerous advantages (Score:5, Informative)
There are numerous advantages to using lasers instead of traditional weapons:
*) Longer range
*) Better accuracy
*) Unlimited ammunition
*) No pollution from spent weapons
Re:Numerous advantages (Score:5, Funny)
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One problem is that the reflected, scattered light can still be very harmful, easily blinding. I think the light can be blocked the eye with special goggles, but there's bound to be mistakes even when testing it.
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Perfect mirrors, with not a single imperfection that will melt them in a microsecond, which are completely dust free in spite of being outdoors.
Re:Numerous advantages (Score:5, Informative)
GASP! this is what gets moderated as insightful these days!
So the laser took three seconds to burn a whole in the rather unreflective fuselage of the target drone! but would melt anything but a 'perfect' mirror in microseconds. But let us humor this point one moment further and calculate 32kJ / 3E6 = 0.032J ... some of my less intense emotions about this thread have more energy than that!
And further down the thread these brilliant commenteers further apologise how 'perfect' the mirrors inside lasers are and their so special you cant possible coat anything but laser components like that. Narrow bandwidth my rearend!
Try burning a freaking hole onto a polished (90% reflectivity) aircraft grade fuselage with your now 3.2kW laser. Absoption, melting point, mass, heat capacity, heat conductivity... I'll leave it all as an exercise to these enlightened enthusiasts.
Humbly Yours
Pissed off physicist
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Your comment should be modded funny, not insightful. The kind of mirror you can realistically bring to a battlefield is not going to protect you from a 32KW laser aimed in your direction.
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Re:Numerous advantages (Score:5, Insightful)
*) Longer range
Not really. Lasers are strongly attenuated in air, especially in the humid air in marine environments. Trying to get around this problem is the reason we're just getting weapons like this now, as opposed to thirty years ago, and even now they're limited to short ranges.
*) Better accuracy
Yes and no. In order to heat up the target's surface enough to cause destruction, you either need to focus the laser on the exact same spot for long enough time, or just crank the power up and/or widen the beam enough so that it doesn't matter. The first has proven almost impossible, and so we've resorted to the second.
*) Unlimited ammunition
No. There are two kinds of lasers in consideration by the military: chemical and solid-state. Chemical lasers need tons of (duh) chemicals to form the reaction that generates the laser light, and when you run out, you're done shooting. Solid-state lasers require heavy amounts of electricity, which needs to come from somewhere.
*) No pollution from spent weapons
Again, no. Chemical lasers leave behind highly toxic waste products when the reactants are expended; that's the main reason why they're not in heavy use in the military today. Solid-state lasers leave behind pollution from whatever power source you use to generate the electricity.
I'm not saying lasers are awful tools, they're certainly useful in specific applications. But they're not the Wunderwaffen you're making them out to be.
Re:Numerous advantages (Score:5, Informative)
From the article :
Although Booen says that for security reasons he cannot divulge the distance at which the laser-based systems can shoot down incoming threats (or the UAVs' altitudes during the Navy test), he notes that the military would not be interested in the new laser technology if it could not at least double the range of existing weapons.
That would imply that at least in this case it would give longer range and higher accuracy.
Also, regarding the lasers:
The Phalanx--a rapid-fire, computer-controlled, radar-guided gun system--used electro-optical tracking and radio frequency sensors to provide range data to the LaWS, which is made up of six solid-state lasers with an output of 32 kilowatts that simultaneously focus on a target.
So they use the already-existing Phalanx platform for targeting and tracking. Also also:
The weapon combines a 20-millimeter Gatling gun that fires at a rate of either 3,000 or 4,500 shots per minute, with radar to search for and track targets
So it seems that the new laser weapon will supplement or replace the existing gatling gun, and they indicate the laser will more than double the effective range of the setup.
Re:Numerous advantages (Score:5, Informative)
GP said "Better accuracy"
P said "No"
Lasers ARE more accurate than projectiles, wind doesn't shift a laser's course. The need for greater accuracy with a laser is a power issue, not an accuracy issue. Nobody is arguing yet that lasers are fully ready and powerful enough to replace projectiles, just that we are getting closer.
GP said "Unlimited ammunition and No pollution from spent weapons"
P said "No"... to both
Again, solid state lasers, which are the topic of the article have their waste and ammunition limited only by their power source. Seeing as these are being tested for naval deployment, it's a pretty sure bet the power source for these in any significant deployment is going to be a nuclear reactor. That means the "ammunition" supply cycle for the ships lasers will by measured in years, so yes, that is as good as unlimited. The waste is also limited to the size of the reactor vessel, again over that same number of years. Not terribly shabby. The only obstacle is getting the power on the lasers up high enough to be useful even in foggy/cloudy weather.
Re:Numerous advantages (Score:5, Informative)
The Phalanx system by itself has a very good RADAR system behind it, and the outgoing bullet stream is identifiable by that RADAR. Basically, it becomes a very accurate system because the firing system doesn't need to know anything about wind, etc. It just pushes the az/el/range of the outgoing doppler objects (bullets) to the az/el/range of the incoming doppler objects (bad things). Any effects of wind, etc are just taken into account automagically.
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Since the only Naval ships which are, currently, nuclear powered are aircraft carriers
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Technically many high-speed surface ships run on gas turbines rather then diesel with diesel generators as emergency backup. While you probably could put them on nuclear power source, that typically would not be a good idea - the hulls are usually designed to run on specific engines designed for the hull, and while it is certainly within conceivable realm of possibility to replace such turbines with specially designed nuclear reactor and electric engines, it is extremely unfeasible in most cases, causing ma
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*) Longer range
*) Better accuracy
*) Unlimited ammunition
*) No pollution from spent weapons
*) Standard missiles can engage targets 50-100 miles away. Power on the laser is diminished the farther you go, making it practical for close in targets.
*) Accuracy is better due to zero flight time. I wouldn't want to be behind the target, tho. I'm sure that the tracking is not 100%.
*) Ammo is limited by the fuel on the ship.
*) Just a big cloud of exhaust from the stacks.
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Longer range & Better accuracy
How do you figure? A laser can be disbursed by the atmosphere like any other light wave and just because it travels in straight line does not mean that it can effectively hit that target. Unless the airplane is flying in a straight line, it can miss just like anything else. Guided missiles are effective in that it gets close enough to the target to limit the targets options for evasion. Unless you have some super computer that perfectly track a moving target the whole
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A laser would require energy, how much energy, I don't know how much but I doubt it is a pair of double AA are powering the thing so lets not pretend it has unlimited ammunition.
32 kW according to the fine article, and if the laser is mounted on a carrier it will be a pair of Westinghouse A4W nuclear reactors powering it. The number of shots one of these things could fire won't be limited by the power plant, that's for sure. On a cruiser or destroyer it will be powered by the ship's service diesel generators. Sure, the ship could run out of JP5, but at that point it's dead in the water anyway because that's what the gas turbines that turn the screws run on as well. Long story short
Man whatnow? (Score:4, Funny)
Paint the Target (Score:2)
Seems like they had to hold the laser on the target for a long time until it worked. If you can keep a laser beam on target that long, you might as well use the laser to guide an effective, high explosive round to it.
Re:Paint the Target (Score:4, Insightful)
Depending on the duty cycle of the parts in the weapon laser vs. a painting laser, it could well be far more efficient, from a logistical point of view, to use this system than to expend some consumable weapon guided by a painting laser. Never underestimate the importance of logistics.
It also could be more reliable, as you just have to keep the laser operating and on target, rather than keep a laser operating and on target and avoid a failure in the launching, propulsion, guidance, or warhead system of the separate passive-laser homing missile. Given the consequence of failure with you point defense system, even small differences in reliability can be a big deal.
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If you can keep a laser beam on target that long, you might as well use the laser to guide an effective, high explosive round to it.
Sounds like faulty reasoning to me. For one thing, there are many values for "a long time." If you have to hold the guidance laser on the target for 30 seconds, but the defense laser for 20 seconds, those are both non-instantaneous, but when you're talking about an enemy aircraft trying to bomb you, I'd assume that's a world of difference. Also seems like we might not want missiles certain situations, like maybe when the enemy aircraft are in close proximity to friendly aircraft. I'd also expect the eff
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Re-pointing a laser: not so much work
Re-pointing a missile traveling at mach 3, especially after passing the target: hard
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Seems like they had to hold the laser on the target for a long time until it worked.
I wonder what happens when your target is rotating, thus not exposing the same spot to the heat... oh dear, did I just counter a multi-million dollar weapon system?
I'm sure it works fine on drones that fly in a straight line and are painted black.
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That's my point. This cheaper laser takes too long to destroy the target. An HE round destroys it instantly (at greater cost, obviously).
Plus, since it's new technology, they'll sell it at a 1,000,000% mark-up. I know, because I'm a defense contractor ;-)
Well, that's exciting (Score:2)
As a military contractor, I encourage the addition of new systems onto NATO ships.
As a Mechwarrior fan, I say bring on the Clan-LAMS. 1d6 heat?
Only a few orders of magnitude off... (Score:5, Informative)
...shows the 32-megawatt solid-state laser...
From TFA:
...which is made up of six solid-state lasers with an output of 32 kilowatts that simultaneously focus on a target.
As my stat mech professor once said, "but hey, what's a few orders of magnitude between friends?"
Priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice. So, we don't have money for the unemployed, for the ill, or even for veterans benefits, but we can afford laser systems to shoot down planes for imaginary invasions.
Seventy percent of the defense industry is a private set of corporations whose economic incentive is to discover (or invent) threats, and then sell the government the contract to fight this imaginary enemy. Sounds like a nice recipe for solutions that exacerbate the underlying problems, and not by accident [go.com].
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
A corrupt defense industry is one thing, but opponents who would like to destroy warships date back thousands of years.
Ships are (very) high value targets, which obviously merit beam weapons to defend against attack, and particularly so as UAV systems proliferate.
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well, the unemployed, veterans and the ill could build, man and be targets for these devices if they had even the slightest motivation to be useful.
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Your description could apply to all kinds of things equally well.
Homeland Defense - First invent an imaginary enemy, then enact all kinds of policies, surveillance, and counter-measures to defend against it.
Consultants - Invent an inefficiency in an industry then sell services, software, and plans to work around it.
Home Cleaning Products Industry - Note that something might be dirty/infested and sell people the product to clean it.
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Well, if you want to invest in more war instead of, say, better infrastructure, or more education, that's a choice you can make. A stupid one, in my opinion, but a choice nonetheless.
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However, the world is a big, nasty, brutish, ugly place, and thus this is one of the few things that th
A serious question (Score:4, Insightful)
Next, as a former soldier myself, I can tell you that we are very appreciative of the best equipment money can buy. You know, because it saves our lives and all. I figure that paying for that is very least I and the rest of the tax payers can do for those that are willing to lay down their lives so you can complain about it freely.
First of all, I'm not trying to denigrate anyone's service. I know many people feel that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are justified, and I blame myself as much as I blame the politicians and businessmen who exploit our armed forces for their own goals and benefits.
But what if you had been asked to perform your duty to your country by educating poor children (in foreign lands or at home), or to help build roads or work with communities to reduce drug problems, mentor troubled teens, or become a surgeon and work for a lower wage in a government hospital?
It seems odd to me that the same people who think using force and violence to impose our will on foreign nationals - and putting their own life at risk in the process - is patriotic, while any of the previous paragraph gets relabeled as communism or some other misnomer. A battlefield medic is a hero, while a government paid surgeon would be considered incompetent, even though they are the same thing. The whole thing seems nonsensical to me.
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Why don't you sell the computer and donate the money to charity?
Because that, like your question, would be incredibly stupid, shortsighted, and entirely besides the point.
If America is broke, we should be rolling back the tax cuts for the wealthy and withdrawing our troops from around the world, or at least preparing our allies for the eventuality. But we're not broke - people are just hoodwinking the populace into accepting that without any evidence, and using the resulting hysteria for their own purposes.
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something the various armed forces of the world are actively prepared to do again.
The actions we guard against are exactly the actions we execute every single day across the world. We're not scared of Russia or China or Cuba trying to invade the homeland. We're scared of someone we're abusing fighting back.
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I live in a reality based on historical fact, not on wish-thinking and jingoism. So I imagine that's quite disconnected from your reality.
Here's an argument for your belief system [project-syndicate.org] that is reasonably rounded, but wrong. Here's why:
To be sure, the US now has more power resources relative to other countries than Britain had at its imperial peak. But the US has less power - in the sense of control over other countries' internal behavior - than Britain did when it ruled a quarter of the globe.
For example, Britis
Question... (Score:2)
I don't know much about lasers so perhaps someone can answer this:
If I were to make a missile/plane/uav with a chrome coating, something mirror-like and reflective, would the laser still work?
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Re:Question... (Score:5, Funny)
the shark will still bite you though but nice try
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The usual response here on Slashdot is that since most of the mirror surfaces you're likely to get are irregular/imperfect, the heat from the laser would likely ablate (burn off) any mirror coating you have before it would do what you're thinking. In the case of chrome, it's not a perfect mirror, and it wouldn't work.
I think you would need a very perfect mirror surface, and even the
Other options... (Score:2)
Oh well, so use lightweight ablative coating. With the typical times of flybys / warning before missile hit, that shouldn't be much of a problem. For some bonus points, make the coating release a barrier (in whatever form - aerosol, plasma, who cares as long as it works)
Real bonus points: add retroreflectors; they might work only for a short time and reflect only a small part of incoming radiation...but there's bound to be something delicate on the other end. For that matter - how hard millions of toy ballo
Re:Other options... (Score:4, Interesting)
So..."if the heatshield is ablative, then after an exceedingly short period of time, the superheated air is now hitting the real surface and doing damage, no?" Or perhaps the idea behind ablative surfaces is exactly to dissipate far larger amounts of energy than it would be otherwise possible without them...it's not about absolute defense (it never is), just about changing the odds
Gases don't "burn of" - at most they can turn to plasma; which would be a great thing - it's not translucent.
And hey, if the baloons are released from some distance / are just floating there... ;p
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Warships aren't cost effective (Score:2)
Yes but... (Score:5, Funny)
I see a great need... (Score:5, Funny)
I see a great need for a UAV-mounted Jiffy Pop module.
It is a moral imperative.
Navy's answer to Chinese Anti-Carrier Missile (Score:2, Interesting)
Chinese have developed and are testing the Dong Feng 21D missile, capable of accurately targeting and hitting a moving navy Aircraft Carrier from 2000 miles away. US experts are scared. Since capabilities of this missile are not fully known to US Navy, their strategy to combat it currently is SM-3 interceptor rockets launched from Aegis destroyers and cruisers that escort Aircraft Carriers.
Problem with that is that the reloading capacity of these Aegis equipped ships isn't fast enough to protect against a v
Re:Navy's answer to Chinese Anti-Carrier Missile (Score:4, Interesting)
A carrier group would be the least of our worries if the Chinese decided to launch a surprise attack. It would have to be a surprise attack, because we wouldn't put our ships within range of them unless we had some plan or some way of negating the threat. Telling a few soldiers to rush a machine gun nest is one thing, but telling a large part of our navy to rush the equivalent of a machine gun nest is quite another. Carrier groups are NOT expendable unless that's our only option.
The scenario could go two ways.
The Chinese launch a surprise attack and there's an 80% casualty rate within a carrier group. We send a few hundred cruise missiles to rain down on their capital and shore line defenses while another carrier group comes to fill in the position. One side backs off when the other starts threatening to launch nukes.
Or, the Chinese declare war on us for some reason and aside from a few slap fights and invasion of Taiwan/Japan/Korea, we don't see much action because we're currently tied up in the cat box of the Middle East. We damn sure don't send a carrier group into hell's maw to die to those missiles.
Re:Navy's answer to Chinese Anti-Carrier Missile (Score:4, Funny)
It'd also be useless if the USSR reformed and launched a sneak attack in league with the martians, which is an equally relevant scenario in the current geopolitical climate and the scenarios for which this system is intended.
Obligatory (Score:3, Funny)
no robo sharks! (Score:2)
no robo sharks!
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20 miles isn't far for a 32 megawatt laser I think. 32 megawatts is a lot.
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>> And what if it's a cloudy day?
Crank up Dark Side of the Moon and spark one?
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"The technology is apparently mature enough to be deployed as part of ships' short-range missile defenses"
Re:Yeah. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, since the only reason to adopt this(no doubt more expensive and power hungry) system is that offers hope against missiles, why testing against UAVs? Well, if I were an optimist, I would say that this is just one of the tests in the development process. If I were a pessimist, I would say that the fine folks at Raytheon are following in the time-honored tradition of anti-missile systems, and responding to the fact that the problem is hard by moving the goalposts until their system is up to the "task"...
Hopefully, well before deployment, it will see proper "red team"/"green team" type testing, where the opposing force, made up of the most devious and talented people at their disposal, is free to try every sneaky, optically confusing, silver plated, ablative armor protected, etc. hypothetical near future threat that they can come up with against the system. A very valuable learning exercise....
Re:Yeah. (Score:5, Insightful)
This offers far less hope against missile swarms and fast cruise missiles then lead-spewing kinetic weapons. With this you need to affect a single point on the missile from the front for quite some time to get results. If it's a fast cruise missile with mach3-mach5 terminal approach, laser is useless - it simply won't have enough time to do damage. So is kinetic CIWS. Missile based CIWS has a chance as it can engage at decent range and score a one shot kill.
Against swarms, this is even worse. You have to burn every individual missile, retarget and burn next one. Even if by some stroke of luck you succeed in this titanic task and can get missile terminated in say 3 seconds of burning it (completely impossible with laser as weak in tests), all that opponent needs to do to counter it is to program missile to go into a spin in terminal stage, making it impossible to focus at a single point of the missile. Or install a high-albedo tip. Or just attack in a stormy weather where laser energy will dissipate into water droplets long before it hits the missile.
Kinetic CIWS like phalanx/kashtan on the other hand actually have a decent chance of shooting slow and small missiles of this kind down, as they can usually kill a missile in one-two hits and are largely unaffected by weather conditions. Missile CIWS are better, but tend to get overloaded with sheer numbers.
All in all, this is just a PR stunt to show US taxpayers that their money is spent on yet another hollywood-style toy with little room for real life applications. This is a weapon for space age and space warfare where weather does not exist and laser can be effective at far greater ranges.
Re:Yeah. (Score:5, Insightful)
A 32 MW laser would be a fine alternative to a gatling gun - 32 MW is a lot of power, you don't need to paint a single spot on an incoming missile. The laser in the video was just a few kW, and so took several seconds to kill a drone. The gatling guns also kill one threat at a time, and it takes time to get a few rouns into an incoming missile (the first few rounds usually miss, the gun tracks both rounds an missile on RADAR and corrects fire until it gets it right), and once you do the remains are still a serious threat that will cause real damage and casualties. A laser has a lot more potential to cause a catastrophic kill of the missile, where the remains aren't nearly as threatening (and all the fuel is gone) when the ship is hit.
But gatling guns deal with threats that make it past the missiles, and the advantage of the Sea-Sparrow-based defenses is you can launch all your counter-missiles rapidly against many incoming threats at once, at medium range. A laser cannon might grow into that role, but it would be much harder (and have enormous power demands, but then we do need to protect ships with nuclear power, so maybe that's OK).
The other nice advantage of a solid-state laser is that it's not used up after one engangement. The gatling guns require significant service after minimal use. Can the Sea Sparrow-based CIWS can be "re-stocked" at sea?
Re:Yeah. (Score:5, Informative)
This laser is 32kW, and it's already pushing the limits of solid state laser tech. 32MW laser is nowhere in sight for several decades, unless we make major breakthroughs in materials needed, not to even talk about power draw, which for current laser at 20% efficiency would be around 160MW for your suggested 32MW laser. And with increased power, the efficiency of laser installation is likely to decrease significantly.
You're gonna have some pretty hardcore power cabling, cooling system and a nuclear reactor to power that kind of a thing, not to even mention the epic size of a weapon. Cooling system alone will probably be bigger then a modern missile silo.
This replacing a small, localized and largely autonomous system that performs better in most conditions? I think not.
Comparing this to Sea Sparrows or any other ship based medium range SAM in any way other then augmentation is just plain foolish anyway. This caps at a few kilometers, depending on weather. It's a potential kinetic CIWS replacement (i.e. phalanx). It's in no way even a contender for SAM CIWS replacement. Not even because the tech isn't ready, but because the tech is unsuitable by default. Weather and fact that Earth is a sphere will make sure of this.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why can't the pulse compression technology that's used for lasic lasers be used for military lasers?
If the problem is painting the same spot on a missile for a second or so, wouldn't it be a lot easier if a 0.1 second pulse is compressed down to a femtosecond so all the energy put into the laser over the course of 0.1 seconds is delivered in 0.000000000000001 seconds?
Re:Yeah. (Score:4, Informative)
Payload. Much of energy is wasted as such lasers have very low efficiency. You will have to dissipate around 4-5 times the energy you get on laser's focus around the laser itself as waste heat. When it's lasik, you have nice and low power ratings which can be cooled easily. When it comes to large powerful lasers, it is simply not doable with current materials. Your installation will simply melt down or even vaporise itself if you have to output the energy needed to burn through metal in that kind of a small time window.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A few points:
The fiber lasers used in the demonstration can approach 80% efficiency.
A more realistic 500KW would shoot just about anything down and would easily be powered by ship or grid.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If the missile is moving at mach 5, it really doesn't matter if the bullet is stationary or at mach 1, most of the KE is supplied by the missile itself.
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One of the biggest concerns is that in a war with China or North Korea they would swarm our aircraft carriers with airplanes and missiles. Developing something like this to counter the asymmetric warfare would be huge.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Swarm[ing] our aircraft carriers with airplanes and missiles" is NOT "asymmetric" warfare. That is your basic nation to nation warfare, where someone has the guts and sense of honor to fight in compliance with the rules of the Geneva Convention. Asymmetric warfare would be someone floating a civilian boat up the the warship and setting off a suicide bomb. Google "USS Cole (DDG 67) on October 12, 2000" for an example.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
where someone has the guts and sense of honor to fight in compliance with the rules of the Geneva Convention.
It doesn't seem to me that fighting to win with the lmited resources you have at your disposal implies a lack of guts or honour.
Re:Yeah. (Score:4, Insightful)
An advance in missile technology that takes missiles well out of the targeting ability of phalanx guns could do the same for aircraft carriers, which would sort of demote the US navy from "scary" to "eh" in a few hours... Hence, presumably, the interest in lasers and railguns and suchlike exotic ultra-high-velocity stuff.
The more "asymmetric" possibility of anti-ship missiles would be that, if they can be built into suitably rugged and easy to use one-time-use packages, programmed just to hit the biggest ship in range, or the one closest to the direction it was pointed, when used, you open up all kinds of fascinating capabilities for whatever ragged non-state-actors you are using as puppets at the moment.... Missiles are more expensive than artillery; if you are going to be shooting lots and lots of them; but offer greater portability and one-time punch....
If, for instance, anti-ship missiles, in a package large enough to crack a modern warship at least enough to require it to return to port for repair(and to cook off the onboard munitions, if lucky) and small enough to transport on a civilian truck or smallish boat, pretty much every modern navy in the world would have to triple the onboard laundry facilities to deal with all the shitting themselves... Near land, any dinky little shack with a seaward-facing window could pop a missile at any second. At sea, any civilian fishing boat in range is a potential threat(but you aren't allowed to just butcher them all). One of those fiberglass mini-subs that they use for drug running, which probably peanuts for a radar signature and can just quietly move around on electric engines, could pop up and fire at any moment. It would get ugly...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Yeah. Too bad, though, since dropping gravity bombs from planes had its heyday during 1935 to 1955."
There have been more (tonnage) dropped since 1955 than in the 2 decades you mentioned. (And thas even discounting JDAM's and laser guided gravity bombs. Of course nearly all of it was dropped by US or 'Allied' planes.
"Nobody's tried doing that for a long long time."
Not against the US navy, since it has always had air superiority since after the Vietnam war. However The Royal Navy suffered many hits during tt
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And what if it's a cloudy day?
Then they use different weapons?
Did you think they were going to scrap all existing weapons and replace them with this thing?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I know I saw that movie but I really have no memory of it.
COOL!
Re:Let's keep it orderly... (Score:5, Funny)
Red lasers on one side, blue lasers on the other. I keep forgetting which is which...
It's red lasers on the port side, green lasers on the starboard side showing from dead ahead to 2 points abaft of the beam. I thought everyone knew that.