Navy Will Make 2013 Its Year of the Laser Gun

"Ships with fricken lasers on there decks"



www.wired.com...

Well, it had to happen! This is awesome.

I know there has been many stories about this, but it finally looks like there bringing out the big guns......I mean Lasers.

During a year of budget cuts that has the U.S. military freaking out, the Navy is improbably signaling it’ll take major steps forward on developing laser cannons.

Next month, the Navy plans to devote a big panel discussion on the “Breakthrough Technologies” behind energy weapons at its annual D.C.-area confab known as Sea Air Space. Heading it will be the officer charged with moving those lasers out of sci-fi and onto ships, Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, the Navy’s chief of research. It’ll be a de facto prologue to a far more significant event the Navy plans in the coming months: the first-ever demonstration tour of a laser gun aboard a surface ship, the U.S.S. Ponce.

That’s a major show of confidence in laser technology, for two reasons. First, testing a laser gun — most likely a solid-state laser — on a ship at sea puts enormous pressure on a much-hyped weapon to show-and-prove. Second, the laser isn’t going on any old ship, it’s going on the Ponce, recently retrofitted to become an “Afloat Forward Staging Base” — that is, a new launchpad for attack helicopters, drones and commandos for, among other missions, counterterrorism raids. In other words, the Navy is putting laser weaponry aboard one of the ships it’s most eager to highlight.

All of this is still a demonstration — one with the added and perhaps unintended consequence of adding more hype to a form of weapon that’s been nothing but hype for literally decades. But it comes at a time when congressionally mandated budget shortfalls have the Navy scaling back nearly everything it plans on doing this year. Research cash is especially scarce. Yet one of the naval community’s biggest laser advocates argues that the unique features of so-called “directed energy” weaponry are particularly well-suited for an era of tighter budgets.


“In a sense, it’s more economical — but more than just theoretically economical, it’s a way to have deeper magazines, because your fuel tanks become your mags,” says Nevin Carr, a retired two-star admiral who preceded Klunder as head of the Office of Naval Research. (Klunder declined comment for this story.) Laser weaponry recharges by taking power from a power source like a shipboard generator. Keep adding power and the gun will keep shooting, provided that the ship isn’t diverting power from its propulsion systems. (A big caveat, and one that the Navy repeatedly swears it’s got covered.)

A rechargeable magazine doesn’t just save the Navy money on weapons. “Now that refueling becomes rearming, it changes the logistics trail,” Carr argues. “Think of all the ships that carry weapons” to warships across oceans, burning through fuel — and rising fuel costs are a problem the Navy just hasn’t been able to solve.

the first-ever demonstration tour of a laser gun aboard a surface ship

First time? I don't get it. What was this?
www.scientificamerican.com...

reply to post by Phage


That was smoke and (Giant) mirrors Phage!

No, in all seriousness I have heard about several "test" platforms before, but is this the "first" time it has been placed on an "in service" ship?

reply to post by CaptainBeno

Ah. Now I get it.
That's pretty rapid development for the system.

Still, even if the laser system continues to test successfully, such a weapon would not be fully developed for combat before 2016, according to Booen.

www.scientificamerican.com...

From 2011:

reply to post by Phage


Pretty amazing though hey? Silent (maybe) and deadly!

Pew pew!

reply to post by CaptainBeno

Yep. They burned the boat at a range of a mile. I don't know how long the laser was on it though.

For the "old" Navy, the blue water Navy, I don't see it being a useful offensive weapon. But with the "new" Navy, the littoral Navy, it could be a different story.

A global force for good.

As cool and nifty nice interesting as Laser, or even Maser (Microwave Laser) weapons are, one problem with the platform is that it can't shoot over the horizon.

It otherwise makes for a great defensive weapon platform for targeting LOS threats.

reply to post by Phage


Yep. It would be interesting to see how long this "laser" was focused on the rear of that boat? Surely it would be a simple exercise to just turn around if you suspected imminent laser damage? I would have thought it would have taken a little while to burn.

As for the first vid you kindly posted, I would imagine that is a better way to apply the weapon due to the pilot not knowing this thing was focused on it's underbelly.

Ouch! It's getting hot in here!

reply to post by Druscilla


Agreed, maybe aircraft are a better option i.e. Ship to aircraft.

Focus on it longer and no real horizon issues, except if they are low on the horizon etc.

Great tool for taking out bomber formations perhaps? But that does not really happen any longer........does it?

Originally posted by CaptainBeno
Heading it will be the officer charged with moving those lasers out of sci-fi and onto ships, Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, the Navy’s chief of research.

I dub it the Klunderbuss.

Official, TM, copyrighted, send me checks, I'm here all week.

I would hope that the new laser weapon will have more catastrophic and immediate effects than the ones shown in the videos thus far posted. Im thinking it will be a half decent weapon for use by a serious military, at the point where less than a seconds worth of output results in enough power being expended to pass clear through a ships hull, its engines, and out the other side.

Other wise, I hate to break the news, but the whole idea will be a totally lame duck. Big military vessels already carry weapons that can put holes in an outboard motor at range. Heck, they carry weapons that could reduce such a vessel and larger, to so much vapour. But a laser which could number one cut an entire enemy vessel, splice an attacking aircraft in two, or blast missiles out of the air? Now THAT is a development worth making.

reply to post by CaptainBeno


Interesting find CaptainBeno Now if they modify the Laser beam to rings is it then a Ray these then can guide them away… as opposed to hit and fragment if not x-37b or upgrade intercepted why in EA*RTH space…

NAMASTE*******

Originally posted by TrueBrit
blast missiles out of the air

My guess is this is what they would like at this point, for instance notice any similarities with this [LaWS] system

sonic rings vibrate material away ... more energy more vibe in ring object fragments to particles

reply to post by iforget


Thats all very interesting and what have you, but anti missile laser systems are not a new concept at all. Using one as part of the main offensive capability of the ship however.... thats new, and to fit that bill, this laser is going to have to be a freaking gargant of a laser!

Looks like a replacement for the phalanx as far as CIWS goes. Likely more range without the ballistic arc and no worries about where any missing rounds land. (Makes it more usable for defense while moored.)

But how well is its all-weather capability? It would be a problem if there are beam dispersion issues when you have an inbound while in heavy seas under a gale with fierce sleet and heavy rain. Might want to keep a gatling or two just in case. Not to dismiss it entirely though, laser would still make a nice complementary defensive weapon when conditions allow its use.

If it can be demonstrated as effective under the crappiest of weather, then I'd really be amazed and all for it.

reply to post by CaptainBeno

Directed Energy Directorate


The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Directed Energy Directorate is the Air Force's center of expertise for directed energy and optical technologies. The Directed Energy Directorate focuses in four core technical competencies: Laser Systems, High Power Electromagnetics, Weapons Modeling and Simulation, and Directed Energy and Electro-Optics for Space Superiority.

AFRL pioneered the first and only megawatt class airborne laser and is a leader in ground-based space imagining using adaptive optics with our 3.5 meter telescope in New Mexico and a 3.6 meter telescope in Hawaii. The lab is transitioning game-changing counter-electronics weapon technologies that can degrade, damage or destroy electronic systems with minimum collateral damage.



www.kirtland.af.mil...

Light is cheaper than missiles... That's probably the new driving push for these kinds of weapons. They were tested successfully ages ago, so I have to think we're under-reporting the actual capabilities of these things. Obviously, they solved the power problems plaguing the earlier designs.

What you have to understand is 20-30 years ago when people started burning up from the inside out and it was called the SHC spontaneous human combustion, the idea was laughable.

They never confirmed that the technology existed until now.

Folks, they've had for years the ability to turn you into a pile of ash. Now they have improved upon that and have made it military-grade.

Constructing weaponized lasers is fiscally irresponsible for anything short of anti-aircraft/drone technologies. It takes approximately 1000 times as much money to pay for clustered diodes and heat sinks connected to an appropriate number of regulators and power supply as it does to purchase one destructive device capable of similar ranges and material damage. The bulk of these devices is so great than the normal sized machines require several tonnes of equipment and generators. Sadly, scaling this down to the lowest power requirements to kill an unarmored target still leaves you with a device that costs half a million dollars and weighs more than the largest antimateriel rifle plus ammo.