US Navy Close To On-Ship Laser Cannons 309
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the warm-up-the-wave-motion-gun dept.
from the warm-up-the-wave-motion-gun dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Office of Naval Research and industry partner Northrop Grumman said they successfully tested for the first time an on-board laser defense system known as the Maritime Laser Demonstrator (MLD), using it to destroy a small target vessel. The test actually accomplished several other benchmarks, including integrating MLD with a ship's radar and navigation system, and firing an electric laser weapon from a moving platform at-sea in a humid environment."
Uninformative (Score:4, Interesting)
Well that was an uninformative article.
How does the laser work? What is its power? Efficiency? Frequency? Hell it doesn't even say what happened when they tested it.
now where are the Sharks? (Score:4, Interesting)
now where are the Sharks?
Re:Patently useless (Score:4, Interesting)
A fair number of navy vessels, especially the pricey, strategically important ones, do have a nuclear reactor to power it. They are also subject to some concern about the ability of today's minigun-based CIWS defenses to deal with some contemporary and upcoming anti-ship missiles. An anti-boat test is a serious lowball, compared to the eventual task; but I assume somebody had a 'milestone' that needed to be ticked.
For other ships, and coastal targets, the navy has also been showing considerable interest in railguns...
Re:Cool way to kill people (Score:5, Interesting)
Pointless. A simple 40mm bofors (cheap as hell) or a properly set up AA Gatling will do the job far, FAR better against boat swarms. At the same time they are far cheaper, integrate into system with self-auto corrective targeting based on radar signature of gun's own shells, do not require a heavy supply of energy and have significantly fewer points of failure.
This is essentially a theoretical "possible future weapon" exercise - it has nothing to do with actual, realistic modern combat. AT ALL. In the current material technology levels, a laser that would be at least on par with a modern (actually never mind, let's talk on par with a WW2-aged so we don't get too depressed) kinetic gun is at least as far away as commercial fusion.
In other words, it's a huge waste of taxpayers money, that is validated because people that know nothing of actual weapon technology and how it needs to work go "woo, laser cannons, I saw that in the movies!".
Sad really.
Re:Just sail over the horizon _then_ fire your gun (Score:4, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout [wikipedia.org]
Hate to break it to you cowboy, but out of over 60 keyboard layouts the only ones with a and y anywhere near each other are the Bulgarian and Ukrainian. Given the incredible meaning differences in the words and unconventionality of use (rules out non-native speaker issues), and the unlikeliness of the layout, it is incredibly unlikely that this mistake is made by anything other than: a) intentional, or b) force of habit.
Both of those conclusions are... odd.
Re:Just sail over the horizon _then_ fire your gun (Score:5, Interesting)
Modern warships are basically floating generators powering the communications equipment.
They also have missiles, helicopters, and torpedoes. Usually for target engagement, you fire a missile off in the wrong direction, have it fly away for a bit, turn, and then correct course towards the target. The target is not aware of your correct location.
Now if you can see your target that's usually an intelligence failure or you're investigating without engaging. For example, if a Spanish fishing trawler is illegally catching fish off the Grand Banks and you decide to fire a warning shot when they don't pull over.
So where do lasers come in?
1. For defence, or incoming ballistics neutralization. The Phalanx (R2D2 / Dalek) can destroy most incoming ballistics BUT it goes through ammo like Charlie Sheen goes through hookers and Coke! (It fires 50 cal at 3000 RPM) so it's expensive to fire. Replace that with a laser and suddenly it's costing a gallon of fuel instead of $40k with of bullets. The target acquisition time with modern equipment is enough to destroy almost anything, and even better you can now destroy incoming shells with the lasers. You normally wouldn't be able to acquire / waste ammo on the smaller shells. Now you can.
2. For close-in target neutralization. If you can see the target, you can CUT OFF HER MASTS and then the ship is dark. There's no radar, no radio, and no way of acquiring targets without going outside and opening up a sextant and graph paper. And that's a warship. A civilian ship would be dead in the water.
3. Interdiction of small vessels. When the Cole was hit, even if they'd known that there was a threat there was a good chance they couldn't have repelled it. Warships are designed to hit warships, not two guys in a rowboat. They best they could have done was go down to the small arms locker and try to pick them off with machine gun fire. It wasn't until a few years later that they tried, and with remarkable success, using the Phalanx to hit small incoming craft. Again, that's a waste of money and ammo. With a laser, you can just cut them in half and throw the survivors a Kisby ring, OR switch carrier to a MASER and knock them out with the pain.
Re:Cool way to kill people (Score:4, Interesting)
You're not entirely correct - there was resistance, but it was because of firing rates - the rifles traded speed for accuracy and the (very successful) British tactical doctrine at the time emphasized speed of firing. So they used the rifles for their skirmishers, and dressed them green because they were mostly in front of the redcoats and needed to be less conspicuous.
It was Napoleon who regarded the rifle as a toy and refused, point blank, to allow them to be used.
You're correct about conservatism in the armed forces, but I was wearing my nerd hat and had to respond :)