US Navy Close To On-Ship Laser Cannons 309
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."
Cool way to kill people (Score:2, Informative)
Killing people is OK as long as you use cool technology to do it.
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Well if you actually RTFA, it's for ship defense against small boats, i.e. suicide speedboat swarms that countries like Iran have shown to be willing to deploy. My guess is that the typical 20mm cannons are too slow or too short ranged to react to more than a handful of these agile targets before they close in and the laser system is developed to address this weakness.
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:Cool way to kill people (Score:4, Informative)
This is essentially a theoretical "possible future weapon" exercise - it has nothing to do with actual, realistic modern combat.
To be fair, there was a time that the machine gun, submarine and airplane fell into this category too.
Though I do have to admit ... the current guns and firearms and such do seem hard to beat.
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This is essentially a theoretical "possible future weapon" exercise - it has nothing to do with actual, realistic modern combat.
To be fair, there was a time that the machine gun, submarine and airplane fell into this category too.
Though I do have to admit ... the current guns and firearms and such do seem hard to beat.
During the Napoleonic war, the British army actively fought against the introduction of rifles. Favouring the proper and well tested Musket, despite the greater range and firepower of rifled guns. Rifle units were set apart and even dressed differently to regular troops (green coats rather then red coats).
Conservatism is nothing new to armed forces, resistance to new ideas has always been great. The old saying "generals are equipped to fight the last war" exists for a reason.
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 :)
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Most wars before WWI were contests between monarchs. The actual people couldn't care less who won - it's not like their lives would get any better. War was supposed to be fought by honourable opponents armed with more or less the same weapons.
That was the romanticised history. Medieval and pre-medieval warfare was littered with people trying to get unfair advantages over their enemies. From compisite bows to crossbows, at one time the nobility of Europe attempted to get the crossbow outlawed because it could take out an armoured knight. This didn't work because the minute someone needed a peasant militia to go up against armoured knights, they made crossbows. Every king, lord and emperor wanted better trebuchets, would launch disease laden corp
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Laser does not usurp kinetic energy of projectile.
True, but it distorts the shape of the projectile, causing it to tumble and go off course.
Anyway, who cares about bullets being shot at a ship?
It's the missiles (both guided and "ballistic") that are packed with explosives and electronics that are really vulnerable to lasers.
Anti-ship missiles are far better
Except that ships have a fixed (and not very large) supply of missiles, but do have lots and lots of electricity for lasers.
close range
Who says you lase it at close range? Burn that bastard as soon as it comes over the horizon.
Re:Cool way to kill people (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
You really have no idea what you are talking about. Every single branch of the U.S. military dearly wants guided lasers to be able to disable incoming mortar rounds, missiles, aircraft, boats and enemy personnel. They have been actively testing these devices for the past several years by removing the guns off of their radar-guided mounts and replacing them with these high-energy lasers.
The lasers are appealing because they make it easier to hit the target. With conventional ballistics, you have to consider both the target's trajectory and that of your interceptor. Additionally, your interceptor has a finite size, so you not only need to line up its path with that of the target, but you also need to coordinate the arrival times of both objects at that point in space. With a light-speed weapon, you just point at where the target is currently. Additionally, if you miss in a populated area, you do not have to worry about your interceptor causing collateral damage. The military currently uses self-deflagrating rounds to address this issue, so that they will burn up before they hit the ground. If you have ever watched a mortar defense system in action, you'll notice it takes A LOT of rounds to hit the mortar.
Finally, your concerns about tracking and auto-correcting are unfounded. These systems use an IR laser and an IR camera to guide it. The system can see the target, the laser beam (due to scattered light), and the hit-region illuminated by the laser. There is no longer any radar needed.
You may not be excited about this system, but the US soldiers deployed overseas are.
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Actually, not only have I "thought about it", I'm actually something of an armchair expert in the subject.
1. Tracking is done either automatically with a radar, or manually by a gunner. Radar guidance generally scans surface, locks on, does calibrated targeting (i.e. points gun in the general direction of the target) and starts firing. Then it radar tracks the relation of shells' trajectory to targets location and auto-corrects.
This is why pretty much all of the ship-based close range AA is usually an auton
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Outfitting carrier with a laser system makes a whole lot less sense. Besides the obvious energy feed problems, carrier is not a ship that is designed to defend itself from a direct attack, and as such typically carries only small set of anti-air weaponry (with really crappy field of view due to lack of elevated spots to place them into).
If your carrier has any contact with "swarming boats", that means your perimeter defense ships are dead or totally overwhelmed. Carrier shooting back is akin to general havi
Re:Cool way to kill people (Score:5, Insightful)
Eh, it's the bloody navy. Who exactly are they going to vaporize?
You can complain about cool technology "killing people" in the context of, say, dropping bombs on cities. In that case you've got a clear argument that the weapon in question can and will be used in a way that will leave innocent civilians dead, since it's not like shrapnel knows the difference between the barracks and the orphanage. However, a weapon useful only against military targets, for instance a laser to slag warships, missiles and aircraft, isn't very useful for carrying out war crimes, and isn't likely to mistake a bus-full of nuns for an enemy aircraft carrier.
Bottom line, if the people being killed are hostile armed forces in a time of war, not killing them gives them the opportunity to kill you instead.
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and isn't likely to mistake a bus-full of nuns for an enemy aircraft carrier..
You mean that actual nun incident [bbc.co.uk] you reference was just an identification error? The one that caused protesters to chant "Washington Guns Killed American Nuns" during Alexander Haig's commencement speech at Syracuse? [google.com]
Those nuns were targeted, and should it suit someone in the right position to send a laser blast into a bus full of nuns, you can bet they will do it with no qualms at all.
The clear argument that weapons will be u
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People have been using "bus load of nuns" as a shorthand for "group of innocent people" since long before 1980. Nuns rank right alongside orphans as obvious innocents.
So no, I was not referencing "that actual nun incident". This is the first I've run into that particular case, though I might well have seen it before and simply forgotten it.
I'm not even going to try and untangle the run on sentence at the end of your post. Other than to remark that you clearly need to check the soles of your shoes for soa
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The 299 people that were on Iran Air 655 might disagree with you on that.
"Isn't very useful for carrying out war crimes" I said. Not "cannot be used".
And anyway, that wasn't either a deliberate act of murder, or an malfunction of the weapon system; that was a combination of bad judgment and misidentification. It wouldn't have made any difference what weapon system the ship had. Any weapon can kill the wrong people if it's aimed the wrong way.
And a navy is absolutely useful for defence, go ask the Brits. Force projection beyond coastal waters is a key aspect of a sound defens
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But for the price, it isnt useful for anything else either. Unless you consider enriching "defense" contractors useful of course.
I didnt say it was anything but an accident. However it was the sort of accident that could only happen because we poured enormous amounts of reso
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But for the price, it isnt useful for anything else either. Unless you consider enriching "defense" contractors useful of course.
That's another discussion, and one better left elsewhere in the thread. I (kinda) agree with you in that I think it's a bit, uh, "porky" not unlike many other military R&D projects.
However it was the sort of accident that could only happen because we poured enormous amounts of resources into building a massive Navy which we certainly didnt need for defense, and then sent it halfway around the globe to bully other nations.
Which is neither here nor there in respect to my argument.
GP alleges that the tech is bad because it will be used to kill people (with a sarcastic "killing people is okay as long as cool tech is involved" remark).
I responded that, as the tech will be used to defend soldiers from other soldiers, in a kill or be killed scenari
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Actually I did address your points h
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You allege that this weapon will only be used to kill "other soldiers" not civilians.
Nowhere do I allege that. I instead allege that the weapon's nature is defensive, rather than offensive, and that a weapon designed to defend a ship from armed attack is a poor choice for going on the offensive with. I think I specifically said it was a "poor choice" for committing war crimes with, not that it was an impossible choice.
Perhaps an example will help. If a destroyer has cruise missiles, SAMs, and this new laser, and is tasked with destroying a building, it will use cruise missiles. And perh
Re:Cool way to kill people (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact very recently you wrote:
*Coughs*
Indeed it is, I am glad you can admit that.
That means by it's very nature it implies aggression. Sure, like most weapons, it isnt impossible to imagine it being used in defense, but it's defensive applications dont even come close to justifying its expense relative to other options, so it doesnt make sense to build and maintain such a weapon unless you intend aggression with it. Simple as that.
If we were really focused on defense, we could build, stock, and maintain a chain of airbases along every coast and border for the cost of our Carrier fleets and have plenty left over. An airbase is superior to a Carrier in every way except one - the airbase can't steam across the oceans looking for trouble, it has to sit in place and wait for someone to at least get somewhat near to us.
Not at all. I am all in favour of armed, I'd rather see us more armed than less. Just with weapons suited to defending ourselves, rather than weapons designed to "project power" into other peoples lands, that's the difference.
You raised it but it doesnt stand up. Britains defense in WWII was overwhelmingly from land-based airfields, which produced much better results at much lower cost. I certainly never claimed that a Navy cannot be used defensively, simply that it makes no sense to build one for that purpose, given the options and the costs involved.
Touchy much? Believe me, if I feel like insulting someone I dont use veils to do it. You may believe you are understanding me, but at points your responses are clearly inconsistent with that belief. It is not rude to point that out.
Long range naval power foundation of everything (Score:3)
Britains defense in WWII was overwhelmingly from land-based airfields, which produced much better results at much lower cost. I certainly never claimed that a Navy cannot be used defensively, simply that it makes no sense to build one for that purpose, given the options and the costs involved.
Winston Churchill seemed to think that long range naval power was the foundation for *everything* else that occurred during the war:
"The Battle of the Atlantic was the dominating factor all through the war. Never for one moment could we forget that everything happening elsewhere, on land, at sea or in the air depended ultimately on its outcome." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Atlantic_(1939 [wikipedia.org]–1945)
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Winston Churchill was a smart man, but he was not one that limited his military ambitions to defense by any stretch of the imagination. He declared war against Germany, not the other way around, and his goal was to defeat her, not to defend and preserve Britannia. So naturally he would see it that way - but his viewpoint isnt very relevant to the defense of a Republic which "does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy."
That is quite the dodge. Hypothetical causes of the war are irrelevant to the point being made, not even tangential. The fact remains that Britain was under serious threat due to its loss of seaborne supplies. They could have quite literally been starved into submission had they only possessed a coastal defense.
Uses of a Navy (Score:2)
> The only time you really need a Navy is if you want, not to defend yourself, but to sail around the world attacking or threatening to attack other people in their own homes.
They can also be useful for defending or threatening to defend other people or supply lines. Keeping oil flowing into our economy, for example. Keeping industrial output flowing.
Power is most effective when one does not have to use it. A US carrier group is a massive military threat to almost any country in the world. It is more
A Navy is essential for defense and trade (Score:2)
Navies aren't really all that useful for defending the country. Sure, they can be parked off our coast and used for that, but the same effect can be had for a fraction of the cost with ground bases.
History shows otherwise, both early American (1812) and more recent (WW2). Your idea of being safe behind fixed immobile defenses has been shown to be a failed strategy for millennia.
The only time you really need a Navy is if you want, not to defend yourself, but to sail around the world attacking or threatening to attack other people in their own homes.
Wrong. If you have international trade and commerce you need a Navy to defend the trade routes. Either your Navy or someone else's friendly Navy.
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I said nothing about being safe behind immobile defenses first off, that's sheer fabrication.
Land-based aircraft are hardly immobile. Littoral vessels are hardly immobile. Hunter-killer submarines are not immobile, and confining them to the vicinity of your coast rather than stationing them all around the world does not make t
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History shows otherwise, both early American (1812) and more recent (WW2). Your idea of being safe behind fixed immobile defenses has been shown to be a failed strategy for millennia.
I said nothing about being safe behind immobile defenses first off, that's sheer fabrication.
"... but the same effect can be had for a fraction of the cost with ground bases ..."
Ground bases are immobile.
Land-based aircraft are hardly immobile.
However they have historically failed at naval defense. Regarding "immobile", aircraft need infrastructure, lots of it. And in a land base that infrastructure is immobile, ie a target. Witness the plethora of decades old weapons systems that crater runways or bust bunkers protecting aircraft, munitions, fuel, etc. For thirty plus years we've have been watching gun/missile camera footage of land b
Re:Cool way to kill people (Score:4, Funny)
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In fact, there is some evidence that this is already happening. Qaddafi is hiring Somalian mercenaries for $1000/day to fight in Libya, which is doubtless attracting some fine young men away from the life of piracy at sea.
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Lasers are much more precise and reduce collateral damage significantly.
Wouldn't there still be a high potential of causing blindness? Given enough power, even diffuse reflections can blind people permanently.
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.
Re:Uninformative (Score:5, Informative)
It set the the outboard motors on fire. You can see a video here... http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/ [wired.com]
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Thanks for the link. And that's not really very impressive. Looked like they had to maintain the laser for several seconds before they managed to do any serious damage. Seems like it would have been easier, more effective, and probably cheaper just to fire at it with a traditional ballistic weapon. After all, you can't very easily fire over the horizon with lasers, and their strength is affected (oftentimes negatively) by numerous weather conditions coupled with distance. Compare that to a ballistic round,
Just sail over the horizon _then_ fire your guns (Score:4, Insightful)
Afterthought: presumably the torpedo manufacturers aren't too worried, either.
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Yawn.
First, if you see your enema, better go to a better doctor.
Second, its not a replacement for artillery (thats going to be the job of railguns), but of phalanx systems. Operational range would only be a few km, so plenty in line of sight.
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And what if a potential attack consists of a missile that will seperate itself into multiple warheads before attacking the target? The overloading tactic would presumably also work against RAMs (Rolling Airframe Missiles) and conventional Phalanx guns.
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i'm looking at 'A' and 'Y' on my keyboard. nope. maybe a mistake like enemu or enemt. but you had to write enema on purpose. which is odd, as your post seems serious
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.
enema + dvork (Score:5, Funny)
i think the internet has officially acheived its original purpose.
to create a discussion thread that goes from laser weapons, to enemas, to dvorak keyboard arguments, without any intervening replies.
absolutely unbelievable. bravo to you, sirs. bravo.
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I agree, that was an amazing turn of discussion points. Better yet, it didn't involve Godwin's Law. Adding "cowboy" in there just put it over the top; I give it a 9.9!
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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.
I also hate to break it to you but there's keyboard layouts beyond QWERTY out there, like QWERTZ [wikipedia.org] - German, Hungarian, Swiss, Bosnian, Croatian and Slovene layouts make mistyping an A for a Y a breeze...
np: Battles - IPT-2 (EP C/B EP)
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that's the culprit, autocomplete
the clash is not between keyboard layouts, but between desktop culture and mobile keyboardless culture
however, autocomplete uses past word usage as an indicator of intent. since enemy is more frequent than enema in normal use, we can conclude the author of the original post uses the word "enema" a lot, to trick autocomplete into thinking that is his intended word
(snicker)
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A Treatment for Fecal Impaction? (Score:2)
A line of sight weapon is only useful if you can see the enema.
A fecal impaction is a large mass of dry, hard shit that can develop in the rectum due to chronic constipation. A laser treatment might very well be a productive treatment to get the stools flowing...
Gosh, someone should WARN the navy (Score:3)
QUICK, someone call the navy! They MUST know this! A random dweed on slashdot has pointed out a fatal flaw in their decade long research! Save the nation, we can prevent a second Pearl Harbor if only we can this information to the right people!
Either this or, thank you for point out the bloody obvious and that a close range defensive weapon designed to take out small attacking ships does not need over the horizon capabilities. Layers of defence, read up on it.
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.
Just reflect the beam with a mirror (Score:2)
I alway think defending against such lasers is quite easy and low-cost: Just put up a good-quality mirror and the beam gets reflected. If you aim well, you could even attack the ship with its own laser-beam.
Markus
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This has discussed before in other articles about lasers. The problem with mirrors is that they old reflect a % of the energy of the laser and are soon damaged to the point where they no longer reflect at all.
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Reflective chaff is cheap and plentiful. Just use more chaff and the target is safe. The cost of chaff per laser power is an asymmetric defense that renders these lasers just another way to bankrupt the US. Which has been the defensive strategy of our enemies in the field for at least a decade now. And it's totally worked, while they remain in the same condition they started in, or better.
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Chaff only makes sense when your not moving or when your moving AWAY from the weapon.
Chaff is defense against rear attacks. if your on a speed boat heading toward a ship that is shooting at you chaff is worthless.
think before you speak.
Chaff stays in the air for a very short time (Score:3)
And it would be very difficult to store enough chaff rounds onboard to do a continuous barrage, especially if you were a small vessel. And current chaff launchers would melt down if you tried to fire them this regularly. And small boats (the intended targets for this thing) mostly don't have room for even the chaff launcher, much less the ammo.
Chaff is not a practical countermeasure to this.
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In the navy.... (Score:3)
In the navy,
Yes, you can sail the seven seas!
In the navy,
Yes, you can fire MLDs!
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Of course, now, it is only a matter of time before our enemies have ship-mounted lasers. Which means soon we'll get roped into paying for deflector shields.
Shit! They always get you with the add-ons...
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Does hitting five targets in a row entitle me to growl "IMPRESSIVE!" over the P.A.?
Obligatory (Score:2)
The laser was mounted onto the deck of the Navy’s self-defense test ship, former USS Paul Foster (DD 964).
Too bad the ship wasn't called Sea Bass
now where are the Sharks? (Score:4, Interesting)
now where are the Sharks?
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"now where are the Sharks?"
In the water.
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"The frikin' laser needs to be frikin' miniaturized before it can be out on the frikin' sharks frikin' heads."
C'mon! you can't be a real terror demigod aiming at world domination if you can't think big.
You feed your shark army in the radiactive seaside near Fukushima so they grow Godzilla-like ("frikin' Sharkzillas"?) then you won't have any problem to mount navy-size lasers on their frikin' heads.
Oh good, we got a volunteer (Score:2)
Sir, we got a volunteer. Private Turbidostato has volunteered to not just take a large high power electric device into salt water but to strap it, unarmed and naked (we are the navy after all) to our specially grown giant sized sharks whose increase in size thanks to their constant submergance in radiated water is only outmatched by their increase in ferocity.
Might I suggest sir, that you put in the request for his medal (posthumous), now? It would save time.
Re:now where are the Sharks? (Score:5, Funny)
Rumbling with the Jets. Where else?
So Expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad we didn't cut a penny from the 2011 military budget. Then we wouldn't have these extra boat lasers around that we don't need, along with all the thousands of other defense contractor welfare projects we've run up $TRILLIONS in debt to pay for.
Instead we cut 1% of the Federal budget, from women, children and the poor. Why protect them with social programmes when we can defend them with extra weapons that kill other people, or sit unused, instead?
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On another note, is the navy seriously suggesting that current close-in weapons systems are so useless that we need lasers? I mean the idea is cool, but come on. Small vessels getting close enough to do serious damage seems more of a failure of procedure than a failure of weapons. Unless you're willing to shoot any old fishing boa
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Dealing with hostile small boats is a nightmare. In order to shoot one while not in a hot war, you have to establish hostile intent, which is pretty hard to do. Compounding this further is that our enemies know what our rules of engagement are, and constantly ride the line of them. When you transit the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian small boats constantly charge your ship and turn away at the last minute. If you ask them to stop, they say they're "conducting training in international waters," which is true p
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The laser is powered by vast quantities of fuel. Ballistics and rockets can be made and stored anywhere, but the fuel for lasers has to come from long global oil supply lines. Kevlar bags of water could multiply a ballistic (or rocket) arsenal without reloading from a land depot or supply ship.
And these are all expensive solutions to problems we don't really have. Certainly not the kinds of urgent (long overdue), important (essential) problems that we're cutting funding to elsewhere in the Federal budget, w
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So get rid of both Then you won't breed cretinous weapons or people.
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I'm not an "armchair quarterback". I'm a taxpayer. These lasers aren't armoring anyone. In fact they're stealing money from the armor budget you Republicans left unfunded for years, killing so many of our soldiers in the wars you insisted on starting, losing and never ending.
You sound more like a freeloader. A bloodthirsty one. The kind of Republican who refused to properly armor our troops after lying them into war in Iraq for 10 years, driving us to bankruptcy.
You are already as sick as possible without a
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No, the money spent on military contractors is much more likely to be spent on foreign imported products and labor, rather than spent immediately in the economy on groceries and local sales clerks as social programmes are.
As has been demonstrated by you Republicans for generation after generation, cutting money to poor people is more certain to create a recession than is cutting military spending. That's why we're in the worst recession ever, despite the most spending on military programmes ever. Even the m
Nits for the pickin' (Score:2)
Summary correction (Score:2)
From the summary:
using it to destroy a small target vessel
From the article:
disabled a small target vessel
Big difference between "disable" and "destroy."
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If the target vessel is a speedboat packed with explosives, or an incoming anti-ship missile (which are probably the types of threats the laser would be designed to stop) then maybe the disabling would lead to the destruction of the target, and prevent the destruction of the navy ship it was defending.
Remember the USS Cole, and the HMS Sheffield, these days the biggest threat to a ship is a small suicide boat or a missile.
Ha! We win! (Score:5, Funny)
The enemy just said that their defense system is mostly smoke and mirrors!
No... wait...
Psh, not impressed. (Score:2)
cookies if you get the reference
What a boondoggle (Score:3)
Ok, so this is for at range and close-in defense?
Fine.
Just attack the ship in a fog. Laser efficiency and focus goes out the window. Ask any land surveyor who's tried to work in a fog and can't get a beam to make a 10 meter round-trip. Not happening.
Yes it's more powerful than the laser in a total-station but condensed water vapor (fog, driving rain) is going to make your beam useless. Please note they tested this in a "high humidity environment" and not fog. There's a difference, and the difference is utter failure in fog. You can't defeat physics.
This is pants-on-head retarded.
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BMO
the US just had massive budget cuts (Score:3)
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Also, lasers don't bounce back at the attacker they way they do in fiction. A mirror is essentially armour against lasers, but unless you can aim the beam back in the time it takes for the mirror to melt, it isn't a weapon reflector.
And so what if the target can be armoured against laser fire? It can also be armoured against conventional weapons, and yet I don't see battleships making a comeback anytime soon. Armour, like all design decisions, is about trade offs, often weighed against cost and mobility.
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The whole stealth aircraft program works on the principle of radar diffusion. Coat your craft accordingly, and the effectiveness goes way down. Seems like most of the bad guys don't have enough money for the reseach that it would take to do it. So the weapon works for a few years until a rational defense is found and can be afforded.
The whole thing goes to hell if the enemy uses the techniques found in those drug-carrying subs-- kevlar instead of steel, and therefore, tough to detect.
Retroreflectors (Score:3)
Also, lasers don't bounce back at the attacker they way they do in fiction. A mirror is essentially armour against lasers, but unless you can aim the beam back in the time it takes for the mirror to melt, it isn't a weapon reflector.
Would you believe TWO mirrors [wikipedia.org]? Well, actually six mirrors, because it's 3d, but you get the idea.
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The most effective reflective armor wouldn't attempt to bounce the beam back (the Wobbuffet defense). If you had highly reflective armor placed at a very low angle, the beam would strike a much larger area, reducing the concentration of energy in addition to reflecting it away.
Of course, the problem would be that you now have a powerful laser beam aimed at an angle into the air--less concentrated than it was, but still enough to dam
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"Also, lasers don't bounce back at the attacker they way they do in fiction. A mirror is essentially armour against lasers, but unless you can aim the beam back in the time it takes for the mirror to melt, it isn't a weapon reflector."
Not a problem. Just use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_reflector [wikipedia.org]
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I'm pretty sure it's the first. It's really ideal for such a role. Also:
There doesn't have to be a capacitor that needs charging if the ship can provide enough power. There's probably a capacitor in there somewhere, but it most likely doesn't work like a camera flash. It's probably more limited by heating.
There's no reason for it to miss, given that it's a laser and unlike in Star Wars, in reality those move at the speed of light. All it needs is a positioning system capable of keeping up.
It's also most lik
Re:Patently useless (Score:4, Informative)
It's not really a new concept it looks like this [youtube.com]. It's just not very practical.
From what I heard the problem with this kind of thing is that it takes two trucks worth of equipment to setup, lots of power, cooling and chemicals (since it's a dye laser). Now on a ship that's a lot less of a problem.
From what I understand, the kind of mirror used in a laser is extremely efficient, tuned to the laser's frequency, sealed in a chamber that doesn't have a spec of dust in it, and has an active cooling system. This can be done in a special environment like inside an enclosed mechanism, but a missile isn't going to be able to have this kind of thing on its surface.
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A target can fire bundles of chaff ahead of itself. Indeed there's probably a cheap way for the target to fire water scooped along the way out in front of itself, or just between the moving target and the stationary ship aiming its laser.
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um they aren't shooting missiles they are shooting a laser, an d what chaff does is to create a second radar target behind the first one to enable premature detonation.
You can't send chaff out in front of you , and if you toss it to the side they will simply adjust the aim to the second target.
Chaff is only good when your running away from something. When your running towards it chaff isn't good as the second target is behind you and the missile or laser has to go through you to get to it.
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What if the weapon is, I don't know, a radar guided one.
Ooh, look! Your pretty laser just cooked a small school of herring. Meanwhile my small boat is either completing its attack run or getting the hell out of there. Either way I've lived a fuck of a lot longer than if I'd had no chaff.
What, you're going to aim the laser manually? Sure.
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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...
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If you can eliminate all the other weapons systems on the boat it will never run out of ammo so long as it does not run out of fuel. For a nuclear military vessel (which is maintained at someone else's expense) running out of fuel in the middle of combat is essentially a non-issue.
Big military vessels don't need indirect fire if they have air cover... which they generally do at all times.
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Big military vessels don't need indirect fire if they have air cover... which they generally do at all times.
Assuming that the local aircraft carrier isn't pursuing an exciting second career as a submarine at the time, which is presumably why the US is investing in stuff like this(along with their continued emphasis on in-air refueling abilities). The US is in the somewhat tricky position that most hypothetical 'force projection' scenarios that don't simply involve asymmetric beating on dusty hellholes full of irregulars(dubiously winnable; but not a blue-water threat) tend to involve having to move very, very exp
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Oh, please (Score:2)
Here's a hint: the utility of putting a laser weapon on a ship: not exactly a secret, and hasn't been since, well, lasers were invented. I don't think we're really giving away the farm here.