US Navy Authorizes Use of Laser In Combat 225
mi writes The U.S. Navy has declared an experimental laser weapon on its Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB) in the Persian Gulf an operational asset and U.S. Central Command has given permission for the commander of the ship to defend itself with the weapon. The 30 kilowatt Laser Weapon System (LaWS) was installed aboard USS Ponce this summer as part of a $40 million research and development effort from ONR and Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) to test the viability of directed energy weapons in an operational environment. No word yet on a smaller, shark-mounted version.
USS Ponce? (Score:5, Funny)
Really? Does "ponce" mean something different in US English or is there some story behind it?
I thought poncy names for ships was the preserve of the Royal Navy.
Re:USS Ponce? (Score:5, Informative)
From the link on the name in the summary:
Ponce is the only ship of the United States Navy that is named for Ponce in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, which in turn was named after the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León, the first governor of Puerto Rico and European discoverer of Florida.
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For the moment it is more like mounting the sharks to the lasers.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
I think that explains it.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U... [wikipedia.org]
Dont ask - Dont tell (Score:2)
Re:USS Ponce? (Score:5, Funny)
Ponce is the only ship of the United States Navy that is named for Ponce in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico
And a good thing too, nobody would know what the fuck is going on if there were 15 ships and a submarine all named Ponce.
Re:USS Ponce? (Score:5, Funny)
Ponce is the only ship of the United States Navy that is named for Ponce in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico
And a good thing too, nobody would know what the fuck is going on if there were 15 ships and a submarine all named Ponce.
"Is your name not Bruce?"
This might alienate anti-ISI* Muslims. (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the religious prohibitions in Islam is making war with fire.
If this is used it will be interesting to see the effects on recruiting by the Islamic State and other anti-US organizations among those Muslims who are currently either opposed to them or unaligned.
Also: How do you keep a 30 kW laser, at any frequency, from blinding everybody in the general direction of the target? The last I heard, weapons that blind are banned by the current "laws of war" as recognized by the western powers - and that's been the major impeidment so far to deploying laser (and other directed energy) weapons. Has something changed? Or did the current administration just decide to play with the new toy despite past promises to the other kids?
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yeah... it's going to be the laser weapons that makes them hate us.
and i get the feeling that this is going to "blind" combatants in the same way a bullet blinds them. utter removal of the seeing apparatus.
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I have got the feeling that using high energy lasers on boats with the unpredictable reflective nature of the surface of the sea, waves and such, might not be the safest thing to do for anyone involved in those laser shenanigans. Perhaps a rethink might be in order or at least many damn good pairs of sunglasses for the crew of the vessel, crews of any nearby friendly vessels or planes or people on the shore. So what fraction of second for the partial reflection of a high energy laser is required to blind s
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your right of course, obviously no testing has been done and you certainly sound like you're more knowledgeable then the many, many people i'm sure worked on this. Yes that's it, i'm sure there was never even a thought about the safety and security of the crew. /s
jesus christ this place is a landfill opinions.
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It's not illegal to use weapons that blind, it just cannot be their primary purpose to do so
Exactly right. Nearly all weapons can blind. But if the reason the weapon was fired was to kill a target, or destroy a missile, or sink a boat... or whatever than its 'fine' if someone gets blinded.
But if your just pulling the trigger with the intention to blind people, then its against the "rules".
Re:This might alienate anti-ISI* Muslims. (Score:5, Insightful)
That "Law" only applies to weapons whose primary purpose is to create blindness. Incidental blindness in pursuit of an "acceptable" primary purpose is specifically permitted.
Though, really, rules concerning the appropriate way to make war are just another example of a cartel colluding to protect their monopoly on the use of deadly force by raising the bar of entry.
The purpose of war is to shatter a social system that is harming our species and make space for something better. If your war is moral, the cruelty of your weapons is immaterial.
Re:This might alienate anti-ISI* Muslims. (Score:4, Interesting)
The purpose of war is to shatter a social system that is harming our species and make space for something better. If your war is moral, the cruelty of your weapons is immaterial.
Oh please.
"War is diplomacy by other means." - Carl von Clausewitz
There's nothing moral or immoral about waging war. It is one of many methods in which a country pursues it's strategic objectives in opposition to another country or organized group. The conduct by which war is fought is moral or immoral however, which includes the cruelty of your weapons. Weapons such as chemical weapons were banned specifically because they were indiscriminate and horrific in their effects. The exact opposite of what you just said is true.
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Immorality destroys itself. That is what distinguishes it from morality, which sustains itself.
Talking about why this nation makes war on that nation is irrelevant to the question of "What evolutionary advantage does war give to the human race.", which is the foundation of all morality.
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That's a childish and superficial philosophy. You haven't thought it through, can't support it, and make no effort to live by it.
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"There's nothing moral or immoral about waging war".
As that is a value judgment, I shall not say that it is incorrect. It does differ sharply, however, from all international and national laws and norms. Wikipedia puts it simply:
'The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, which followed World War II, called the waging of aggressive war "essentially an evil thing...to initiate a war of aggression...is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war
Re:This might alienate anti-ISI* Muslims. (Score:4, Interesting)
This is about the silliest thing I've read all year... And it has a lot of competition.
The purpose of war is to gain land, money or power. Ultimately it comes down to power as money and land are just methods to get it. Even the enforcement of an ideology is to get more power for those who control or benefit from that ideology being enforced. No religious war has ever been waged to benefit god, men have always been the primary and intended beneficiaries.
OK, now this is the silliest thing I've read all year. At least your consistent.
When men decide that all means are necessary to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.
You're essentially saying that any method can be defended by the outcome. The wholesale slaughter of civilians with chemical and biological weapons is just and moral?
Sorry, but the people who were exposed to such things long ago decided that in order for a conflict to remain moral, such weapons and tactics should not be permitted. What makes a side in a conflict moral is not just why the conflict is fought, but how it is fought. You cannot keep moral intentions if your actions are immoral.
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When men decide that all means are necessary to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.
From your point of view, yes... what happens when the other side doesn't agree with you?
You're essentially saying that any method can be defended by the outcome. The wholesale slaughter of civilians with chemical and biological weapons is just and moral?
It could be, if that is the moral point of view of those doing it. "moral" and "immoral" are not absolute terms.
Sorry, but the people who were exposed to such things long ago decided that in order for a conflict to remain moral, such weapons and tactics should not be permitted. What makes a side in a conflict moral is not just why the conflict is fought, but how it is fought. You cannot keep moral intentions if your actions are immoral.
We used nuclear weapons against Japan, and I consider that to be a quite moral act, it saved far more lives than it took. What Japan was doing was immoral, and had to be stopped, no matter the cost. Germany too...
Frankly, had we been willing to use nuclear weapons in Afghanistan 10 years ago, back when Bin
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The only acceptable purpose for war is defence. Under international law countries cannot use military force for any purpose other than defence, and when they win they must return everything to how it was before rather than trying to grab land from their opponent. A war of aggression is illegal, and those starting one can be tried for war crimes.
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The purpose of war is to shatter a social system that is harming our species and make space for something better.
Said every genocidal dictator ever.
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Eh... no. The rules are there to ban the use of weapons which are low on utility but high on pain and suffering. Gas, mostly. The poor man's deadly force is still RDX and its children.
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raising the bar of entry
Not really. Countries that haven't signed the treaties aren't officially bound by them.
See it more as a formalization of what was thought to be just wrong. The countries that signed it formally declare that they aren't going to use it anymore.
In practice it is used as a handle to allow an incursion if these weapons are used. Even when the user hasn't signed the treaty.
And I don't think that is wrong. Most weapons on that list (biological, chemical, incendiary and mines) are not specific. They can't see the
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Yeah really. And we should have a secret spy agency that doesn't ponce around but just tortures people to get answers.
Re:This might alienate anti-ISI* Muslims. (Score:5, Informative)
Per Article 1, weapons specifically designed as their sole combat function, or one of their functions, to cause permanent blindness are Not OK.
However, Per Article 3, "Blinding as an incidental or collateral effect of the legitimate military employment of laser systems, including laser systems used against optical equipment, is not covered by the prohibition of this Protocol." Just aim for a legitimate target and stock up on braille sympathy cards.
Problem solved.
As for making war with fire, light isn't fire, and conventional explosives(never mind thermobarics and incendiaries) are markedly more strongly associated with fire. Lasers have that novelty thing going against them; but anybody who actually cares about the letter of the law probably has hangups about tracers, attacks on fuel dumps, and other routine stuff. As soon as the novelty wears off lasers will recede into the background.
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Silly rabbit, laws of war don't apply to dealing with unlawful combatants.
Also, lasers are fairly well collimated, so you'd have to aim directly at the person to blind them, and then I think they would have more problems than just blinding. You can also blind someone by shooting them in the eye with a gun, but for some reason it's ok as long as they have a good chance of dying outright.
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The prohibition only applies to weapons that are designed to blind the naked eye as a primary purpose, not to weapons where blinding is collateral damage. It is even permissable to lase optical systems that would blind a human looking through the system.
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This could get sticky. The most effective property of the lasers may be that they blind, even though that isn't their stated function. Similarly to using white phosphorus against humans, the legality is debated.
Everyone on a ship with the laser will need eye protection all the time. Crude metal corner cubes will be pretty effective and since the goal of the weapon is rapid response, the crew will need to always be ready, or they risk blinding their own people. It will have a really tough time burning thro
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I'm worried about a reflector on the target ship. If I were planning a terrorist attack on a US navy ship, after reading this, I'd mount an optical retro-reflectors. (though of course that makes you more radar-visible... The retroreflectors are a big hazard to crew on the firing ship. They don't need to be very good if you are just trying to blind, not do physical damage.
The blinding problem is more an issue if the ship is in harbor somewhere. There is also the risk of a clever terrorist on a boat reflec
Re: This might alienate anti-ISI* Muslims. (Score:2)
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A modestly shiny piece of metal will do quite a good job of reflecting. You won't get a coherent beam but a diffuse spot that will still blind at a long distance. think of the sun reflecting off of a modestly well polished metal surface. Something you could easily get with a buffing wheel.
Or for more humor value - a disco ball......
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A reflector will become seriously non reflective very very quickly. Mirrors don't reflect 100% of the energy, otherwise every hall of mirrors in the world would be unbearably bright.
So if you do manage to get something reflective in the path of the laser the amount of energy it will absorb rather than reflect will have two effects. One it will cause the reflector to ablate and become useless, the second is it will absorb so much energy that the resultant laser reflections will have been robbed of most of
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The only demo I saw of one of these was against a small boat.
Missiles might be a valid target, but they could be designed to be very laser resistant - picture a reentry shield......
I don't really see much use for these anyway - "won't work in rain and fog" is a pretty big problem.
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Missiles are right on the border line of blowing up in flight already. At the moment speed is the key thing to get you past other point defence systems. Any laser counter measures that are added will inevitable increase weight or reduce payload. If you reduce speed then the existing vulcans are more likely to hit it.
Also you wouldn't mount the lasers on the the ship you were trying to protect. They would be on the surrounding ships. So the laser can hit the control surfaces or even the engine. All you
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Would you be able to put up a lens instead? Potentially you could just widen the beam, or refract it somewhere else... Clearly, not practical on a missile, but if they were aiming it at your boat, you might be able to do something, I guess...?
To your 2nd question (Score:4, Informative)
The last I heard, weapons that blind are banned by the current "laws of war" as recognized by the western powers - and that's been the major impeidment so far to deploying laser (and other directed energy) weapons. Has something changed? Or did the current administration just decide to play with the new toy despite past promises to the other kids?
The US does not honor International Law on banned weapons, nor does any other country in reality. Weapons that are "banned" are normally relabeled to make them look good, but does not change what they are. As long as you are on the winning side who is going to prosecute you? As a prime example, cluster bombs are against the law yet the main artillery round of the MLRS fires a warhead packed with 1001 "grenadelets". See that? By renaming "cluster bomb" to be "grenadelets" you have not broken the law. Firing a weapon at a "person" with a round of .50 caliber or higher is illegal by international law. The main sniper rifle used by all troops in the Middle East has become a.50 caliber, and look at the video of the Reuters reporter killed by the 30MM chain gun on an Apache.
Countries today use what they think they can get away with, and in the case of Western countries that is quite a lot. Look at all the depleted uranium dumped in the middle east causing serious health problems for over a decade.
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" As long as you are on the winning side who is going to prosecute you?"
Exactly. Nicely put.
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Has anyone explained to them how guns operate?
or bombs and mortars?
The first significant user of firearms in Europe were the Ottoman Empire (modern day Turkey) as hand held guns came in from Asia via the middle east.
Then again a little hypocrisy in religion is nothing new. So I highly doubt it will have any effect on Muslims what so ever.
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Oh really? They seemed to be fine using flamethrowers in the Crusades. They used siphons with naphtha in combat.
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One of the religious prohibitions in Islam is making war with fire.
If this is used it will be interesting to see the effects on recruiting by the Islamic State and other anti-US organizations among those Muslims who are currently either opposed to them or unaligned.
Also: How do you keep a 30 kW laser, at any frequency, from blinding everybody in the general direction of the target? The last I heard, weapons that blind are banned by the current "laws of war" as recognized by the western powers - and that's been the major impeidment so far to deploying laser (and other directed energy) weapons. Has something changed? Or did the current administration just decide to play with the new toy despite past promises to the other kids?
Re ban on blinding weapons. Here's the Geneva Conventional protocol on Blinding Weapons:
https://www.icrc.org/ihl/INTRO... [icrc.org]
Article 3:
Blinding as an incidental or collateral effect of the legitimate military employment of laser systems, including laser systems used against optical equipment, is not covered by the prohibition of this Protocol.
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it doesn't blind in the general direction of the target...
besides, the blinding is accidental by product.
also, it's not "fire". just like bombs are not "fire" and using a fire to make swords is not "making war with fire". So I think they only mean some shit like a forest fire. they don't have any forests anymore soo..
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You are reading it wrong. The laws of war prohibit using weapons with the purpose of blinding. The purpose of this is blowing stuff up.
Article 3 [wikipedia.org]
Blinding as an incidental or collateral effect of the legitimate military employment of laser systems, including laser systems used against optical equipment, is not covered by the prohibition of this Protocol.
It may be Ok to shoot unarmed people (Score:2)
Michael Brown attacked a policeman, who confronted him. The officer was perfectly justified in killing the thug.
That Michael Brown was "unarmed" is irrelevant. Similarly, it would've been perfectly Ok — by all ethics standards — for owners of all the looted stores (and burned cars) to shoot the attackers, whether or not the looters were armed.
We are better if only because the th
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It never ceases to astonish me how some Slashdotters, who usually seem fairly intelligent and rational, say things like this whenever the discussion turns to politics.
I blame the influence of Hollywood and violent TV. Maybe the actual sight (and smell) of a few real dead and injured people would do you a world of good, and bring your strange thoughts closer to reality.
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The treaty just doesn't define properly what torture is. This allowed the US to define it the way they did. And they didn't choose a reasonable definition.
According to that they do not torture.
Whether that holds up in any war tribunal will probably never be tested because the US is too mighty. They count on that.
All valid except one point: (Score:2)
Nearly all of what you say are valid points. But one carries a misconception:
By it's very nature of being a focused, collimated beam a laser does not affect anything in "the general direction" of the target - if it was not focused and accurate, it wouldn't be an effective weapon and might not even be dangerous.
That's SO not true. There are two issues here:
- Forward (and back) scatter: A laser beam "leaks" light, primarily in the "general direction" of the main beam and, to a lesser extent, in the
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And those are illegal to countries who signed the Geneva Convention.
Shark-mounted laser (Score:5, Funny)
Why make the laser smaller when you can make the shark bigger?
What Type Of "Laser"? (Score:3)
Is it the kind of continuous beam that sounds like it is activated by an industrial elevator servo and emits a high-pitched screech even in space, or is it the kind that goes in segmented little blasts that go ptew ptew ptew and bounce off of bulkheads with little sparks?
Does the FAA now about this? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Does the FAA know about this? (Score:3)
>> Does the FAA know about this?
They probably would after the fried plane drops into the sea.
Finally we close the Shark Gap (Score:2)
>> U.S. Navy has declared a "laz-er" ...an operational asset and ...has given permission for the commander of the ship to defend itself with the weapon
Today, we finally begin to close the Shark Gap.
Defensive Anti-Missile System (Score:2)
Also works well against motor boats and other third world potential mass suicide attack.
Thank you for thinking out of the box and kicking ass Lt. Gen. Riper! [wikipedia.org]
screw the laser (Score:2)
Re:in other news... (Score:5, Interesting)
No mirror exposed to the open ocean will be clean enough to not explode fairly quickly when a 30kw laser beam hits it.
Honestly, I'm surprised the laser itself doesn't have issues with its own optics in that sort of environment. One tiny spec of dust on the lens would be disastrous.
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Re:in other news... (Score:5, Informative)
One tiny spec of dust on the lens would be disastrous.
No. That's a myth. A tiny speck absorbs a tiny amount of energy before ionizing. These lasers are made of a large mass of tough material and they don't explode or whatnot when a tiny piece of matter ionizes on a ruby or YAG crystal surface.
Powerful cutting and welding lasers are used all day long in manufacturing environments around the world. They don't go haywire when a tiny speck of foreign material vaporizes in the beam. The laser degrades over time as damage accumulates.
Cracked lenses or lenses with significant contaminants on the surface can be damaged or even explode when the laser is activated. A speck of dust won't get you there.
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Vaporizing in the beam off the surface is different than on the surface.
The process occurring on the surface creates are larger pot mark on the surface, so the surface is no longer 'flawless', which then cascades from there.
There is no way the thing would survive long with sea spray on it. What happens in a lab is not what happens in combat on the open ocean.
They have to have some mechanism to protect the optics on the device itself, even if that is as others have suggested by putting it in a tube that exp
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As for mirrors, purely reflective countermeasures will be a waste of time; but ablative ones or water cooled open cell foams might be an issue.
Re:in other news... (Score:4, Informative)
According to stuff I've read before, dust particles are mostly a problem inside the system, on mirrors and on targets. This is because dust hit by a laser tends to accelerate away from the beam source, as the side of the particle that is illuminated by the laser vaporizes first. So dust on the near side of a lens, on a mirror or on a target would get blown into the object's surface, causing pitting. But dust on the far surface of a lens would get blown off of the lens. Inside the system, this would be a problem because that dust would get blown into the next element in line. But on that last lens/window where the beam exists, I think mostly the external surface dust merely gets accelerated off of the surface. I'm sure they make an effort to keep that surface clean, but I'm not sure it's as crucial an issue as your post makes it out to be.
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If only the Navy had hundreds of years of experience with dealing with saltwater. If only somebody could invent covers.
Ah well. Scrap the whole project.
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Honestly, I'm surprised the laser itself doesn't have issues with its own optics in that sort of environment. One tiny spec of dust on the lens would be disastrous.
Not really a problem. The laser isn't focused at the objective, and the 30kw of light energy flowing through the objective tend to keep it pretty clean.
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It's not the flux that matters. It's the flux per unit area, ie., irradiance or radiant exitance. As long as the laser's exit optic is large, the power per area is low. But at the focal point, it's a different matter.
Where the stress exists a laser like this is that they are developing this level of flux in a friggin' fiber! That's before it gets to the projecting and directing optics.
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I imagine the beam diameter is larger at the source, converging on the target. This keeps the flux(?) low enough at the source not to incinerate its own optics.
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couldn't you pop it into a big tube, that constantly pushes out air?
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Well, they do have a rather large heat sink right under them.
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Re: in other news... (Score:2)
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But Light can be reflected!
Stop hitting yourself, it's only c/2 fast but I think anybody can hardly dodge this!
Re:End of flight as we know it (Score:4, Informative)
Not perfectly, and the energy absorbed from a 30kw laser will quickly darken the surface accelerating the rate of energy absorption. Here's [youtube.com] a video of a 500W laser cutting into a mirrored surface.
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Re:End of flight as we know it (Score:5, Interesting)
Even under the ideal and closely controlled conditions of industrial laser cutters, lasers are abundantly unsafe for ocular exposure; but by no means the speediest remover of bulk material. In an atmosphere, range is going to be constrained by thermal distortion if nothing else, so the ease of keeping photons on target won't be quite as dramatic as it would be in space, and against close-in non-aircraft, there'll be a lot of cheap 'n nasty (but probably embarrassingly effective) countermeasures involving coating things with mud, spraying them with seawater, and generally making a 3rd world nuisance of yourself.
(By way of comparison, assuming that this 30Kw laser delivers 100% of energy to target, it'll take 2/3 of a second of continuous exposure to deliver the same number of joules to the target as a
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What remains to be seen is whether jets and missiles can shrug off (either through brute-force thickening or more sophisticated ablative armor or actively deployed particulates that effectively scatter incoming light) the relatively tepid amounts of energy that lasers (especially anything that dodges the rather nasty requirements of chemical lasers) are good for, particularly at range, under optically sub-optimal conditions (never have those at sea!).
Current missiles ride pretty close to the edge, it doesn't take much of a hole or even for thermal forces to screw them up. Plus, any armor or countermeasures aren't fuel to increase range, warhead to increase damage, or guidance packages to make it hit the target.
Heck, the laser getting the guidance and blinding the missile would normally be a mission kill for the missile.
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If it misses because the guidance systems are blinded of fried, all the momentum doesn't matter.
And most missiles aren't bunker-buster/armor penetrating either.
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Don't necessarily need to "burn through" thick metal to disable a missle. If you hit control surfaces, instrument surfaces or impact sensors, you can disable/destruct fairly fast.
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Have you watched the video [youtube.com]? It seems reasonably destructive. The missile target (carried on a platform on a boat, as the weapon seems manually aimed in this demo) just detonates - presumably the fuel goes up. It's hard to see how much damage the drone target took, as we only have the gun camera footage, but it clearly changed from flying to falling. Thermal energy is generally going to be more of a threat than a puncture to anything that's carrying a bunch of jet fuel.
I don't know about this weapon, but
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This [youtube.com] looks a lot more destructive. And they only have to fire a few at once. Also point defense is nothing new. Antiship missiles are designed with them in mind.
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but
1) “It would be [used] against those [unmanned aerial vehicles], slow moving helicopters, fast patrol craft.” - not likely to have countermeasures of any sort
and
2) they say it costs about a dollar per shot..
The system is powered and cooled by a so-called “skid” that provides power through a diesel generator and is separate from Ponce separate electrical systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org]
Among the advantages of this device versus projectile weapons is the low cost per shot,
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"free electron lasers..."
Are you freaking nuts? FELs are big contraptions in particle accelerator labs.
The Navy's gadget is a fiber laser. Ie., a diode pumped fiber. Diode lasers are very efficient these days, and fiber lasers and amplifiers are similar. Fiber lasers don't exist except for being diode pumped. This is the only way to get tens of kW from a package size that will fit on a pallet.
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Huh? There's no way a missile can outmaneuver the optical targeting system on these things, the biggest threat will be surface skimming that will reduce the targeting systems reaction time, but the newest class of ships have pretty good synthetic aperture radar and the computer aided target discrimination is getting better all the time.
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This has to be a milestone in warfare, right up there with the gun, or bow and arrow.
Uh, why?
The practicality of early designs isn't the issue - just as early guns were inferior to bows yet rapidly improved, lasers suck now and will get better.
The issue is the physics of the matter. Lasers may be very precise but they're very easy to counter (add some reflective bits) and they require a lot of energy per damage done. Ejecting mass at velocity requires much less energy per damage done and we've gotten very good at getting guns and other ballistic systems to be incredibly precise. And this
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There are a few significant advantages I can think of for lasers off-hand. Near perfect accuracy with any line of sight to the target is essentially assured. That is, if you can see the target, you can hit it. That's extremely important for fast, inbound targets like anti-ship missiles, in which you may only get one real shot at it. The speed of the laser assures that the inbound target will be hit as far away from the ship as possible. Additionally, there are no limitations of ammunition - it doesn't
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Absolutely agree. Where I see lasers being useful is in point defence. The tracking speed and their "instahit" nature make them excellent for shooting down incoming missiles.
If they can get the weapon manoeuvrable enough and have a fast enough rate of fire expect to see these deployed around carrier groups.
I still think we are more than a few years away from GDI's Ion Cannon.