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Warships May Get Lasers For Close-In Defense
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)."
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.
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.