US Navy Breaks Laser Record

ectotherm writes "The US Navy has broken the existing record for the power of a laser. Their new free-electron laser can burn through 20 feet of steel per second. 'Next up for the tech: additional weaponization. The Navy just awarded Boeing a contract worth up to $163 million to take that technology and package it as a 100 kW weapons system, one that the Navy hopes to use not only to destroy things but for on-ship communications, tracking and detection, too — using a fraction of the energy such applications use now, plus with more accuracy.' Now all we need to do is upgrade the sharks..."

Comments

ouch

[rodneylee]

Someone needs to take there toys away from them and stop the nonsensitive before they start testing it on us, which we all know they will, heck disband all military we really just need a small group to protect the environment and or a army that create Harmony between nations.

Re:ouch

[AGMW]

... we really just need a small group to protect the environment and or a army that create Harmony between nations.

Sure, I'll vote for that as long as it's my army!

Re:ouch

[peragrin]

yea right.

What planet do you live on? But the humans of earth are a jealous lot, full of hate and mistrust, and belief that their way is the only way to live, and that all other ways must be eliminated.

Before you go spouting off stupid again why don't you take a look at the shear number of fanatics in the world(christian, muslim, jewish, whale watcher, environmentalist, whatever) and decide if your small army will work againist people who don't believe in reason and are willing to fight to the death for their illogic.

Re:ouch

[Graff]

"stop the nonsensitive" eh?

I disagree, I think we have to stop the overly-sensative!

Re:ouch

[Graff]

Or even sensitive. Lol, I don't know why I even bother to preview when I miss simple stuff like that...

Re:ouch

[orphiuchus]

Someone needs to take there toys away from them and stop the nonsensitive before they start testing it on us, which we all know they will, heck disband all military we really just need a small group to protect the environment and or a army that create Harmony between nations.

I'm pretty sure this was a joke.

Re:ouch

[burnin1965]

the humans of earth are a jealous lot, full of hate and mistrust, and belief that their way is the only way to live, and that all other ways must be eliminated

Suddenly the foreign policy and economically destructive wars perpetuated by the United States make sense.

Honestly I think the comment "we really just need a small group to protect the environment and or a army that create Harmony between nations" needs a hell of a lot more clarification but the truth is that the United States is not paying for a defensive military.

And like previous nations the end result of feeding a perpetual offensive war state will eventually have a serious economic impact on the ordinary citizens who are simply trying to make a living to the point where not only are the wars unsustainable but the entire military, government and economic structure of the nation will crumble. See the history of France with their perpetual wars and borrowing of capital to fuel the American Revolution because "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" that resulted in the French Revolution and several people losing their heads.

Our militarily enforced foreign policy is like nailing together a fine curio cabinet with 8 penny framing nails and a 20 pound sledge hammer. The end product is something nobody wants.

Re:ouch

[dkleinsc]

"It's all very well to laugh at the military, but when one considers the meaning of life, it is a struggle between alternative viewpoints of life itself. And without the ability to defend one's own viewpoint against other perhaps more aggressive ideologies, then reasonableness and moderation could quite simply disappear. That is why we will always need an army, and may God strike me down if it were to be otherwi..." ZAP!

Re:ouch

[ScrewMaster]

the humans of earth are a jealous lot, full of hate and mistrust, and belief that their way is the only way to live, and that all other ways must be eliminated

Suddenly the foreign policy and economically destructive wars perpetuated by the United States make sense.

Uh ... what? Do you really believe that the United States is hell-bent on eliminating other ways of life? Do you really believe that (because if so, that's just bizarre) or are you just America-bashing for fun? I'd say the Soviets did a hell of a lot more in that regard than the United States ever did. Many of our previous conflicts were ostensibly driven by ideological differences (although, if you dig a little deeper you'll usually find that there was more to it than that) but since the Cold War is over we're far more focused on the economic benefit of our overseas campaigns. Which isn't necessarily better, but it still has nothing to do with converting everyone to our brand of representative republicanism. We don't really care how you want to live: just buy our stuff and sell us your oil. Oh, and listen to our music and buy a lot of our DVDs.

but the truth is that the United States is not paying for a defensive military.

Why would you ever have thought that? More to the point, what do you mean by "defensive"? Not all conflicts have to be fought on one's own territory to be considered "defensive", and sometimes investments have to be made because of obligations to allied nations. Hell, World War II, if you have the ability to grasp the big picture, was in fact a defensive war. The reality is, though, that we've cut back substantially on our military capability since the end of the Cold War. Why? Because (so it was believed at the highest levels of our government) the world is now safe because the Soviet Empire collapsed, and we don't need all these men and machines. So this idea that America is continuing to build this ever more massive military is just wrong. Period. Furthermore, the current Iraq conflict is stretching our ability to deploy personnel: we just don't have the manpower or equipment that we used to have, even going back to the first Gulf war.

Whether or not we made the correct choice in downsizing our military machine remains to be seen. But it is most definitely not what it once was.

Re:ouch

[peragrin]

what we use the army for isn't what it is designed for . The US army aren't police and shouldn't be used to keep the peace.

I also agree that something has to give in the USA spending strategies. However while we may only rarely directly benefit from some of those, things like the internet, UAV's, even submersibles all allow us to see our word and do things that would never come to bear without someone losing tons of money on them to begin with.

a lot of the really cool tech and refinements out there today are because the USA military spent tens of millions 2 decades ago on abstract and weird ideas that had very little return.

Re:ouch

[nospam007]

"because the USA military spent tens of millions 2 decades ago on abstract and weird ideas that had very little return."

Nowadays they spend the millions on training and weapons for Afghan military and police and in the US thousands of teachers and nurses get the boot to pay for it.

Re:ouch

[slackbheep]

Your comment of the purpose of the armed forces vs how they are applied reminded me of a talk Thomas Barnett gave for TED about six years ago.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/thomas_barnett_draws_a_new_map_for_peace.html Interesting idea, even if so ambitious as to never happen :P

Re:ouch

[abulafia]

Um, on your intuition that maybe the military should be bigger, what multiple of the rest of the world's force projection capability seems sensible to you? And why? Do you acknowledge that our spending is not static against rivals? That a large, standing army will sometimes be misused? That opportunity costs exist?

Re:ouch

[Ihmhi]

You'd probably enjoy Gundam 00.

In that anime, the world pretty much has unlimited power thanks to a ring of solar panels around the earth which are tethered to the planet with three equidistant orbital elevators. Three superpowers form around these elevators, and there are more than a few straggler countries who don't play ball and therefore are shut out of the free energy. The superpowers are in a deadlocked cold war with one another. Meanwhile, private military countries fight wars for their benefactors all over the world.

Enter Celestial Being with their giant robots. This being Gundam, of course everyone has giant robots, but CB's are vastly more powerful. Imagine a fighter jet that had unlimited ammo and flight time and had armor tough enough to take dozens of missiles and thousands of bullets - even if it were just a small strike force of four of these fighters, how many air forces in the world could stand against them? Think that, but instead giant 30 foot tall robots whose pilot aim to end war by (ironically) blowing up any advantage any one side has.

Technically, this should be the United Nations, I suppose. Someone starts a war and all the other countries should smack them the fuck down. But I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Re:ouch

[burnin1965]

I wasn't going to reply in this thread, it seems a bit pointless with the cry baby troll moding, but I like your comment so I will reply.

Uh ... what? Do you really believe that the United States is hell-bent on eliminating other ways of life? Do you really believe that (because if so, that's just bizarre) or are you just America-bashing for fun?

Short answer, no.

My comment was an over the top somewhat ridiculous statement responding to another over the top fear mongering paranoid delusional "the world is out to get us" comment. And logically if all humans on earth are such garbage it should follow that people in the United States are also humans who are subject to the listed human weaknesses and threatening characteristics. I know for a fact that people in the United States do not fit this crappy characterisation of humans and I know from the foreigners I have interacted with that it is the same elsewhere. I am sorry that you and the moderators failed to catch that, although your questioning leads me to believe that you may have caught it but were not absolutely sure.

And on another note, criticism of one's own nation and politics is not bashing. Attacking criticism because it is criticism is tantamount to being a cry baby nationalistic whore. I like your comment because you bring up some valid points but be careful about labeling criticism as bashing. I hope the only reason you mentioned bashing was due to the outrageous nature of my comment.

we're far more focused on the economic benefit of our overseas campaigns. Which isn't necessarily better, but it still has nothing to do with converting everyone to our brand of representative republicanism. We don't really care how you want to live: just buy our stuff and sell us your oil. Oh, and listen to our music and buy a lot of our DVDs.

I think many people miss the underlying economic causes of many conflicts and I think it plays a greater role than many would like to admit, it is unethical and evil.

I was with you on the fact that, perhaps other than religious evangelism in foreign nations, the U.S. people and government are happy to let people of sovereign nations live the way they want in most cases but the 'buy our shit and sell us your resources' policy isn't any better. But perhaps you are alluding to this circumstance when you noted that the economic based campaigns aren't much better.

Why would you ever have thought that? More to the point, what do you mean by "defensive"?

Where a battle is fought does not determine whether actions are defensive or offensive but I feel I must point out that defense is much broader than fighting battles. The war in Afghanistan was a defensive war because the United States was attacked the the Al Queda organization that was based in and harbored by Afghanistan and their government. The Iraq war was offensive because there was no credible threat from within Iraq from the government or any harbored organizations. The U.S. Nuclear Forces and the ICBM systems are an offensive weapon used defensively through coercion. Reagan's negotiation of the START I treaty was defensive, the talks between U.S. and Chinese military leaders is defensive, the Patriot Missile system is defensive. Hopefully that elucidates my understanding of "defensive".

this idea that America is continuing to build this ever more massive military is just wrong

It is less a question of how much was spent in the past on the military versus what is spent today, the question is how much is needed to achieve the desired objective. Looking at what the United States spends on military versus every other nation suggests to me that we are spending much more than is necessary. To use an automobile analogy, :), if you need a vehicle to commute to work you may want a Bugatti Veyron but that doesn't mean you can't do the same commute just

Re:ouch

[kdemetter]

If your idea is Harmony at any cost ( some sort of global ideology ) , i don't want to live on your world.

The fact is , there are differences between people , and there are idealists in all groups of people.

This naturally leads to conflict , but that's not a problem : if those people are allowed to voice there opinion , there may be heated discussions , but the end result will probably be something useful for everyone.

However, if you block certain ideas and opinions from public debate , then you are causing problems , because you effectively force the idealists to use other methods to impose themselves. And this will often result in violence in the end.

Meh...Wake me when

[UDChris]

They manage to scale the frickin' lasers down to frickin' shark-size.

Re:Meh...Wake me when

[Tamran]

They manage to scale the frickin' lasers down to frickin' shark-size.

They can just manufacture massive sharks in the meantime! With a few camera tricks no one will notice ...

They want 2000 though

[Woogiemonger]

Who needs to burn through 20 feet of steel? Or even 2 feet of steel?

What's even more crazy is that their ultimate goal is to reach a megawatt of power and burn through *2000* feet of steel per second. I'd imagine seeing a phalanx of tanks, and with one 3 second FWOOOONG! from the laser, our military crosscuts through them all in one sweep. Here's the Wired article I'm referring to: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/unexpectedly-navys-superlaser-blasts-away-a-record

Re:They want 2000 though

[SpinyNorman]

The "20 feet of steel per second" number is similar to Slashdots car analogies - a way to make an otherwise difficult to understand number more human friendly. It's probably just the time it took to burn though, say, 1/4" of steel scaled up how much it could cut through in a second, if they could operate it continuously (which presumably they can't).

The goal of this thing certainly isn't cutting though many feet of steel - it's for shooting down missiles.

Re:They want 2000 though

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say that this classifies as more than needed to take down missiles. This is a more weaponized version without any doubt.

Re:They want 2000 though

[commodore6502]

>>>Who needs to burn through 20 feet of steel?

The Navy is they are trying to "laser" a hole in an enemy ship and make it sink. Certainly more efficient than the old method of using a torpedo or missile.

Re:They want 2000 though

[bsDaemon]

I interned in the instrumentation and control group of the Jefferson Lab FEL the summer I graduated from high school. My main project was working with the optics guys to write some spot-size detection software in C. Until my current job, it was definitely the most fun I've ever had in my life that didn't involve rafting. Of course, back in 2002, they had just started the 10kW upgarde project from 1kW, so a little over 10 years to get it working at 10x that capacity is pretty sweet.

the project website for all the real, nerdy, details is here if anyone is interested.

Re:They want 2000 though

[Woogiemonger]

The "20 feet of steel per second" number is similar to Slashdots car analogies - a way to make an otherwise difficult to understand number more human friendly. It's probably just the time it took to burn though, say, 1/4" of steel scaled up how much it could cut through in a second, if they could operate it continuously (which presumably they can't).

The goal of this thing certainly isn't cutting though many feet of steel - it's for shooting down missiles.

With 20 ft per second I can maybe agree (that translates to a quarter an inch of steel per millisecond on a stationary target), but when they hit 2000, it's quacking like the duck that it is.

Re:They want 2000 though

[Zorpheus]

That is not so useful to fire on one ship from another since you cannot shoot over the horizon. Missiles can sink your ship before you get in range. Unless you get down all of them with the laser, of course.

Re:They want 2000 though

[Thing 1]

That is not so useful to fire on one ship from another since you cannot shoot over the horizon. Missiles can sink your ship before you get in range. Unless you get down all of them with the laser, of course.

BIG MIRRORS IN ORBIT.

Re:They want 2000 though

[TCPhotography]

Right now the USN doesn't use any OTH missiles for ship-to-ship duties. We keep the Harpoon (XGM-84) around because it's cheap and with some minor mods (a GPS unit) can be used as a land attack missile.

The preferred anti-ship system right now is an SM-2 because with them you maintain positive control throughout the entire flight. It's also a hell of a lot faster than a subsonic Harpoon, which combined with the solid fuel makes it a lot more dangerous.

Re:They want 2000 though

[commodore6502]

You forgot about the TASM (Tomahawk Anti-Ship Missile).

As for lasers I could easily imagine a missile equipped with a laser so, instead of blowing a hole with explosives, the missile would "pop up" 20 miles out and start melting through the hull.

Re:They want 2000 though

[TCPhotography]

The TASMs were pulled from service years ago.

20 feeet, not 200

[SpinyNorman]

The article said it can burn thru 20 feet of steel per second, not 200 per the slashdot version.

Even the 20 feet is likely misleading since I doubt it can sustain that power output for more than a fraction of a second, and anyways if you really were borign thru multiple feet of steel then all your vaporized steel in the borehole you were creating would get in the way of the laser.

Still very impressive though. I'd love to see the face of the first crackpot dictator whose ICBMs are shot down by one of these.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[Anonymous Coward]

Summaries are intentionally misleading and made that way by the editors. It encourages people to "participate" in a discussion and is for keeping mindshare with people people who are somehow not discouraged by repeated editorial manipulation.

Single fox news link posted to the front page? Seriously could have gotten a better source.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[TiberiusMonkey]

...or the crazy glint on the face of first crackpot president, that decides to point it at whichever country the USA has decided is the bad guy next time around. Sorry, couldn't resist.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[Anonymous Coward]

If you set aside the politics and simply examine the extent of U.S. military activity, it is pretty hard to argue that they are working very much at destroying things.

(I'm not arguing that they do not destroy things, simply that they don't usually do anything resembling exercising their full capability)

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[YrWrstNtmr]

I'd love to see the face of the first crackpot dictator whose ICBMs are shot down by one of these.

Currently, no dictator at the crackpot level has an ICBM. Emphasis on the C.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[Yvanhoe]

This is very interesting and I think the point is not to shoot down ICBMs but to shoot down anti-ship missiles. Right now, there are simply no way to stop a recent missile before it gets to the ship. Aircraft carriers are currently little more than overpriced targets. This kind of research is vital to the navy.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[Anonymous Coward]

What I was reading earlier about this free electron laser weapon is that it can essentially be left on so long as power is supplied. What I'm not sure is what '20 feet of steel per second' means. I doubt they mean drilling into a 20-foot deep plate, given that slag and vapor would make that difficult, so maybe they mean cutting a 20-foot long line across a plate of steel?

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[burnin1965]

If the United States military exercised their full capability everyone on the planet would be dead multiple times over and a significant percentage of all human civilization infrastructure would be destroyed.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[ISoldat53]

I wonder if this announcement has anything to do with the recent Chinese parade showing off their new anti-aircraft carrier missile?

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to see the face of the first crackpot dictator whose ICBMs are shot down by one of these.

Currently, no dictator at the crackpot level has an ICBM. Emphasis on the C.

I believe the little, bald, lonely fellow in North Korea has a few missiles that are capable of reaching all the way to Alaska and, last I heard in about the middle of 2009, was that in three years he might be able to lob them as far as the west coast of the US. So even if his current crop of Dongs are barely ICBM grade it may be that he (or perhaps his son) could soon have actual ICBM capability.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[SpinyNorman]

There do already exist anti-missile defences such as the phalanx gun (a radar guided gun that shoots 3-4000 15mm rounds per minute = 50+ rounds/sec), but this would certainly be a huge step up in defensive capability.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbs=vid%3A1&q=phalanx+gun&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[SpinyNorman]

This video shows the phalanx doing it's thing ! :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prNhzbqlZ4Q

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[camperdave]

Summaries are intentionally misleading and made that way by the editors. It encourages people to "participate" in a discussion and is for keeping mindshare with people people who are somehow not discouraged by repeated editorial manipulation.

That explains a lot.

Single fox news link posted to the front page? Seriously could have gotten a better source.

I'll say. That's why there are such gems as producing a supercharged electron beam that can burn through 20 feet of steel per second. A free electron laser uses a beam of electrons as a lasing medium, but it never leaves the device.

“We’re fast approaching the limits of our ability to hit maneuvering pieces of metal in the sky with other piece of flying metal,” explained Rear Admiral Nevin P. Carr Jr., Chief of Naval Research, in an interview with FoxNews.com. That’s why he calls free election laser technology or “directed energy” tech “our marquee program.”

Free election laser? I thought they were shooting down cruise missiles, not malevolent dictators.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[ScrewMaster]

I wonder if this announcement has anything to do with the recent Chinese parade showing off their new anti-aircraft carrier missile?

I dunno. On the one hand, it gains some political points but on the other ... it's the kind of think you'd probably want to keep secret so the other side doesn't spend time and money working on countermeasures.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[Anonymous Coward]

I would not trust anybody who measures distance in feet to design my laser. Much less feeet. Smoots, maybe.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[Anonymous Coward]

Currently, no dictator at the crackpot level has an ICBM. Emphasis on the C.

Emphsis on the C because there may be a crackpot dictator within IBM?

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[JaredOfEuropa]

That's a Dutch ship, using the Goalkeeper antimissile system rather than the Phalanx.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah.. i'm sure it will only be used on "crackpot dictators" that deserve it, who's territories we are morally justified in invading to "liberate" their people.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how everyone with a tiny bit of knowledge clings to the idea of that one missile that made it into Fox News and CNN as the end all be all anti-cap ship weapon. Anyone with the inkling to do some research will find the problem is far more significant but far less worrisome than the mainstream media would have us believe. I wrote a freakin' GRADUATE THESIS on the subject.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is more likely we will see the look on the faces of the people the crackpot dictator dictates over when you sell him one of these.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[Anonymous Coward]

...Right now, there are simply no way to stop a recent missile before it gets to the ship. Aircraft carriers are currently little more than overpriced targets. This kind of research is vital to the navy.

This is when I wish I made an account ten years ago so I could be seen...

Of course there is anti-ship missile defense systems. They are shockingly impressive. They are able to take out any other country's missile technology, but unlikely our own under certain circumstances. A carrier is never alone, there are dedicated defense vessels using 'ordinary' missile technology and the carrier's point defense is merely the last line of defense should things go pear shaped.

As a rule the military tries to stay 20 years ahead of everyone and this is simply that.

Citation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_weapon_system

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[Brannoncyll]

Well then lets pray to all of our deities that the next president isn't Republican.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[Anonymous Coward]

Just send Iran poetry, flowers, and good vibes instead. The dignity of human nature will then come out, the peaceful religion of Islam will blow kisses back, and we can all groove on good sex, good dope, and utopia.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[John Hasler]

Or maybe you do want the other side to spend time and money working on countermeasures (besides, the other side is going to know about it anyway).

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably believe also that he can deploy them against the UK within 45 minutes, don't you? Get real, wanker.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlikely, as most of the crackpot dictators out there are U.S. client states.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[Anonymous Coward]

Currently. Emphasis on the C.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[fluffy99]

The article said it can burn thru 20 feet of steel per second, not 200 per the slashdot version.

Even the 20 feet is likely misleading since I doubt it can sustain that power output for more than a fraction of a second, and anyways if you really were borign thru multiple feet of steel then all your vaporized steel in the borehole you were creating would get in the way of the laser.

Still very impressive though. I'd love to see the face of the first crackpot dictator whose ICBMs are shot down by one of these.

True. The duty cycle is probably very short indeed. However a single 1-millisecond shot is sufficent to burn through a 1/4" shell on an inbound missle. Higher power in a short duration is actually what you want when shooting something down as it makes stable aiming (especially on something rotating) far less critical. The Navy is very interesting in laser weapons as nuclear power is cheap and you don't have to carry or create a supply line for munitions.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[aliquis]

How great.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the major advantages of free electron lasers is that they can sustain max power much longer than most other lasers. There is no physical medium that needs to maintain integrity.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[Marcika]

...Right now, there are simply no way to stop a recent missile before it gets to the ship. Aircraft carriers are currently little more than overpriced targets. This kind of research is vital to the navy.

This is when I wish I made an account ten years ago so I could be seen...

Of course there is anti-ship missile defense systems. They are shockingly impressive. They are able to take out any other country's missile technology, but unlikely our own under certain circumstances. A carrier is never alone, there are dedicated defense vessels using 'ordinary' missile technology and the carrier's point defense is merely the last line of defense should things go pear shaped.

As a rule the military tries to stay 20 years ahead of everyone and this is simply that.

Citation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_weapon_system

Let me be the first to say BULLSHIT. I never heard of any expert stating that a teeny-tiny 20mm gatling gun like the Phalanx would have a snowman's chance in hell of intercepting a ballistic missile. Just to remind you, a modern ASBM like the Dong-Wave 21 has a 15-tonne warhead arriving at mach 10 or more. Firing a handful of 100g gatling gun rounds at it in that last one second when it is in range won't do a damn thing - it won't even change its direction...

The only credible countermeasure against ballistic missiles is to shoot another ballistic missile at it - preferably AEGIS-guided, like the RIM-161 SM-3... Problem is that there are a limited number of these on any one target ship, each with only one shot at success; and even 20 ASBM are a hell of a lot cheaper than a carrier with all its planes...

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[Yvanhoe]

Well, feel free to link on your thesis. The fact that there are missiles that can escape detection until very close range and switch into ballistic mode before even bullets can reach them seems like good things to be worried about.

Even before reading about it I personally was more worried about the possibility to overwhelm a ship's anti-missile defenses with thousands of missiles/decoys at the same time. If you can sink a ship with a missile budget that is 1/10th of the ship's cost, the ships becomes actually a standing target.

So please tell us what possible ways of escaping a ballistic missile have US navy ships ?

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[Yvanhoe]

I may add that while Phalanx turrets have had some success at intercepting some anti-ship missiles, the worries comes exactly from the kind of missiles described : a ballistic missile. As a reminder, "ballistic" means that the missile is just falling down. You can destroy its guidance systems, engines, etc... without changing its trajectory. It is basically several tons of metal and explosives falling down on the ship.

Recent missiles have the ability to escape detection until close range (by staying close to the sea) and make a very quick manoeuver (turn 90 degrees up in a very tight turn) so as to go ballistic just a few seconds after the anti-missile system has had a chace to detect it. This is your interception window, bullets and missiles are too slow to be effective in these conditions, laser is your only chance. You have to destroy guidance systems during the stealth-to-ballistic manoeuver.

Re:20 feeet, not 200

[Anonymous Coward]

False, there are multiple systems such as CIWS and Sea-Sparrow just to name a few. However there is a constant arms race between anti-ship missiles and counter-measures. This is just part of that.

Also, carriers never travel alone for that reason.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-630

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goalkeeper_CIWS

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-7_Sea_Sparrow

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_strike_group

volume

[electrosoccertux]

what diameter is the beam? volume/sec more important IMO

Re:volume

[pushing-robot]

what diameter is the beam? volume/sec more important IMO

I dunno, if it slices a jet/tank/ICBM/ship in half I'm probably not going to care too much about the size of the gap.

Re:volume

[SpinyNorman]

I doubt there are too many places an ICBM travelling at Mach 1 can sustain even a 1/2" hole bored thru it without either somthing vital (fuel, wiring, electronics, warhead) being hit, or just simply losing control aerodynamically and breaking up a la Columbia (Space Shuttle) with a hole in the wing.

Re:volume

[Dr. Grabow]

Mach 1 is about 340 m/s. At that speed the Navy could send up a fighter and throw a rope around it. ICBM reentry speeds are usually over 4,000 m/s, with in-flight speeds of over 6,000 m/s. Or about Mach 16. A different magnitude of problem...

An order of magnitude

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Editors, were you asleep the day they taught reading comprehension? The FA says 20 feet per second, not 200. An order of magnitude is one hell of an error. You guys are pathetic. How about you slow down and practice a little quality control?

Re:An order of magnitude

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Editors, were you asleep the day they taught reading comprehension? The FA says 20 feet per second, not 200. An order of magnitude is one hell of an error. You guys are pathetic. How about you slow down and practice a little quality control?

To be asleep, one first needs the ability to be awake.

20, not 200

[Broofa]

From the article: producing a supercharged electron beam that can burn through 20 feet of steel per second"

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/02/18/navy-breaks-world-record-futuristic-laser-getting-real/#ixzz1EPpwfpx0

Re:20, not 200

[Stele]

Fox News has a science tech section? You just blew my mind!

Re:20, not 200

[Anonymous Coward]

They have to know who to brand as heretics, right?

Re:20, not 200

[Posting=!Working]

Yes, it covers both major branches of science: war and religion.

Not lasing yet

[Anonymous Coward]

This 500kV test was of just the accelerator (i.e. the bit the produces the electron beam part of a Free Electron Beam laser), not the FEL itself. It's this electron beam that is purported to do the extraordinary steel-cutting, not the laser beam. There is no mention of whether this was a momentary or sustained electron beam output. A 500kV accelerator on it's own isn't all that impressive, but once they package it into a small volume (room rather than building), and actually use it to lase, then that will be very impressive indeed.

Re:Not lasing yet

[Anonymous Coward]

> but once they package it into a small volume (room rather than building), and actually use it to lase, then that will be very impressive indeed.

Given that size, the shark they manage to mount it on will even more fricking impressive!

Re:Not lasing yet

[Dr. Evil]

These jokes were old when Slashdot UIDs were in the 4 digits.

Re:Not lasing yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Who knows, combine it with what they've been learning and researching with those Bussard reactors, and we just might get some real-life Yamato cannons afterall. (But in all likelihood we won't call them that. And line of sight pretty much means defense and airspace denial rather than attacking other ships with them.) It's kind of funny that some of the stuff the Navy has under wraps is more impressive than the stuff the Air Force has been doing.

Now if somebody can get the particle accelerator package into something small enough to put on an actual aircraft that would even be more impressive than getting it on a ship. Stealth would be sort of redundant if no enemy aircraft or missiles in line of sight would be allowed close enough to do anything. Something resembling a modified airliner could perform no-fly-zone type enforcement missions (and maybe take on an occasional Spectre gunship style ground-support mission) while the pilots kick back and take it easy. I suppose that kind of development would seriously piss off the thrills and glory seeking fighter jockeys.

Re:Not lasing yet

[John Hasler]

> A 500kV accelerator on it's own isn't all that impressive,

A 500kV accelerator with a beam current of 1 microamp isn't all that impressive. A 500kV accelerator with a beam current of 1A is.

Re:20 feet of steel, not 200.

[maroberts]

Who needs to burn through 20 feet of steel? Or even 2 feet of steel?

Well, not so much 20 feet of steel directly, but there's a lot to be said for a weapon that could punch through 1-2 feet of layered tank armour, or melt a substantial hole in a warship. While many warships are not heavily armored nowadays, there are still exceptions.

Re:Why scale down?

[Anonymous Coward]

They manage to scale the frickin' lasers down to frickin' shark-size.

Wake me when they scale frickin' sharks up to frickin' laser-size.

Re:US Navy Breaks Laser Record

[maroberts]

Fricken' sharks not impressed.

Fricken' sharks are checking in for an upgrade...

Damn it

[Semptimilius]

Just when I installed my new 200' thick steel bunker doors on my ocean-side villain headquarters.

Re:Damn it

[camperdave]

That's okay. Just mount mirrors on the outside of the bunker doors. If you get the angle just right, the navy will wind up shooting themselves.

Re:Damn it

[ravenshrike]

Not unless you have one fuckload of an impressive heatsink on the other side of the mirrors cold to a few degrees above 0

Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[seeker_1us]

Naval artillery and missiles can shoot over the horizon. Lasers have to be in line of sight.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Anonymous Coward]

No! they'll just burn a hole thru the horizon and get you on the other side :)

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[SpinyNorman]

Who needs range when your "missile" is travelling at the speed of light?

Anyways, for a laser mounted on a Navy warship, say 10m above sea level, the horizon is over 10km away, so even an incoming sea skipping exocet missile coming in at 300 m/s is over 30 sec away.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[rossdee]

But naval warfare is well suited to the sharks that you mount your lasers on

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[GreatBunzinni]

These laser systems are being developed to shoot down incoming artillery and missiles. That's why the US Navy is commissioning companies to develop small enough systems to be fit in destroyers. That way, the US carrier group employs these destroyers to protect the carrier group from airborne threats while the carrier, with their fighters and bombers, occupy themselves with attacking stuff over the horizon.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[peragrin]

good you have the basics, now go back and learn which horizon your shooting over and how one shoots over the horizon to begin with.

There is plenty of time for a laser to hit naval artillery and missiles while they are flying over the horizon and the target they are attacking

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[TheRaven64]

What makes you think that they're just for attacking? One of the nice things about lasers is that they can be aimed very quickly. With enough energy, you can vaporise incoming artillery shells. And if you can vaporise any incoming cruise or ballistic weapons, you can get very close to the enemy...

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Anonymous Coward]

They have these things called air planes now.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[timeOday]

Then again, defensive lasers could shoot down incoming enemy artillery and missiles.

Also, notice the sentence "the Navy just awarded Boeing a contract worth up to $163 million to take that technology and package it as a 100 kW weapons system."

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[maxume]

Of course, such a device would still be quite useful at shooting down such missiles.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Nemyst]

Lasers are unavoidable and impossible to counter - the best you can do is get more hull plating everywhere. They just about never miss, either, especially on large targets.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or put a mirror in space...

While been mocked in many movies the idea is sound. If it can keep its energy level up long enough. You could litterally vaporize a target from Kansas and hit it in Korea.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090056/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Graff]

Naval artillery and missiles can shoot over the horizon. Lasers have to be in line of sight.

True, which is why you make them orbital lasers.

Even better is if you make them orbital mind-control lasers!

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[SpinyNorman]

Lasers are unavoidable and impossible to counter - the best you can do is get more hull plating everywhere.

Yeah - either that or just shoot the frickin' shark.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[jpapon]

I may be off base here, but I'm pretty sure building a mirror that reflects an energy beam that can burn through 20ft of steel per second is impossible. Or rather, impossible with today's technology. Or do you think a mirror-coated ICBM would be invulnerable to said laser? Think a little!

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[fish waffle]

...impossible to counter?

Umm, what if the enemy launched 1000 fake missiles at the same time---how many simultaneous targets can it destroy? What if they launched a series of missiles from beyond the horizon, how long can you keep using your laser? What if they launched torpedos instead, or at the same time, does your laser also work underwater? What if they launched highly reflective chaff with their missiles, would your laser be able to find the target and would it have full energy? What if they launched a whole lot of small missiles rather than one big one? What if their missiles incorporated radar invisibility, so you don't see it with the auto-aiming mechanism? What if they just launched chunks of metal that didn't care if they had a pin-sized hole in them? What if they made missiles that looked like missiles, but actually had the explosive part offset somehow, so your super-accurate laser kept burning holes in irrelevant areas?

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[burnin1965]

Would that be the exocet missile with the fresh coat of Krylon metallic chrome paint on the nose cone? :P

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[burnin1965]

Lasers are unavoidable and impossible to counter

I checked and the local Ace Hardware is mysteriously out of Krylon metallic chrome spray paint.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Carewolf]

So you have an incoming ballistic projectile coming at you and you shoot it with you laser.. You now have a molten superheated projectile of the exact same mass and velocity coming at you.. It is very convinient to be able to detonate warheads before impact, but the enemy will stil have old-fashioned mass-based weapons to shoot you with.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[PPH]

True, which is why you make them orbital lasers

Now that's a shark out of water if ever there was one.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[TheRaven64]

No, you have a superheated cloud of vapour coming at you with the same momentum. The interactions between air and a solid projectile and air and a cloud of vapour are very different.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Anonymous Coward]

Spinning mirror covered missiles.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[PieSquared]

And what percent of incoming light do you think chrome paint reflects? 99%? Why, that only leaves 2.5 inches of steel per second of cutting power, and what it actually needs is enough heat to burn paint, which is considerably less.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the classic offense versus defense arms race. Of course you could use decoys to counter a laser - but that rapidly gets expensive. How expensive? Depends on the laser (or lasers) that you have to counter. If you need 2500 missiles that cost 500k Euro each to pierce the defense provided by a pair of 20m Euro lasers, effectively piercing that defense is pretty much impractical. Also, don't forget that radar isn't the only way to auto-aim: IR and visible frequency devices have been available for decades, and the computers to correlate these inputs are only getting better. A laser-armed ship will probably have other defenses, too, including radar decoys, IR decoys, jamming, missiles, autocannon and stealth. No defense is perfect - but no offense is, either.

Torpedoes present a tougher problem, and would probably be the most effective weapon against a laser-armed ship, since making a laser that can counter a torpedo is hard. Of course, torpedoes themselves have issues - basically it boils down to: fast, long range, cheap, smart - pick at most three, and "cheap" counts as two.

Also, contrary to popular belief, lasers don't just poke pinholes in things. A rapid train of laser pulses can blast fairly large craters in objects, because the superheated material vaporized by the laser wants to rapidly expand (explode, basically), and this will damage the surrounding material. Shocks produced by this can produce even more damage remote to the point of impact. These blasts can also knock unguided artillery shells off course or trigger their fuzes.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Thing 1]

I like the AC's response for humor, but I can envision us putting up a bunch of orbital mirrors. 'Course, why not put the weapon in orbit as well? Cuts down on half the travel time, and also can be more accurately pointed.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Thing 1]

One of the nice things about lasers is that they can be aimed very quickly. With enough energy, you can vaporise incoming artillery shells

I feel bad for the birds of prey, who will suddenly become the military's dinner.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[phobos512]

I'm going to go ahead and give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant sea SKIMMING, not sea SKIPPING. The idea of a weapon bouncing along the surface of the ocean at 0.92 Mach is...well, hilarious. To say nothing of the fact that the Exocet doesn't go that fast.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[phobos512]

We've been frying pigeons since the inception of radar. Nothing new to be concerned about.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[phobos512]

"Torpedoes present a tougher problem, and would probably be the most effective weapon against a laser-armed ship, since making a laser that can counter a torpedo is hard. Of course, torpedoes themselves have issues - basically it boils down to: fast, long range, cheap, smart - pick at most three, and "cheap" counts as two." And why do yo make this supposition? There are wavelengths of light that easily penetrate to the depths torpedoes travel at, which isn't very deep, especially in the terminal phase. It's again just a question of energy on target.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[phobos512]

"Of course, torpedoes themselves have issues - basically it boils down to: fast, long range, cheap, smart - pick at most three, and "cheap" counts as two." The generally acknowledged "pick any" in engineering is "Cost, Schedule, Performance" within which you pick any two to be as originally desired. Choose three of four though, that's, charming, lol.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[kevinNCSU]

Once you detonate the warhead there isn't going to be a whole lot of solid mass left traveling in the original direction.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Zancarius]

The generally acknowledged "pick any" in engineering is "Cost, Schedule, Performance" within which you pick any two to be as originally desired. Choose three of four though, that's, charming, lol.

I suspect the OP knew that much, but he was simply being humorous or attempting to add tongue in cheek humor to the conversation.

You also neglected the "fast, good, and cheap" from business, too, which is effectively the same thing but with smaller words so that bean counters can more easily understand.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[tkrotchko]

"Umm, what if the enemy launched 1000 fake missiles at the same time--"

Who can do such a thing?

As far as a missile is concerned, what is the difference between a "real" missile and a "fake" one? Is it the warhead?

Because it seems to me that once you can build a missile, you might as well put a warhead on them because that might be the cheapest part of the weapon.

So then we're back to "who has 1000 missiles to launch"? Does anybody have that capability?

As to the other scenarios you mention, who has those capabilities? Not theoretically, but actually has them?

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[John Hasler]

Mirrors don't work against extremely high power lasers. The electric field strength at the focal point is such that electrons are ripped directly out of the atoms. This forms a plasma which is an efficient absorber regardless of how shiny the surface originally was.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[John Hasler]

You have to admit that a sea-skipping missile would be hard to hit, though. Of course, it might also be a bit inaccurate...

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[The Wild Norseman]

No! they'll just burn a hole thru the horizon and get you on the other side :)

Chuck Norris doesn't burn a hole through the horizon.

He is the horizon.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[jklovanc]

The Chinese have 187 Xian H-g's each capable of launching 6-7 anti ship missiles. 187*7 = 1309. So China does have the capability of launching 100+ antiship missiles at once. Add in missiles launched from ships, submarines and ballistic missiles and one can easily see have any defence can be overwhelmed. I am not saying it will be easy; just possible.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[blair1q]

Line of sight on the ocean is a long damn way, and lasers are zero time-of-flight. Gives you plenty of room to defend against any projectile known.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[stevelinton]

1. pure ballistic weapons aren't that big a threat. They are in flight, and unsteered for so long that you can dodge them (or shoot them down with some sort of quick reacting machine gun).

2. If you melt the front or side of the shell it will likely tumble and miss, and surely fail to penetrate armour

3. You may be able to detonate and will certainly be able to disable the explosive warhead. Now you just have a cannonball coming at you, which is a lot better than a shell.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Anonymous Coward]

>enemy launched 1000 fake missiles
Bwahahahaha, if an enemy can afford to make 1000 missiles that move at the same speed and with indistinguishably the same maneuvering as a real missile, they might as well put in a real warhead because the cost of that is peanuts compared to the rest.

The rest of your objections are more or less equally dumb.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Anonymous Coward]

that was the worst chuck norris joke I ever heard... and that says a lot since they're all pretty much awful.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Anonymous Coward]

Until proven in real-life battle conditions, all of the modern countermeasures are cosmetic at best. The one conclusion we can draw from the Falklands and the more recent skirmishes near the Korean peninsula is that modern warships are nothing more than giant floating coffins for their crews.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[John Hasler]

And while they are concentrating all their antiship resources on one US carrier, what are the other US carriers doing?

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[GravityStar]

I think the idea would be that the energy beam arrives at the mirror evenly distributed over its surface. The mirror would then do the focusing and targeting. As for execution, I don't know if this is feasible, but it made for a great Tom Clancy novel though. (The Cardinal of the Kremlin)

http://www.amazon.com/Cardinal-Kremlin-Tom-Clancy/dp/0425116840

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[burnin1965]

I was being facetious about the chrome painted missile but you are wrong about mirrors and high power lasers.

It is not as simple as spraying krylon chrome paint on a substrate to create a laser mirror and cooling is an issue but even high power lasers utilize mirrors in the optical cavity with a Q switch outcoupler mirror on one end.

For your reference here is a picture of the outcoupler from the Jefferson Lab FEL being worked on.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[garyebickford]

There are several operational tactical missiles that fly at supersonic speeds. The Brahmos I cruise missile is operational now. Brahmos II (2015 deployment) will be hypersonic - Mach 5-7. So now it's less than six or five seconds assuming you spot it at the horizon.

But IIRC the radar on an aircraft carrier is at least 170 feet above ground, so the horizon is farther. However over-the-horizon radar helps - If I recall Top Gun they could spot planes out 200 miles (but those are higher off the deck - it's hard to spot missiles with tiny frontal area, 10 feet above the water.) And (IANA military analyst) I think that there are AWACS-type planes up in the air over a carrier group most of the time when in a war situation and a bunch of other tools in play.

Nevertheless, it's a point of concern and having a laser that could kill such missiles would be a win. But the biggest win is the elimination of the need for the huge logistics chain to provide ordnance to the ships at sea. If a ship has 10 anti-missile missiles, what do they do when those are all gone? With a laser, all you have to provide is fuel, supplies and maintenance equipment. Nuclear ships don't even need fuel (except for the planes etc.) and have so much excess power capability that adding a few lasers would not make a dent.

Vid of Brahmos I - caution loud annoying music but VERY fast missile.

DF-21 Anti-ship ballistic missile

See also ArcLight (US hypersonic cruise missile), under development - adapted from the RIM 161 missile launched from AEGIS guided missile ships, and launchable from the same tubes.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Anonymous Coward]

...impossible to counter?

Umm, what if the enemy launched 1000 fake missiles at the same time---how many simultaneous targets can it destroy? What if they launched a series of missiles from beyond the horizon, how long can you keep using your laser? What if they launched torpedos instead, or at the same time, does your laser also work underwater? What if they launched highly reflective chaff with their missiles, would your laser be able to find the target and would it have full energy? What if they launched a whole lot of small missiles rather than one big one? What if their missiles incorporated radar invisibility, so you don't see it with the auto-aiming mechanism? What if they just launched chunks of metal that didn't care if they had a pin-sized hole in them? What if they made missiles that looked like missiles, but actually had the explosive part offset somehow, so your super-accurate laser kept burning holes in irrelevant areas?

And what if they had a pony?

If they can launch 1000 fake missiles (nevermind the fact that there's no real point in that because a "fake missile" has to be a REAL missile of somekind so it might as well have a warhead on it...) or a "series of missiles from beyond the horizon" you're ALREADY fucked.

As far as, "What if they made missiles that looked like missiles, but actually had the explosive part offset somehow, so your super-accurate laser kept burning holes in irrelevant areas?", do you always go so far in displaying your ignorance? When you make something like a guided missile that travels at least a few hundred miles per hour, there IS NO SUCH THING as an "irrelevant area".

Your straw men are more lame than an fat Thalidomide dachshund. You start by assuming whatever enemy this laser would be facing is already superior enough to launch a thousand fakes or wave after wave of OTH missiles - which, BTW, aren't exactly numerous in anyone's inventory, nor are they inexpensive.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[baegucb]

Maybe they could use an approach such as this: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/using-lasers-to-zap-mosquitoes/

50-100 mosquitoes shot down per second.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[John Hasler]

It is not as simple as spraying krylon chrome paint on a substrate to create a laser mirror and cooling is an issue but even high power lasers utilize mirrors in the optical cavity

Yes of course they do but the beam is not focused on those mirrors.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[ElderKorean]

You have to admit that a sea-skipping missile would be hard to hit, though. Of course, it might also be a bit inaccurate...

Been done before, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouncing_bomb
or even, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skip_bombing
Dam wall are pretty big, as are ships if sideon.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[IICV]

What if your enemy snuck a civilian boat full of explosives in next to your ship and detonated it?

Symmetrical warfare, where you are up against an enemy who can afford to throw more than one missile at you, is the past. Asymetrical warfare is the future.

Right now we're preparing for another 30 Years' War, when World War I is around the corner.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a retarded.
1000 fake missiles? first of all, everyone would see 1000 missiles and not knowing where it will hit would probably turn against you. not only that, the cost would be in the multi-billion dollars value. You would need massive amount of workers and machinery, raising red flags across the world of the resources used. Any country would probably bankrupt itself also USA has over 10 carriers.

torpedoes are anti ship, sea skimming. highly reflective chaff. if you dont know what strength to reflect at, youre not reflecting crap.
lasers do not find targets, radars do therefore it does have full energy. charge and fire.

little missiles, not enough fuel. even the stealthiest bomber the b2 can be detected.
chunk size metal, what is this? a metal moving 1 inch an 5 seconds due to gravity isnt going to be a target.

and your last, cut a missile in 1/2 and there no more steering to it, all it can do is drop in the direction of gravity.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[MechaStreisand]

Sailing in other oceans thousands of miles away?

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, let's play this scenario.

A missile comes over the horizon. You now have 30 seconds before impact. Do you see it immidiately? Tick-tock, tick-tock, now you see it.
There's 25 seconds left on the clock. What do you do? Ah, let's shoot it down with our fancy laser. Give the order. You now have 20 seconds left.

Rotate the laser turret towards the incoming missile, try to get a lock on it, which isn't all that easy since it's pointing right at you. You have 10 seconds left.
You've got a lock and prepare to fire. 5 seconds left. Missile is completely destroyed, with three seconds left. Pfew, that was close!

Too bad you couldn't handle the other two incoming missiles at the same time. Game over.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[seeker_1us]

If you have range advantage, you get to shoot while the enemy can't shoot back.

Seriously, how this comment got modded insightful is beyond me.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why they're working on rail guns too.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Anonymous Coward]

if all your 'what ifs' were true, you'd already be dead. ;)

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[jklovanc]

Return to base, rearm, refuel and sortie against the next carrier. Repeat until all carriers sunk.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Vexar]

That is a very astute observation. Probably not suitable for squads, but definitely for bases, if they can airlift it. And the nuclear reactor to power it. Oh wait. So much technology relies upon electricity and the military is powerless to get beyond its naval reactors. Or those monstrous diesel generators.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Vexar]

Leave it to the French to use a catapult and throw cows at the US Military, defeating so many high-tech toys with mass and velocity. I can just see the battle group comm chatter: "Attention all ships, attention all ships: Run Away!"
Sonic technology is much more capable than laser technology.

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[SpinyNorman]

Huh? You seem to be thinking of an artillary scenario or somesuch, where a shot fired on target is as good as a hit.

What good does it do an enemy to fire a missile at you when you have the ability to shoot it down while it's as far as 10km away??!!

Never mid that, what does your defensive capability (laser) have to do with the your choice of offense?

Please engage brain before posting!

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[jarlsberg71]

I was wondering about how far the beam will go. We've a lot of space junk up there, Will they know that if they burn through something they could hit a satellite? Or junk drifting in LEO?

Re:Serious range disadvantage for naval warfare.

[Anonymous Coward]

But doesn't Phalanx already do this? I remember my dad talking about it putting a round down the axis of a flying artillery round in testing. I suppose CIWS is probably the only thing you could do with it, over the horizon combat's been the name of the game since WW2. And this thing still sounds like a power hog, the kind of thing best fitted to nuclear carriers. I suppose if they get the power down low enough maybe it could be fit to destroyers, but then the question is, do you need to put it on a diesel-electric hybrid ship so you can cut out the screws while you power the thing? I'd really love to see the math on this.

Re:Why scale down?

[UDChris]

Wrong science. This is physics, not biology. Unless you are talking about ill-tempered robotic sharks with frickin' laser beams...

But,

[Anonymous Coward]

Can it pop pocorn?

Laser launchers?

[Cheerio Boy]

Everybody's complaining about the weaponization of this, and I agree they don't need any more toys, but I think this is a good thing because it's a great step towards laser launching systems and away from chemical rockets.

The military may have done it but it also could be adapted to commercial usages.

Heck one thing I can think of is dismantling large ships in boneyards. This would be good for any sort of metal recycling in fact.

Re:Laser launchers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is a ridiculously expensive idea, lasers cost $10,000's per kW of output. Launching rockets requires many GW of power (space shuttle main engines are about 9GW each, close to 50GW total on a spaceshuttle). So if you have a spare few hundred billion lying around for such an endeavour then be my guest.

Rockets or light gas guns will always beat laser.

Re:Laser launchers?

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't need new toys? Competing militaries have missles that can easily destroy carriers. Why can only other millitaries have new "toys?" these "toys" will prevent losses. What's your alternative.

Re:Laser launchers?

[willy_me]

Heck one thing I can think of is dismantling large ships in boneyards. This would be good for any sort of metal recycling in fact.

Hight pressure water jets would be much cheaper for cutting metal. This technology is here and in use today. In addition, the dangers inherit in employees of a recycling yard operating a laser of such power should be obvious.

Re:Laser launchers?

[garyebickford]

Not true. US aircraft carriers are all nuclear powered, so the electrical power for free electron lasers is always available. The biggest single headache for the Navy is logistics - getting bullets and such stuff to the ships in time of war. I don't know if it's still true, but fuel for the trucks in Iraq at one time was costing something like $200 per gallon due to the logistics hassle. And the biggest ships only have room for a small number (under 100) missiles. So during a war it's easy to run out of ammo.

A nuke ship with an electrically-powered laser has almost unlimited shooting capability, limited only in the firing rate according to the equipment capacity and number of weapons. (Of course there are still logistic hassles for food, repair parts and supplies etc.) I think this is probably at least as important, if not more important, than the speed equation.

Real Genius

[mr100percent]

Over 20 comments before someone mentions Real Genius? This was like the plot of the movie itself.

Re:Real Genius

[Graff]

Over 20 comments before someone mentions Real Genius? This was like the plot of the movie itself.

I thought the plot was about nerds getting laid! The laser part was just a way to move the plot along...

Re:Real Genius

[zippthorne]

The plot was stupid.

They created an incredibly expensive weapon that could only be used to very accurately kill single person per shot, but through several layers of armor.

The only possible effect of such a weapon on the nature of warfare would be to change war from a bloody activity in which thousands or millions of commoners sacrifice their lives for the goals of a few powerful elite, to one in which the powerful elite are the targets: A B-1 bomber with a single-shot laser is not exactly the kind of equipment whose expense is justified against infantry.

It's hard to believe that peace lovers would be opposed to the very kind of weapon that would reduce the bloodshed and put pressure on the very causes of wars...

Re:Real Genius

[Anonymous Coward]

Your complaints are stupid. The opening scene showed that the laser was a secret project without any oversight -- hidden from the president and any anyone outside their group -- and when one member of the group in charge decided he couldn't be party to this type of activity, the group ordered his execution (via a thin euphemism). It wasn't that a laser couldn't be used for a reduction in losses, it was that they were obviously going to use it to take out whomever they wanted.

Re:Real Genius

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should start a campaign to allow assassination in the laws of war.

Re:Real Genius

[ScrewMaster]

It's hard to believe that peace lovers would be opposed to the very kind of weapon that would reduce the bloodshed and put pressure on the very causes of wars...

That's because it isn't. If you start assassinating the enemy's leadership (whether it be with baseball bats or orbiting laser projectors), you're going to start World War III. And, because you've killed off all the people who had the power to say "stop", it will continue until we're all dead.

Re:Real Genius

[ScrewMaster]

Your complaints are stupid. The opening scene showed that the laser was a secret project without any oversight -- hidden from the president and any anyone outside their group -- and when one member of the group in charge decided he couldn't be party to this type of activity, the group ordered his execution (via a thin euphemism). It wasn't that a laser couldn't be used for a reduction in losses, it was that they were obviously going to use it to take out whomever they wanted.

Correct, which is why a group of college students interfering with a top-secret military project was entirely justifiable within the film's plotline.

Re:Real Genius

[blair1q]

I thought the plot was about being true to yourself. And making popcorn and using near-zero kelvin water as a quarter.

Re:Real Genius

[Graff]

I thought the plot was about being true to yourself.

Same thing as I said, really! ;-)

Re:Real Genius

[ToasterMonkey]

It's hard to believe that peace lovers would be opposed to the very kind of weapon that would reduce the bloodshed and put pressure on the very causes of wars...

That's because it isn't. If you start assassinating the enemy's leadership (whether it be with baseball bats or orbiting laser projectors), you're going to start World War III. And, because you've killed off all the people who had the power to say "stop", it will continue until we're all dead.

I hope you are kidding. We're talking about reality here, not Command and Conquer.

The logistics involved with keeping a flying megawatt laser operational are nearly ridiculous. Lifting all that to space doesn't make anything easier, and then you have, yay, more atmosphere to deal with. Maybe someday, but hey, maybe someday we'll all have autonomous flying cars too.

Not to mention the fact that the topic today is the NAVY's directed energy program. N_A_V_Y.
Those are the dudes with boats, dude.

Anyway, I think something like THE ENTIRE RECORDED HISTORY OF HUMAN CONFLICTS is proof that constantly evolving weapons don't make war more or less peaceful. What an insane concept, you're both nuts.

Re:Real Genius

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, if anyone wants to argue that certain weapons make war more violent than others, I want to know how that fancy technology rates to old fashioned low tech infanticide, rape, razings, salting the earth, generations enslavement, and genocide.

We've got to stop placing blame on the weapons.

Re:20 feet of steel, not 200.

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume that much power is nice if you're hitting your target for less then the full second, i.e. even a glancing hit will go right thru a ship or whatever.

TFA has no clue what it's talking about

[johndoe42]

What is this thing supposed to be? TFA is rather clear on the point that it's "a new type of laser". But it also says (as though it's obvious) that "the more power one puts into a laser accelerator, the more powerful and precise the light beam that comes out on the other end". I don't know exactly what a "laser accelerator" is, so I don't really know whether pumping more power in makes the other end more precise.

Of course, even if FoxNews.com can't explain how it works, it was a dramatic "supercharged electron beam that can burn through 20 feet of steel per second". Well, FoxNews.com, WTF is it? A laser or an electron beam? (Hint: a laser shoots light not electrons.)

I think it's really a Free-electron laser, in which you inject electrons into a tube and laser light comes out the other end. So TFA has it completely backwards.

Re:TFA has no clue what it's talking about

[ulski]

There some more information to be found here: http://www.jlab.org/FEL/ You could also watch the video http://www.jlab.org/FEL/Movie28.mov , but that was a bit disappointing (no KABOOM).

Re:TFA has no clue what it's talking about

[jfb2252]

The JLab FEL has three segments: an photocathode raised 350kV and now 500kV from ground, a pair of superconducting (SC) cavities that take the low energy beam to ~8 MeV/c, and a small linear accelerator with 24 SC cavities which takes it to 80-140 MeV/c. Laser is pulsed at 75 MHz to photocathode. The efficiency of conversion of energy from electron to light is highly dependent on the electron bunch shape. It's easier to get a good bunch if you start at 500 kV than at 350 kV.

Frequency of the output light is determined by the electron energy and the undulator magnetic field.

Mirrors are cryogenicly cooled and large.

Outcoupling is via a hole in one mirror. It can be as high as 10% in the IR laser. I don't know the UV number.

If electron beam quality is high enough one can do without mirrors. The LCLS at SLAC is an x-ray FEL which does this. Search for SASE FEL for more info.

The JLab FEL uses SC cavities because this allows the recovery of most of the energy of the "spent" electron beam after the lasing section, increasing wall plug efficiency, i.e., light/(power in) roughly a factor of ten. The Navy likes this.

Cornell has a proposal to NSF to build a light source using an energy recovered linac, ERL.

Re:TFA has no clue what it's talking about

[kevinNCSU]

Really? This article was written by the same local news channel?

Re:TFA has no clue what it's talking about

[jo_ham]

Cute, you think the local Fox channels have any independence.

I'm getting

[kilodelta]

A Real Genius moment here. Why would the U.S. Navy need a LASED stream of electrons that can cut through 20 feet of steel?

Re:I'm getting

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I can use this to destroy satellites in orbit that are watching my lair.

Re:I'm getting

[Anonymous Coward]

Those 17-year old Somali pirates better not mess with us.

Re:I'm getting

[burnin1965]

Why ask why, when *how* is so much more fun?

Re:I'm getting

[jklovanc]

You missed the last part of that statement "per second". One of the biggest issues with laser warfare today is that they take time to burn through an object's outer shell and get at the vulnerable parts. It is difficult to keep a laser on the same spot on a moving object. If that time could be decreased dramatically, as in this laser, that problem would go away. A few millisecond burst, instead of a few second burst, will blow the missile out of the sky.

Re:I'm getting

[blair1q]

The whole thing about laser vs. electron is confusing.

I think, reading between the lines in TFA, that the electrons are the lasing medium, and the beam is still light. Not sure how they're using electrons as a medium. It's much less clear how they'd use the electrons as a damaging weapon; the average CRT gets them up to 30 kV and doesn't even scrape a single layer of phosphor molecules off the front glass. And electrons, being charged, disperse rapidly when freed from the confines of your directional system. After a few meters it'd be less beam than spray. So, again, it seems to be a lasing medium.

Re:I'm getting

[stevelinton]

The electrons (in the magnetic field they are in) are in effect the lasing medium. They are being accelerated by the magnets so they emit EM radiation. They are relativistic, so that radiation is focused forwards. Finally there is a weird feedback effect whereby the light beam bunches the electrons into bunches one wavelength apart, so that the radiation is coherent.

The Next Step?

[Lord Agni]

Sharks that can carry those frikkin lasers.

Megawatt laser

[Anonymous Coward]

What's even more crazy is that their ultimate goal is to reach a megawatt of power and burn through *2000* feet of steel per second.

Heck, I'd just be happy to get my plasma rifle in the 40-watt range :)

20 feet of steel?

[Chelloveck]

What's that expressed as houses of popcorn?

Re:20 feet of steel?

[jo_ham]

I need to know what it is in horses per submarine, just to get it in terms I can understand.

Re:20 feet of steel?

[Anonymous Coward]

whoosh!

Re:20 feet of steel?

[jo_ham]

I'm not sure you understand what "whoosh" means.

Re:20 feet of steel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come back when you're sure.

Re:20 feet of steel?

[ScrewMaster]

I'm not sure you understand what "whoosh" means.

Yeah ... the GP is a real genius, let me tell you.

Re:20 feet of steel?

[TubeSteak]

What's that expressed as houses of popcorn?

Assuming an unpopped kernel moisture content of 8.95% (less moisture = more density)
The true density of unpopped kernels is 1.304 g/cm^3
The bulk density of unpopped kernels is 0.771 g/cm^3
Steel density ranges from 7.715 g/cm^3 to 8.050 g/cm^3

So if the laser can go through 20 ft/sec of steel...
If you had one giant unpopped kernel, the laser could cut through it at a rate of 120 ft/sec
If you had lots of loose unpopped kernels, the laser could cut through them at a rate of 200 ft/sec

So to answer your question:
2.8 houses of popcorn

How'd I get 2.8?
the laser in Real Genius was 5 kilowatts and
the laser the Navy tested is 14 kilowatts
14/5 = 2.8 :p

Re:20 feet of steel?

[Anonymous Coward]

The correct message structure should be "calculation,answer", not "irrelevant,answer,calculation".

Re:20 feet of steel?

[Anonymous Coward]

The correct message structure should be "calculation,answer", not "irrelevant,answer,calculation".

You must be new here.

Re:20 feet of steel?

[blair1q]

It's about 3.6 smoots per mississippi. Give or take an ear.

Re:20 feet of steel?

[ImprovOmega]

Hand over your geek card.

The laser in Real Genius was supposed to output 5 MEGAwatts, not kilowatts. But what's a couple orders of magnitude amongst friends?

Re:20 feet of steel, not 200.

[Graff]

Who needs to burn through 20 feet of steel? Or even 2 feet of steel?

Remember that laser illuminance falls off quite rapidly with distance, especially in humid or dusty conditions. Having the power to burn through 20 feet of steel in perfect conditions at a relatively close range means you'll probably be able to still knock down that missile that's miles away in bad conditions.

There's also the factor of being able to keep the laser in one spot long enough to do damage. 1 second is a very long time to keep a beam in one spot so you need enough power that even a fraction of a second can do considerable damage.

What's the Blooming Problem?

[Aaron_Pike]

I didn't see any data about blooming or effective range. Any ideas? Is there a physicist in the house?

Re:What's the Blooming Problem?

[davidwr]

As an initial estimate, I'd say loses its effectiveness somewhere between 20 feet and infinity. I realize you were looking for something more precise than this, but it's all I have right now.

It's possible that anyone with the data to give you a more precise answer would have to kill you if he told you.

Re:What's the Blooming Problem?

[ScrewMaster]

It's possible that anyone with the data to give you a more precise answer would have to kill you if he told you.

I've always wondered if that would hold up in court.

"Yes, Your Honor, once I told him, I had to kill him. It was a moral imperative."

"So then why did you tell him?"

Re:What's the Blooming Problem?

[blair1q]

I just mentioned blooming above, inasmuchas I think it'd make the thing useless at anything like a useful distance. So I don't think it's an electron beam. I think it's an electron-filled chamber being used as a lasing medium. That's the most I could get from TFA.

Re:What's the Blooming Problem?

[dak664]

Above 3GW laser beams are channeled through the atmosphere (google atmospheric self channeling). Compact FELs have no problem with that power level (short pulses, exponential gain with length) and if you kept one idling there would be a good chance of getting it to fire once when you pull the trigger. After that I suspect it would need a month of repairs.

The next round of funding must be coming up.

What about mirrors?

[jurgenaut]

If lasers ever become a serious threat against naval vessels, you could attach mirrors to divert the beams. At least around vital areas. Like those Schürzen the germans attached to their early panzer models (prior to tigers and panthers) to take the edge off of russian anti-tank rifles (and allegedly hollow-charge ordnance like bazooka rounds).

Re:What about mirrors?

[ScrewMaster]

If lasers ever become a serious threat against naval vessels, you could attach mirrors to divert the beams.

Can you? No mirror is perfect, there is always some absorption, and given a beam powerful enough the leakage is going to melt the mirror. Nor do optical mirrors reflect all wavelengths equally: if your laser is tunable you can give the enemy a lot of grief by fiddling with the frequency.

There's also the issue of specular reflections: the slightest touch of a beam that powerful is going to permanently blind anyone in the vicinity, friend or foe. The collateral damage from a high-powered laser used on the battlefield is likely to be spectacular.

Re:What about mirrors?

[garyebickford]

Oddly enough, one of the advantages of free electron 'lasers' is that they ARE tunable. (I was recently told by a physics student on /. that they aren't technically lasers since they aren't based on population inversion / avalanche.)

Board?

[Curialis]

Yes, the more important question is can it pound a nail through a 6 inch board...oh wait , that wasn't with the laser...

Re:Board?

[kilodelta]

Great quote! That movie was a trip. And how they used the flying laser was priceless.

Is it the right security tool?

[Max_W]

Would this tool help to prevent an event similar to 9/11 or metro explosions?

Would not a co-development be a better choice?

Re:Is it the right security tool?

[Anonymous Coward]

No - the 9/11 problem was fixed when the pilots were required to lock the (reinforced retrofit) cockpit door during flight.

This would be a very handy weapon to have on cargo ships off the coast of Somalia though.

Re:Is it the right security tool?

[blair1q]

We're currently facing a growing threat from advancing cruise-missile technology. The Chinese in particular have some that we're pretty sure we can't stop no matter what we do. Not a good thing when your ability to win a war depends on keeping your aircraft carriers secure so that you can project air superiority over a major theater and a fleet and your ground troops.

Re:Is it the right security tool?

[Max_W]

I think the 9/11 type, or metro attacks threat threat can be realistically eliminated by the schools, universities, etc.

This billions could be invested in building something useful, that creates sustainable jobs, not only in one rich country, but in whole Eurasia, Africa and Americas. Say something like this: http://www.et3.com/

Certainly it is more complicated to organize and to build than a laser gun.

Re:20 feet of steel, not 200.

[arielCo]

Well, you may drive at 60 miles/hour and not mean to drive for 60 miles. In this case, it could cut through 1/2" steel plating in 1/2 inch / (20 ft/second) = 2 milliseconds. Does that make sense?

um...

[Charliemopps]

Anyone else a bit concerned about something like this in orbit? There wouldn't be any place on earth safe from it.

Re:um...

[McTickles]

Everyone is concerned about the americans; most of them are very ripe for the psych ward.

So yes such a contraption in orbit would actually give them total dominion over the world, which is of course what they would like; it would also violate an amazin amount of international laws but we all know what they do to international laws, they just sit on them and call them irrelevant.

And you know what we are going to do about it if it happens? NOTHING, we are just once again going to bend over for the US and take it up the back passage, in
the name of the "almighty" dollar (which nowadays is really a joke, if possible avoid getting paid in dollars, it is Monopoly money, it is basically worthless)

Re:um...

[dkleinsc]

There is already no place on Earth that couldn't be completely destroyed by a determined military attack in a matter of hours. What's your point?

Re:um...

[ScrewMaster]

Everyone is concerned about the americans; most of them are very ripe for the psych ward.

Ignorance on a grand scale, I'm impressed. "Most of them". How many is that? A hundred and fifty million? Two hundred million? Three hundred million? You really think that 300 million crazy people managed to accomplish what we have, managed to become the threat that you imagine us to be? Grow up, dude, otherwise you really come off like a pissed-off peon suffering from sour grapes.

So yes such a contraption in orbit would actually give them total dominion over the world, which is of course what they would like ...

No, we wouldn't. Why ignorant people like you insist upon attributing to the United States the sort of evil grandiosity more correctly placed upon old-school Russia, (or maybe modern China once the United States is no longer a major player, hard to say what their long-term plans are) is beyond me. We've fought in a number of conflicts since World War II, some on ideological grounds, others for purely utilitarian or economic reasons. However, America is not now, and never will be, an Empire in the sense that the Soviets were. Empires are incredibly expensive and frankly, you're fooling yourself if you believe that we care enough about you to want to occupy your country, that (with only a few exception) you have anything we want. Other than your women. Yes, we do want your women, but we'd much, much rather buy your oil at inflated prices and sell you iTunes tracks.

And you know what we are going to do about it if it happens? NOTHING, we are just once again going to bend over for the US and take it up the back passage,

Yep. That's the first reasonable thing you've said. And if so, WHOSE FAULT IS THAT? Are you blaming us for your greed and stupidity?

in the name of the "almighty" dollar (which nowadays is really a joke, if possible avoid getting paid in dollars, it is Monopoly money, it is basically worthless)

I can see you failed basic economics. Well, no-one ever said that America-bashing had to be rational, but you'll probably gain a few mod points from people just as ignorant as you.

Re:um...

[Jonner]

Guided bombs in orbit could hit anywhere on Earth too and I don't hear anybody worrying about that. This laser technology isn't anywhere close to being used in a weapon, unlike guided bombs.

Re:um...

[McTickles]

No, we wouldn't. Why ignorant people like you insist upon attributing to the United States the sort of evil grandiosity more correctly placed upon old-school Russia, (or maybe modern China once the United States is no longer a major player, hard to say what their long-term plans are) is beyond me. We've fought in a number of conflicts since World War II, some on ideological grounds, others for purely utilitarian or economic reasons. However, America is not now, and never will be, an Empire in the sense that the Soviets were. Empires are incredibly expensive and frankly, you're fooling yourself if you believe that we care enough about you to want to occupy your country, that (with only a few exception) you have anything we want. Other than your women. Yes, we do want your women, but we'd much, much rather buy your oil at inflated prices and sell you iTunes tracks.

Because hiroshima and nagasaki ?
No other nation in the world had the guts to pull such a retarded move and kill thousands of people in the blink of an eye.
Americans had the nuke, fresh from the factory, and they just had to try it out, for the lolz didn't they? Try out their new toy of mass destruction.
If it wasn't enough, they did it AGAIN!
You are going to argue "pearl harbour, military target, booohooo, soldiers die" or "without our new toy war would never end", right dont justify killing innocent
civilians with the worst weapon that has come out of humanity's imagination so far by claiming that soldiers (who at the time were spending their time surfing and not doing what soldiers do, prepare for attack) weren't aware of the inherent risks of their line of work? or that MAYBE/MAYBE NOT war would have not ended otherwise.
May I remind you at the end of the day what ended WW2 was the combined efforts of european countries and russians (oh noes the evil russians!) and certainly not the Americans who showed up when the war was about to end anyway and quite conviniently claiming all the credit and pillaging what remained of Germany at the time. (need I remind you that alot of technology you like to brag about (like the Apollo rocket) were actually NAZI INVENTIONS)

Look an American beating a dead horse, again, wake up, russians have moved on from communist era, the nazis are not in power anymore!

Americans are stuck with past paranoias and "glory" or what?

Failed basic economics? One would have to be blind to see the dollar is completely aimless and keeps dropping every other day. The euro and the british pound are much more stable and really safer bets in the future. And for that you can in big part blame your own greedy banks.

Re:um...

[Frangible]

The country most likely to complain about America on the internet is... America. Getting trolled by a 12 year old in New Jersey: just say no.

Re:um...

[kevinNCSU]

Because hiroshima and nagasaki ? No other nation in the world had the guts to pull such a retarded move and kill thousands of people in the blink of an eye.

You are quite right, other nations (and US) usually did it more slowly with firebombing turning civilian cities into flames so powerful they would literally suck the air and people into them. The Japanese though favored biological weapons:

"Plague fleas, infected clothing, and infected supplies encased in bombs were dropped on various targets. The resulting cholera, anthrax, and plague were estimated to have killed around 400,000 Chinese civilians.[11] Tularemia was tested on Chinese civilians.[19] Unit 731 and its affiliated units (Unit 1644, Unit 100, et cetera) were involved in research, development, and experimental deployment of epidemic-creating biowarfare weapons in assaults against the Chinese populace (both civilian and military) throughout World War II. Plague-infested fleas, bred in the laboratories of Unit 731 and Unit 1644, were spread by low-flying airplanes upon Chinese cities, coastal Ningbo in 1940, and Changde, Hunan Province, in 1941. This military aerial spraying killed thousands of people with bubonic plague epidemics." (source)

For comparison the high end estimates for casualties from the combined a-bomb drops are at 240,000 (source). The plague is a much slower death then "blink of an eye" so if we're going to start assigning moral responsibility to countries as a whole as you seem to want to then I think the empire of Japan got off a lot easier then it fucking deserved.

May I remind you at the end of the day what ended WW2 was the combined efforts of european countries and russians (oh noes the evil russians!) and certainly not the Americans who showed up when the war was about to end anyway and quite conviniently claiming all the credit

This argument is as deranged and revisionist as the one where people claim the US won single-handedly. Actually doubly so when talking about the Pacific theater as you are. You do realize the Soviet Union only declared war on Japan and attacked 3 days AFTER the atomic bombing of Hiroshima right? But yea, it must be the US that showed up late and took the credit.

Pew, pew, pew...

[ivaldes3]

Pew, pew, pewwww... Luke, I am your Father.

WTF?

[syncrotic]

Wow, that was one of the worst articles I've ever read.

"To create incredible power requires incredible energy. After all, the more power one puts into a laser accelerator, the more powerful and precise the light beam that comes out on the other end."

So to "create power" requires energy. Uh, ok... I'm with you, sort of.

"Scientists there, in coordination with the Office of Naval Research (ONR), injected a sustained 500 kilovolts (KV) of juice into a prototype accelerator where the existing limit had been 320 kV..."

OK, so they "injected" 500kV of "juice." Fuck you, fox news.

"According to ONR officials, that laser beam will eventually perform at a staggering âoemegawatt class,â a measure of the laser's strength. Right now, the accelerator at Jefferson Lab is performing at just 14 Kilowatts."

So wait, the power output of this thing is actually 14kW, and the goal of the program is to reach 1MW. But apparently they were at 10kW four years ago... so what's this article actually about? The fact that they increased the voltage to 500kV from the previous 320kV? Why does that matter?

"Today, Neil and others have shown that they have the ability to harness super-conducting electron power."

Oh ok, I guess the big development here is that they're using superconductors... or something. It's tough to tell, because "super-conducting electron power" is a series of words that, when strung together, don't mean a fucking thing.

"Clearly, the day's events were a feather in everyoneâ(TM)s cap."

Clearly.

Re:WTF?

[PPH]

So wait, the power output of this thing is actually 14kW, and the goal of the program is to reach 1MW. But apparently they were at 10kW four years ago... so what's this article actually about? The fact that they increased the voltage to 500kV from the previous 320kV? Why does that matter?

It matters because the Navy is cutting Boeing a check for $163 million. And if they did so without declaring some sort of technological milestone (particularly in todays economy), people would be pissed.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you're dying to hate Fox News at every opportunity possible, but maybe you should direct the hatred at the WRITER of the article. Kelley Vlahos is a freelance writer who contributes to multiple news organizations (many of which I'm sure you agree with politically).

Re:WTF?

[syncrotic]

If the article were on CNN, I'd have said "fuck you, CNN." Anyone can write badly on things they don't understand: it's a media company's job to ensure that they employ competent staff and then review their output before it goes up for the world to see. Clearly, nobody at foxnews.com even proofread that article, much less verified its technical accuracy.

Re:WTF?

[necro81]

If only I had mod points today - I'd mark you up sky high. It's one of the things that always irks me about most science reporting in the popular media: the inability to tell apart key concepts like "power", "energy", and "voltage." Fox News isn't alone in this realm of ignorance - they just happen to have it elevated to high art. No wonder most adherents to Fox News don't understand our upcoming resource and climate crisis: they've been fed incoherent babble like this.

Re:WTF?

[GreatBunzinni]

So wait, the power output of this thing is actually 14kW, and the goal of the program is to reach 1MW. But apparently they were at 10kW four years ago... so what's this article actually about? The fact that they increased the voltage to 500kV from the previous 320kV? Why does that matter?

The article may be actually about publicity. In a time where the US government is actively cutting down on expensive US defence projects, those involved in managing those projects must do something in order to keep their precious pet project from being cancelled. One thing that they can do is advertise the project, claim that it's a success and try to shine a light (*snicker*) on their project so that the public is not only aware of it's existence but also supports it, no matter how expensive and fruitless it has been.

In this case, TFA states two things:
a) the project is nowhere near it's objective and there is no real chance it will be in the following years (f not decades)
b) the project is already giving away millions of dollars to multinational defence contractors to build useless toys based on the useless technology the project managed to develop.

So, they need all the public help they can get to survive the financial cuts the US government is forced inflict to the US's famously huge defence budget. So, in essence what this article amounts to is nothing more than the desperate cries of some people to avoid getting fired from their once cushy job.

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's really happening is that they have a 14KW laser vs 10KW. That's still impressive, but some fact checking should be done before people write up such worthless articles(or at least check the facts first). Doubly so before posting it here.

That said, 14KW might be enough to puncture the skin of an incoming missile. At the speeds at which a typical missile (ICBM or similar) travels, a tic-tac sized hole is enough to cause it to never reach its target. IIRC, most missiles' exteriors are less than an inch thick. So it's "Can we do enough damage to make a hole in 1/2 inch of aluminum alloy while the object is travelling at hypersonic speeds?".

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL!

Once I saw the "Scientists there, in coordination with the Office of Naval Research (ONR)," I thought to myself, what BS nonsense toy tax payers are money being burned by ONR this time? Well I guess it keeps load of useless program managers in equally useless DOD contractors to continue to draw their big fat salary and at the same complain about big govt.

Re:WTF?

[blair1q]

"super-conducting electron power" is a series of words that, when strung together, don't mean a fucking thing.

in fact, they're oxymoronic

electrons flowing in 0 resistance generate 0 power

Re:WTF?

[garyebickford]

You read TFA?? Wow. Just wow. :D

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just guessing here, but the free electron laser probably uses a newer superconducting photoelectron gun as the source. I doubt they'd use a superconducting linac for acceleration at this point. I wonder if they are recycling the energy from the electrons after they leave the FEL - I've seen some schemes proposed which do this to make the systems much more efficient.

Re:WTF?

[LongearedBat]

Um, could it be that Fox News, by embellishing some military advances for non-techies (most of the voters), is simply trying to keep people positive about military spending?

Don't get too upset about the lack of technical sense in the artice. It's the propaganda that is more worrying.

Re:WTF?

[inKubus]

Fox lies, Fox lies, Fox lies

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Much less awful article here, including a synopsis of FELs: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/unexpectedly-navys-superlaser-blasts-away-a-record/

I still haven't heard a good explanation of the role of beam spread in these systems. Shoot a projectile 10 km and the projectile stays the same diameter throughout while loosing kinetic energy. Shoot a laser 10 km and the beam spreads, dissipating your "kill juice" over a wider area.

Moreover, it's just light! It must be absorbed to cause damage. Make the surface shiny and you cut the power delivery to the surface. If you try to crank up the laser wavelength, eventually air gets in the way... These are *not* trivial problems. Guns and bullets are tried and true, and for a damned good reason.

For most people who work with lasers...

[Shatrat]

That's 80 dBm.

Re:For most people who work with lasers...

[camperdave]

I thought lasers were measured in Gillettes (ie how many razor blades it can burn through per pulse)

Re:For most people who work with lasers...

[Shatrat]

The problem with that is that most lasers are 0 Gillettes.
Possibly a better empirical measurement would be how quickly the feds show up if you point one at an airplane.

Egomania at its best

[McTickles]

The US is world champion of egomania and shows it again...

They simply cannot resist building war toys, it is just an addiction to them.
They want to feel safe? perhaps stop brandishing weapons and bragging would help gain them some sympathy around the world.
What are they possibly going to use it for? another war to "liberate" another third world country and give them an occasion to finally use their very expensive and overpowered deadly contraptions ?

Americans, man, I sure wish they'd snap out of their addiction to war, money and egocentrism, they could actually be decent people...

Eventually they'll come out of it, I think, but will it be of their own volition or will it be forced by some other nation that has had it with their tantrums?

Re:Egomania at its best

[Antisyzygy]

You realize that the majority of technological advances through human history have been from war technology? There are innumerable applications for lasers like this, more peaceful ones than not. Furthermore, why should the US car what anyone else thinks? Humans come from tribes and tribes fight eachother for resources. Nations are like big tribes. The Chinese are pulling an economic war with the rest of the world, and also spying on everyone. Why shouldn't the US be able to show the Chinese we still have some abilities they don't have and they can't just do whatever they want to us. If we were defenseless you would see quite a few nations trying to step all over us, and probably all over Canada as well.

Re:Egomania at its best

[McTickles]

Well keep thinking in that tribal "I am better than you" way this is going to help humanity a whole lot....

Go back to neanderthal the time frame you belong.

Re:Egomania at its best

[Frangible]

Yes, keep insulting Americans, on an American server running American software, on an American-created internet, with an American-created computer, while telling us all how negatively America affects your day-to-day life. Though ironically, I'd say your nationality is actually most likely to be... American. And that's all kinds of psychological issues right there... more daddy issues than a season of "Lost".

Re:Egomania at its best

[McTickles]

Server software = linux as far as I can tell = finnish/international

Internet = international, how hard can it be to understand really? THE INTERNET IS A COLLABORATIVE EFFORT OF MANY COUNTRIES. Arpanet was a prototype from which it evolved.

Computer = Made in china, better luck next time dimwit

Nationality = French (yeah yeah surrender monkey blahblahblah, white flag blahblahblah, and no we dont bend over for ego tantrums like the Iraq wars)

Lost = never watched, probably garbage, besides I am only interested in Scifi not in psychodrama

Re:Egomania at its best

[Frangible]

Yeah... well, I've known French people IRL and online, and their main complaint regarding the US was the latency and time zone difference. None of them actually lived up to the "snobby French" stereotype. You also use a number of American English cliches and idioms that they never did. Sorry, but the kind of polemic angst you display is something typically entirely American, a product of our lovely partisan media. The only people I've *ever* seen display strong anti-Americanisms are ... Americans. Your little rants are more anti-American than Juba the Baghdad Sniper propaganda. And that's saying a lot, cause the Iraqi insurgency ain't too fond of us. There's a good deal of the US with French ancestry, myself included. It would be ridiculous. Sorry. Don't see it. You're about as French as FPS Russia is Russian.

In case you wanted to use Google translate to paste something French-sounding in, allow me to preempt you: Gilles de Rais et de Jeanne D'Arc, héros national. Woah, I'm totally French. Or am I Russian? , , . (You won't find THAT phrase on Google) Point being, what people claim to be, and actually are on the internet are often two entirely different things.

Re:Egomania at its best

[Frangible]

Hah. I guess this thread software can't handle cyrillic unicode.

Re:Egomania at its best

[jjohnson]

Name another country that hasn't been as belligerent and warmongering as they were able to be.

Yeah, it would be fantastic if the U.S. went all peacenik, but realistically, any country, any people, with their economy and relative safety would (and have, in the past) build up their military and throw their weight around. It's asking a little much for Americans to take an enlightened that everyone else has failed at taking, and crapping on them for not doing it is pretty simpleminded.

20 feet of steel

[PPH]

Per second? How thick?

Watts vs Volts?

[freshfromthevat]

They said they were at 10KV four years ago. Now they are looking for 1MW. That's kilovolts vs MegaWatts. The article said they were at 500KV. There is no indication how many watts they are at. The article didn't have enough information to understand how close they are to the goals.

Volts and Watts are related by Amps. P=IE Watts = Amps * Volts.

Re:Watts vs Volts?

[Anonymous Coward]

so we need to figure how much current is flowing through the laser?

Re:Watts vs Volts?

[garyebickford]

Only in an indirect sense - a watt is a measure of power. One horsepower == 745+ watts. Big engines (such as on ships) are often rated in KW instead of horsepower these days. Technically a watt is one joule per second. It can also be used to measure thermal (or any other form of) power.

Since AC current can be measured, and a laser is just a very high frequency AC, I suppose you could count the flow of the light as current, but it's a little weird to do so.

Source is FOXNEWS?!? Gimm

[BlackLungPop]

Email me when this is reported by journalists instead of fanatical christian xenophobes. Foxnews can't be trusted to even seek facts, let alone check them.

Re:Source is FOXNEWS?!? Gimm

[ThorGod]

I posted a request for a non-fox news source and was marked a troll. What's happened to /.?

The Best Defense...

[javalizard]

This just in... China learns how to mass produce mirrors and tape them all over their ICBMs.

Re:20 feet of steel, not 200.

[PieSquared]

The problem with weaponized lasers has always been that it's hard to keep them exactly on one spot long enough to really do damage. I mean, against a static target you're probably not going to need 20 feet of steel in a second, but if you're aiming at a ballistic missile then maybe you need to get through a quarter inch of steel in a millisecond. Then of course there's the typical "paint a mirror on your missiles" defense - but mirrors aren't perfect, and some fraction of the damage gets through (and once it starts melting, the mirror gets less and less perfect).

Title is misleading..

[dos4who]

20 feet of solid steel at a 1 micron hole? 20 linear feet of sheet steel at 1 micron thick? What are the exact specs?

Re:Title is misleading..

[the eric conspiracy]

They don't tell how long it will run, either. 20 feet of steel per second for one microsecond etc.

multi use

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it'll have 2 settings, Hello and Goodbye.

Communication?

[Anonymous Coward]

Captain: "Officer, tell the battlecruiser we're go for attack"
Officer: "Yes sir"
*BOOM*
Officer: "Uh, sir.. I forgot to set the laser to comms mode."

Re:Why scale down?

[shogun]

Been done already....

So...

[WindBourne]

How soon before we see this on a Chinese ship?

That is simply not true

[WindBourne]

Fox has MANY more articles that are worse then this one. You just have to drop about 40 IQ and then learn to read/watch them.

Re:20 feet of steel, not 200.

[MachDelta]

TFA says one advantage of this laser is that, because the wavelength is adjustable, you could theoretically compensate for the atmosphere by picking a wavelength to which the atmosphere is mostly trasnparent.

Defense against Chinese "Carrier Killer"?

[wisebabo]

I feel dirty about commenting on an article from Fox News but it seems that there was some concern in the U.S. recently about a new long range high speed anti-ship missile which was deemed a possible "Carrier Killer". In addition to its long range, the high speed would make it difficult for the terminal defenses (Phalanx guns) to knock the incoming missile(s) out of the sky in the few seconds they would be in range.*

Of course, for a laser, a few seconds is an eternity. Probably the big problem would be to ensure the beam would remain on the dwell point long enough for it to burn through the casing. But if these things have good enough targeting to knock down an ascending ICBM from several hundred kilometers away (as in the air force version), I can't imagine it would be a big problem for a ship based version to take out an approaching (read range getting smaller) missile within a few kilometers (or less!). (I realize that a boost phase ICBM is a "fragile" target compared to a possibly hardened warhead with ablative shielding but remember the inverse-squared law! And the vastly easier targeting at short range against a hot infrared target instead of a cold body in space).

This is a productive use of the hundreds of megawatts of electric power already on tap in a nuclear powered carrier. Against heavier targets (ships) the navy will use rail-guns, also a great user of electric power. (I would imagine the laser would overheat before it could cut through the hull of a warship).

*The Chinese could defeat this (and probably any defensive system) using nuclear warheads on their anti-ship missiles but they would risk a strategic nuclear exchange.

Re:Defense against Chinese "Carrier Killer"?

[sanman2]

I thought UCAV drones like the X-47B are supposed to be the planned defense or response to anti-carrier missiles, since such drones could be launched by carriers much beyond the range of anti-carrier missiles like the DongFeng21.

But as you say, perhaps the next successor to the US Navy's Aegis defense system will use megawatt lasers to immediately neutralize inbound threats like DongFeng21, etc.

Re:Defense against Chinese "Carrier Killer"?

[Frangible]

Liquid-fuel ICBMs are vulnerable during the launch phase; solid fuel ICBMs, however, are almost impossible to destroy. When the Air Force's airborne laser program was canceled, the reasons given by SecDef Gates were very limited range which resulted in a bulky, impractical weapon system that you'd almost have to be hovering above a silo to use. And that was a megawatt-class chemical laser, more powerful than what this technology is.

I'm not saying laser R&D isn't worth it, but good missile defense is extremely difficult. It will take quite a while before any of these systems surpass something more conventional like the Phalanx.

Most Efficient Laser?

[Doc Ruby]

While the Pentagon might have $BILLIONS to spend on ever bigger lasers, what I'm more interested in is more efficient lasers. What's the most efficient working laser now? Preferably one that outputs over 100W of light, but the most efficient ones in different output power classes are interesting.

Presumably the Pentagon is also interested in efficient lasers of medium power, since just laser targeting or even light duty laser cutting is more reasonable to arm a soldier with if it doesn't require a Humvee full of batteries/fuelcells to power it all day.

Why the US Navy wants a Laser Weapon

[bughunter]

The US Navy is really pushing "ammo-less" weapon systems because of the nature of the threat of the Chinese arsenal, especially the air force.

In a nutshell, the US could fire everything it had at Chinese jets, and score a kill with each shot, and still face an overwhelming force. The same goes for US bullets and PRC soldiers. So of course they want lasers. All you need is electricity... and lots and lots of technicians.

(Nobody's asking why the US is attacking China in these scenarios... that's the most bothersome part.)

Re:Why the US Navy wants a Laser Weapon

[Frangible]

It's the military's job to develop a response strategy to pretty much every scenario imaginable. Zombies, velociraptors, zombie velociraptors, a Red Chinese invasion of Alaska... you know, whatever.

Re:Why the US Navy wants a Laser Weapon

[WindBourne]

America will not. The problem is that CHina is obviously gearing up for a war with the west.

Re:Why the US Navy wants a Laser Weapon

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, I get it. You are Donald Trump.

Re:Why the US Navy wants a Laser Weapon

[WindBourne]

Actually, even I have to admit, that I would fear if we got another idiot like W in here, though that is hard to believe. Sadly, Trump, Palin, etc are such idiots.

Most Powerful Laser?

[esrobinson]

The US Navy has broken the existing record for the power of a laser.

[...]and package it as a 100 kW weapons system[...]

So, NIF isn't a thing anymore? Or is 100kW more than 500TW and someone forgot to tell me?

Re:Most Powerful Laser?

[John Hasler]

You confound average power with peak pulse power.

Re:Most Powerful Laser?

[germansausage]

You confound us all when you confuse confound with confuse.

Re:Most Powerful Laser?

[John Hasler]

Define:confound

Re:Most Powerful Laser?

[ThorGod]

I don't care if you did confound something or not - Thanks for the heads up on the NIF! I hadn't heard of the project before.

Atmospheric Attenuation

[sanman2]

I thought lasers attenuate very quickly in the atmosphere.

Maybe this will be more useful for zapping enemy space cruisers.

Re: FoxNews editor poached from The Onion

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes a glance at the 'related links' section will let you know the article's not worth reading:

        - Saving Ryan's Privates: Company Reveals Bombproof Underwear
        - Bomb-Resistant Boxers to Be Manufactured by New York Company
        - Invisible Tanks, Planes and Armor Could Hit Battlefields in 5 Years

I guess that editor gets better pay from FoxNews than his gig at The Onion.

Re:20 feet of steel, not 200.

[Graff]

TFA says one advantage of this laser is that, because the wavelength is adjustable, you could theoretically compensate for the atmosphere by picking a wavelength to which the atmosphere is mostly trasnparent.

Well, it certainly helps but (speaking as an instrumental chemist here) no matter what wavelength you choose there will always be some absorption and scattering in the atmosphere . There's also beam spread which can be improved through better optics but can't be completely eliminated. All of those factors are dependent on distance and will serve to reduce laser illuminance.

Greater distances also affect the aim of the beam since what you really control is the angle of the beam. Simple trigonometry will show you that more distance means less control and thus the likelihood increases that you won't be able to get the beam concentrated on a critical spot for a decent amount of time.

So, you generally want to have a beam energy far above what it would take to make a kill under optimal conditions. You can always build the beam to reduce the length of the bursts or to output a lower energy level if you don't need the extra energy.

Warning.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not look into laser with remaining head.

XCOM

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesome. X-COM is alive and well.

Translamniformism

[osu-neko]

Now all we need to do is upgrade the sharks...

Geneticists: Workin' on it...

Dr. Evil Asks...

[blake182]

When will this technology be available for shark head attachment?

Re:20 feet of steel, not 200.

[couchslug]

"Who needs to burn through 20 feet of steel? Or even 2 feet of steel?"

Can you say "industrial metal cutting"? Some metal is laser-cut today, but being able to easily cut large thick steel sections would save even more time/work/money.

http://www.americanmachinist.com/304/Issue/Article/False/86876/Issue

Weaponization potential greatly overstated.

[Anonymous Coward]

If by 'upgrade the sharks' you mean 'add a cyclotron', then yes, we need to upgrade the sharks.

Can someone convert to kernels popped/second?

[Anonymous Coward]

20ft of steel/sec is impressive but what I really want to know is how many kernels of popcorn can it pop per second... that is... metric kernels per second (mkps).

Murder

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, The military will be able to kill more people than the drones in Pakistan

Re:Why scale down?

[Sulphur]

Wrong science. This is physics, not biology. Unless you are talking about ill-tempered robotic sharks with frickin' laser beams...

No, he meant cute cuddly robotic sharks with simulated lasers.

Ion cannon charging...

[Apothem]

It's only a matter of time now before we start having satellites equipped with this sorta stuff.... AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!

request: non-faux news link

[ThorGod]

Anyone have a link to an article covering this but not written by propagandists?

It's still the communists

[Msdose]

After capitalism was made a crime, Reno threatened to jail the bankers unless they gave mortgages to poor people. The bankers asked where they would get the money and the government agreed to lend them 30 times their capital. The resulting inflation in home values resulted in the creation of 23 million jobs during that administration. When the bankers ran out of government money to continue inflating home values, they asked to be able to borrow 60 times their capital. Obama balked. So the banks would have to go bankrupt and lose the 30 times their capital they owed the government. To prevent the public panic from the bank's going bankrupt, the government is buying up the bum mortgages at face value for homes worth a fraction of that. Since capitalism is still illegal, the only productive enterprise other than jailing their citizens for being politically incorrect is to export war to the world.

A what kind of laser?

[squidflakes]

I can't believe I'm the only one seeing this...

Per wikipedia: "To create a FEL, a beam of electrons is accelerated to almost light speed. The beam passes through an FEL oscillator in the form of a periodic, transverse magnetic field, produced by arranging magnets with alternating poles within a laser cavity along the beam path. This array of magnets is sometimes called an undulator, or a "wiggler", because it forces the electrons in the beam to follow a sinusoidal path."

And we're going to mount this on Naval ships.

Laser weapons that fire beams of light stimulated by an undulation of electrons, or in other words, some sort of wave motion gun...