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

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

[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.

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

[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.

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: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: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?

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...

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.