US Navy Close To On-Ship Laser Cannons

An anonymous reader writes "The Office of Naval Research and industry partner Northrop Grumman said they successfully tested for the first time an on-board laser defense system known as the Maritime Laser Demonstrator (MLD), using it to destroy a small target vessel. The test actually accomplished several other benchmarks, including integrating MLD with a ship's radar and navigation system, and firing an electric laser weapon from a moving platform at-sea in a humid environment."

Comments

Re:Cool way to kill people

[RsG]

Eh, it's the bloody navy. Who exactly are they going to vaporize?

You can complain about cool technology "killing people" in the context of, say, dropping bombs on cities. In that case you've got a clear argument that the weapon in question can and will be used in a way that will leave innocent civilians dead, since it's not like shrapnel knows the difference between the barracks and the orphanage. However, a weapon useful only against military targets, for instance a laser to slag warships, missiles and aircraft, isn't very useful for carrying out war crimes, and isn't likely to mistake a bus-full of nuns for an enemy aircraft carrier.

Bottom line, if the people being killed are hostile armed forces in a time of war, not killing them gives them the opportunity to kill you instead.

So Expensive

[Doc Ruby]

I'm glad we didn't cut a penny from the 2011 military budget. Then we wouldn't have these extra boat lasers around that we don't need, along with all the thousands of other defense contractor welfare projects we've run up $TRILLIONS in debt to pay for.

Instead we cut 1% of the Federal budget, from women, children and the poor. Why protect them with social programmes when we can defend them with extra weapons that kill other people, or sit unused, instead?