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

Cool way to kill people

[DeBattell]

Killing people is OK as long as you use cool technology to do it.

Re:Cool way to kill people

[poity]

Well if you actually RTFA, it's for ship defense against small boats, i.e. suicide speedboat swarms that countries like Iran have shown to be willing to deploy. My guess is that the typical 20mm cannons are too slow or too short ranged to react to more than a handful of these agile targets before they close in and the laser system is developed to address this weakness.

Re:Cool way to kill people

[Flopy]

They don't have to go all the way there, if they just target the environment, global warming will take care of the pirates.

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.

Re:Cool way to kill people

[Luckyo]

Pointless. A simple 40mm bofors (cheap as hell) or a properly set up AA Gatling will do the job far, FAR better against boat swarms. At the same time they are far cheaper, integrate into system with self-auto corrective targeting based on radar signature of gun's own shells, do not require a heavy supply of energy and have significantly fewer points of failure.

This is essentially a theoretical "possible future weapon" exercise - it has nothing to do with actual, realistic modern combat. AT ALL. In the current material technology levels, a laser that would be at least on par with a modern (actually never mind, let's talk on par with a WW2-aged so we don't get too depressed) kinetic gun is at least as far away as commercial fusion.

In other words, it's a huge waste of taxpayers money, that is validated because people that know nothing of actual weapon technology and how it needs to work go "woo, laser cannons, I saw that in the movies!".
Sad really.

Re:Cool way to kill people

[alostpacket]

Clearly you've never actually encountered a bus full of nuns. They can be quite dangerous. Or sexy, depending on where you download the video from.

Re:Cool way to kill people

[dave420]

Nun soup?

Re:Cool way to kill people

[blackbeak]

and isn't likely to mistake a bus-full of nuns for an enemy aircraft carrier..

You mean that actual nun incident you reference was just an identification error? The one that caused protesters to chant "Washington Guns Killed American Nuns" during Alexander Haig's commencement speech at Syracuse?

Those nuns were targeted, and should it suit someone in the right position to send a laser blast into a bus full of nuns, you can bet they will do it with no qualms at all.

The clear argument that weapons will be used improperly is that historically use of weapons is primarily at the sole discretion and behest of extremely self interested parties and serves only their own greed.

Re:Cool way to kill people

[dougmc]

This is essentially a theoretical "possible future weapon" exercise - it has nothing to do with actual, realistic modern combat.

To be fair, there was a time that the machine gun, submarine and airplane fell into this category too.

Though I do have to admit ... the current guns and firearms and such do seem hard to beat.

Re:Cool way to kill people

[Arker]

"Isn't very useful for carrying out war crimes" I said. Not "cannot be used".

But for the price, it isnt useful for anything else either. Unless you consider enriching "defense" contractors useful of course.

And anyway, that wasn't either a deliberate act of murder, or an malfunction of the weapon system; that was a combination of bad judgment and misidentification

I didnt say it was anything but an accident. However it was the sort of accident that could only happen because we poured enormous amounts of resources into building a massive Navy which we certainly didnt need for defense, and then sent it halfway around the globe to bully other nations.

Here's the thing, if you go across town packing weapons intending, for example, to extort money from someone, and in the process you accidentally wind up killing the neighbor kid, it's still considered murder, even though you had no intention whatsoever of killing the kid and it was just a tragic accident. Because it's a tragic accident that would never have happened, if you hadnt been engaged in another felony at the time.

And a navy is absolutely useful for defence, go ask the Brits.

When have the Brits found their Navy useful for defending Britain, in proportion to its cost? The Spanish Armada, perhaps? That was another time entirely, and even then it's clear that the British Navy was primarily a tool for acquiring, controlling, and defending their vast overseas Empire, not their homeland.

The last time they were under attack, back in WWII, they held clear naval superiority over the Germans, but it helped little if any. The Battle of Britain was fought almost exclusively by land-based forces. No doubt their Navy would have been quite useful had the Germans tried to launch an amphibious invasion, and we can even speculate that the Germans might have been more likely to have tried that had the UK not had an impressive Navy, but it's still a fact that the funds that went to build that Navy could have built far more cost-effective land-based defenses instead, if defending their homeland had been the goal, rather than "force projection" which is not a defensive goal but an explicitly aggressive one.

Re:Cool way to kill people

[rgbatduke]

Um, you're confusing cause and effect, here. If they use sharks with frickin' laser cannons to kill the Somali pirates, the world's total number of pirates will likely decrease. This in turn will reduce the average global temperature. Pirates cause warming, not the other way around.

In fact, there is some evidence that this is already happening. Qaddafi is hiring Somalian mercenaries for $1000/day to fight in Libya, which is doubtless attracting some fine young men away from the life of piracy at sea. If one examines the current UAH Global Temperature Anomaly for March, it is at -0.1 C (compared to the running mean since 1979 when the measure began). Global Warming is already Global Cooling, at least on a 30 year running average basis. Coincidence? I don't think so.

rgb

Re:Cool way to kill people

[Arker]

Nowhere do I allege that.

In fact very recently you wrote:

I responded that, as the tech will be used to defend soldiers from other soldiers, in a kill or be killed scenario, this is hardly a bad thing; the dead are not unwitting civilians who had the bad fortune to call a warzone home. This was my argument, clearly spelled out.

*Coughs*

Perhaps an example will help. If a destroyer has cruise missiles, SAMs, and this new laser, and is tasked with destroying a building, it will use cruise missiles. And perhaps innocents will die in the explosion. Tasked with shooting down a high flying aircraft it will use SAMs. And perhaps they'll mistake a jetliner for a bomber, and innocents will die. The destroyer is quite capable of collateral damage.

Indeed it is, I am glad you can admit that.

"Inherently aggressive"? What does that even mean?

That means by it's very nature it implies aggression. Sure, like most weapons, it isnt impossible to imagine it being used in defense, but it's defensive applications dont even come close to justifying its expense relative to other options, so it doesnt make sense to build and maintain such a weapon unless you intend aggression with it. Simple as that.

If we were really focused on defense, we could build, stock, and maintain a chain of airbases along every coast and border for the cost of our Carrier fleets and have plenty left over. An airbase is superior to a Carrier in every way except one - the airbase can't steam across the oceans looking for trouble, it has to sit in place and wait for someone to at least get somewhat near to us.

If you mean "armed", then I fail to see what the big deal is. They are a branch of the armed forces.

Not at all. I am all in favour of armed, I'd rather see us more armed than less. Just with weapons suited to defending ourselves, rather than weapons designed to "project power" into other peoples lands, that's the difference.

Are you alleging their only role is offence? Because I already raised the defence of Britain in WWII as a counterpoint to that - a case where the use of naval force was both necessary and defensive.

You raised it but it doesnt stand up. Britains defense in WWII was overwhelmingly from land-based airfields, which produced much better results at much lower cost. I certainly never claimed that a Navy cannot be used defensively, simply that it makes no sense to build one for that purpose, given the options and the costs involved.

I take that to be a thinly veiled insult, and, frankly, rude. I have no trouble understanding you, I just don't agree with you.

Touchy much? Believe me, if I feel like insulting someone I dont use veils to do it. You may believe you are understanding me, but at points your responses are clearly inconsistent with that belief. It is not rude to point that out.

Re:Cool way to kill people

[Luckyo]

Actually, not only have I "thought about it", I'm actually something of an armchair expert in the subject.

1. Tracking is done either automatically with a radar, or manually by a gunner. Radar guidance generally scans surface, locks on, does calibrated targeting (i.e. points gun in the general direction of the target) and starts firing. Then it radar tracks the relation of shells' trajectory to targets location and auto-corrects.

This is why pretty much all of the ship-based close range AA is usually an autonomous system of a short range radar paired with a gatling, that "just works". You activate it, tell it to engage anything that isn't sending IFF signal, and woe is anything in range that isn't.

2. Normal ships carry two anti-air close range weapons, typically either in elevated spots in front and read, or left and right. Larger ships that cannot position these guns like that, like aircraft carriers, carry them in nests on sides of the ship with meaningful vertical clearance.

3. There are no "dead angles" on a properly built military ship that's a corvette or heavier class. If there are, it's a really bad ship design or a ship not designed for close range combat (i.e. some supply ships). In general, 2 properly positioned anti aircraft cannons can attack anything in 360(horisontal)/200ish(vertical) with only dead spots being in close proximity of the ship covered from gun by ship's hull.
Remember that close range AAA is designed as a last step anti-air measure and as such covers all approach angles in both panes (i.e. missiles that come hugging the water as well as those that "pop-up" and hit the ship vertically in terminal phase.

Finally most ships designed for skirmishes carry similarily configured close range guns (like aforementioned 40mm bofors, which while being a WW2 design is an excellent autocannon still in wide use on anything from spectre gunships to ship perimeter defense).

Relevant search terms: naval anti-air gun, kashtan, goalkeeper, phalanx. If you wish to specifically search for non-AA specified perimeter defence guns, then 40mm bofors alone has so many various naval turret + guidance configurations that you'd have to pick up a brochure just to get a list.

Re:Cool way to kill people

[Luckyo]

Outfitting carrier with a laser system makes a whole lot less sense. Besides the obvious energy feed problems, carrier is not a ship that is designed to defend itself from a direct attack, and as such typically carries only small set of anti-air weaponry (with really crappy field of view due to lack of elevated spots to place them into).

If your carrier has any contact with "swarming boats", that means your perimeter defense ships are dead or totally overwhelmed. Carrier shooting back is akin to general having to go for his pistol.

Re:Cool way to kill people

[Nutria]

Laser does not usurp kinetic energy of projectile.

True, but it distorts the shape of the projectile, causing it to tumble and go off course.

Anyway, who cares about bullets being shot at a ship?

It's the missiles (both guided and "ballistic") that are packed with explosives and electronics that are really vulnerable to lasers.

Anti-ship missiles are far better

Except that ships have a fixed (and not very large) supply of missiles, but do have lots and lots of electricity for lasers.

close range

Who says you lase it at close range? Burn that bastard as soon as it comes over the horizon.

Re:Cool way to kill people

[cyn1c77]

Pointless. A simple 40mm bofors (cheap as hell) or a properly set up AA Gatling will do the job far, FAR better against boat swarms. At the same time they are far cheaper, integrate into system with self-auto corrective targeting based on radar signature of gun's own shells, do not require a heavy supply of energy and have significantly fewer points of failure.

You really have no idea what you are talking about. Every single branch of the U.S. military dearly wants guided lasers to be able to disable incoming mortar rounds, missiles, aircraft, boats and enemy personnel. They have been actively testing these devices for the past several years by removing the guns off of their radar-guided mounts and replacing them with these high-energy lasers.

The lasers are appealing because they make it easier to hit the target. With conventional ballistics, you have to consider both the target's trajectory and that of your interceptor. Additionally, your interceptor has a finite size, so you not only need to line up its path with that of the target, but you also need to coordinate the arrival times of both objects at that point in space. With a light-speed weapon, you just point at where the target is currently. Additionally, if you miss in a populated area, you do not have to worry about your interceptor causing collateral damage. The military currently uses self-deflagrating rounds to address this issue, so that they will burn up before they hit the ground. If you have ever watched a mortar defense system in action, you'll notice it takes A LOT of rounds to hit the mortar.

Finally, your concerns about tracking and auto-correcting are unfounded. These systems use an IR laser and an IR camera to guide it. The system can see the target, the laser beam (due to scattered light), and the hit-region illuminated by the laser. There is no longer any radar needed.

You may not be excited about this system, but the US soldiers deployed overseas are.

Re:Cool way to kill people

[mjwx]

This is essentially a theoretical "possible future weapon" exercise - it has nothing to do with actual, realistic modern combat.

To be fair, there was a time that the machine gun, submarine and airplane fell into this category too.

Though I do have to admit ... the current guns and firearms and such do seem hard to beat.

During the Napoleonic war, the British army actively fought against the introduction of rifles. Favouring the proper and well tested Musket, despite the greater range and firepower of rifled guns. Rifle units were set apart and even dressed differently to regular troops (green coats rather then red coats).

Conservatism is nothing new to armed forces, resistance to new ideas has always been great. The old saying "generals are equipped to fight the last war" exists for a reason.

Re:Cool way to kill people

[DarenN]

You're not entirely correct - there was resistance, but it was because of firing rates - the rifles traded speed for accuracy and the (very successful) British tactical doctrine at the time emphasized speed of firing. So they used the rifles for their skirmishers, and dressed them green because they were mostly in front of the redcoats and needed to be less conspicuous.

It was Napoleon who regarded the rifle as a toy and refused, point blank, to allow them to be used.

You're correct about conservatism in the armed forces, but I was wearing my nerd hat and had to respond :)

Re:Cool way to kill people

[mjwx]

Most wars before WWI were contests between monarchs. The actual people couldn't care less who won - it's not like their lives would get any better. War was supposed to be fought by honourable opponents armed with more or less the same weapons.

That was the romanticised history. Medieval and pre-medieval warfare was littered with people trying to get unfair advantages over their enemies. From compisite bows to crossbows, at one time the nobility of Europe attempted to get the crossbow outlawed because it could take out an armoured knight. This didn't work because the minute someone needed a peasant militia to go up against armoured knights, they made crossbows. Every king, lord and emperor wanted better trebuchets, would launch disease laden corpse into castles. Bigger ships, faster frigates, heavier guns on the decks. War has been pretty much the only aspect of history which has never stopped advancing.

In the middle ages, honour had little to do with it, the victors would write that they were honourable, they were superior and they were chosen by god after the fact, but they all still fought dirty. Much like today.

Bows and arrows, firearms, airplanes, submarines, all were seen as dishonourable killing-at-a-distance weapons when they were introduced, reflecting the Homeric influence on our military tradition.

Actually, the British put quite a bit of stock into killing from a distance and it paid off more then once. The battle of Agincourt, a force largely combined of English longbowmen defeated a superior force of armoured french knights. 5/6 of the force were said to be bowmen. At one stage, all other sports except Archery were banned on a Sunday so all Britons would practice with the bow.

Sir Francis Drake used the superior range and accuracy of English warships to harass the numerically superior Spanish armada, although the British fleet out gunned the Spanish, guns were useless when the ships entered grappling range. Even in the battle of gravelines, Drake tried to keep the fleet 100 yards from the Spanish ships to avoid being boarded as they needed to close to that distance to do real damage to the Spanish ships.

Then we come to artillery, the final argument of kings, that which bought dignity to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl but was responsible for maiming and killing more men in the Napoleonic war then all the muskets combined.

The "honour" of war is a fairy tale.

Uninformative

[Timmmm]

Well that was an uninformative article.

How does the laser work? What is its power? Efficiency? Frequency? Hell it doesn't even say what happened when they tested it.

Re:Uninformative

[Motard]

It set the the outboard motors on fire. You can see a video here... http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/

Re:Uninformative

[cultiv8]

The above link is just to a list of articles. Here's the actual link to the video: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/04/video-navy-laser-sets-ship-on-fire, which demonstrates the frickin laser beam setting an inflatable motorboat on fire a mile away.

Just sail over the horizon _then_ fire your guns

[petes_PoV]

A line of sight weapon is only useful if you can see the enema. If they happen to be distant enough that the earth gets in the way, you've got nothing. Meanwhile, they can still fire shells at you which follow a nice, ballistic trajectory. Whether of not the laser weapon is accurate enough, powerful enough or lucky enough to hit a small, supersonic target will be an interesting experiment. I await the results with a non-zero (barely), positive interest.

Afterthought: presumably the torpedo manufacturers aren't too worried, either.

In the navy....

[Lord_of_the_nerf]

In the navy,
Yes, you can sail the seven seas!
In the navy,
Yes, you can fire MLDs!

Re:Just sail over the horizon _then_ fire your gun

[imsabbel]

Yawn.

First, if you see your enema, better go to a better doctor.

Second, its not a replacement for artillery (thats going to be the job of railguns), but of phalanx systems. Operational range would only be a few km, so plenty in line of sight.

now where are the Sharks?

[Joe The Dragon]

now where are the Sharks?

Re:now where are the Sharks?

[PPH]

Rumbling with the Jets. Where else?

Re:Patently useless

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

My impression is that the (eventual) use case, aside from giving our valued contractors something to bill for, is intercepting missiles and possibly nearby aircraft.

A fair number of navy vessels, especially the pricey, strategically important ones, do have a nuclear reactor to power it. They are also subject to some concern about the ability of today's minigun-based CIWS defenses to deal with some contemporary and upcoming anti-ship missiles. An anti-boat test is a serious lowball, compared to the eventual task; but I assume somebody had a 'milestone' that needed to be ticked.

For other ships, and coastal targets, the navy has also been showing considerable interest in railguns...

Re:Just sail over the horizon _then_ fire your gun

[mijelh]

The article says the laser is a defensive weapon to be used against small boats, and they actually say that its going to work together with, and not as a substitution to "kinetic energy weapon systems". I don't think you need to defend yourself against a small boat which is too far to be seen, if nothing else because there is probably no way to know if they are hostile or not.

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?

Re:So Expensive

[Dails]

Dealing with hostile small boats is a nightmare. In order to shoot one while not in a hot war, you have to establish hostile intent, which is pretty hard to do. Compounding this further is that our enemies know what our rules of engagement are, and constantly ride the line of them. When you transit the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian small boats constantly charge your ship and turn away at the last minute. If you ask them to stop, they say they're "conducting training in international waters," which is true per the UN Convention on Law of the Sea. Chinese small boats do the same thing. When transiting through the Strait of Taiwan, PRC fishing vessels will frequently drive in front of your ship and stop, sometimes a hundred yards or less in front of you. Guess whose fault it is if you hit them?

You contradict yourself in your own post by recognizing that the RoE is the biggest problem, but still saying that it's a failure of procedure when a small boat gets too close. Which is it?

Re:So Expensive

[yodleboy]

No contradiction, the RoE is a procedure that must be followed. My main point was that lasers are neat, but the neatest weapons system in the world makes no difference if you can't or won't use it. Current close-in systems are just as effective as lasers if you use them.

Re:So Expensive

[Doc Ruby]

The laser is powered by vast quantities of fuel. Ballistics and rockets can be made and stored anywhere, but the fuel for lasers has to come from long global oil supply lines. Kevlar bags of water could multiply a ballistic (or rocket) arsenal without reloading from a land depot or supply ship.

And these are all expensive solutions to problems we don't really have. Certainly not the kinds of urgent (long overdue), important (essential) problems that we're cutting funding to elsewhere in the Federal budget, while protecting these fancy toys. Protecting them literally at all costs.

The point is not the value of these lasers. It's their value compared to the other stuff we're cutting instead of them. The lasers' value is lower, but we're still paying top dollar for them. Top dollar we don't have.

Re:So Expensive

[Doc Ruby]

No, the money spent on military contractors is much more likely to be spent on foreign imported products and labor, rather than spent immediately in the economy on groceries and local sales clerks as social programmes are.

As has been demonstrated by you Republicans for generation after generation, cutting money to poor people is more certain to create a recession than is cutting military spending. That's why we're in the worst recession ever, despite the most spending on military programmes ever. Even the most overwhelming evidence cannot convince you Anonymous Teabagger Cowards to talk straight.

BTW, "programme" is a proper English spelling, that's distinguishable from the "program" that means "software". But I guess it's too "French" for you Teabaggers or something.

Re:Patently useless

[vadim_t]

It's not really a new concept it looks like this. It's just not very practical.

From what I heard the problem with this kind of thing is that it takes two trucks worth of equipment to setup, lots of power, cooling and chemicals (since it's a dye laser). Now on a ship that's a lot less of a problem.

From what I understand, the kind of mirror used in a laser is extremely efficient, tuned to the laser's frequency, sealed in a chamber that doesn't have a spec of dust in it, and has an active cooling system. This can be done in a special environment like inside an enclosed mechanism, but a missile isn't going to be able to have this kind of thing on its surface.

Re:Just sail over the horizon _then_ fire your gun

[SunTzuWarmaster]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout

Hate to break it to you cowboy, but out of over 60 keyboard layouts the only ones with a and y anywhere near each other are the Bulgarian and Ukrainian. Given the incredible meaning differences in the words and unconventionality of use (rules out non-native speaker issues), and the unlikeliness of the layout, it is incredibly unlikely that this mistake is made by anything other than: a) intentional, or b) force of habit.

Both of those conclusions are... odd.

Retroreflectors

[mangu]

Also, lasers don't bounce back at the attacker they way they do in fiction. A mirror is essentially armour against lasers, but unless you can aim the beam back in the time it takes for the mirror to melt, it isn't a weapon reflector.

Would you believe TWO mirrors? Well, actually six mirrors, because it's 3d, but you get the idea.

enema + dvork

[decora]

i think the internet has officially acheived its original purpose.

to create a discussion thread that goes from laser weapons, to enemas, to dvorak keyboard arguments, without any intervening replies.

absolutely unbelievable. bravo to you, sirs. bravo.

Re:enema + dvork

[El Torico]

I agree, that was an amazing turn of discussion points. Better yet, it didn't involve Godwin's Law. Adding "cowboy" in there just put it over the top; I give it a 9.9!

Re:Patently useless

[Kral_Blbec]

Summary: Random slashdotter smarter than everyone else actually working on a project. News at 11.

Re:Just reflect the beam with a mirror

[peragrin]

Chaff only makes sense when your not moving or when your moving AWAY from the weapon.

Chaff is defense against rear attacks. if your on a speed boat heading toward a ship that is shooting at you chaff is worthless.

think before you speak.

Ha! We win!

[Opportunist]

The enemy just said that their defense system is mostly smoke and mirrors!

No... wait...

Re:Just sail over the horizon _then_ fire your gun

[circletimessquare]

that's the culprit, autocomplete

the clash is not between keyboard layouts, but between desktop culture and mobile keyboardless culture

however, autocomplete uses past word usage as an indicator of intent. since enemy is more frequent than enema in normal use, we can conclude the author of the original post uses the word "enema" a lot, to trick autocomplete into thinking that is his intended word

(snicker)

Gosh, someone should WARN the navy

[SmallFurryCreature]

QUICK, someone call the navy! They MUST know this! A random dweed on slashdot has pointed out a fatal flaw in their decade long research! Save the nation, we can prevent a second Pearl Harbor if only we can this information to the right people!

Either this or, thank you for point out the bloody obvious and that a close range defensive weapon designed to take out small attacking ships does not need over the horizon capabilities. Layers of defence, read up on it.

Re:Just sail over the horizon _then_ fire your gun

[Beardo the Bearded]

Modern warships are basically floating generators powering the communications equipment.

They also have missiles, helicopters, and torpedoes. Usually for target engagement, you fire a missile off in the wrong direction, have it fly away for a bit, turn, and then correct course towards the target. The target is not aware of your correct location.

Now if you can see your target that's usually an intelligence failure or you're investigating without engaging. For example, if a Spanish fishing trawler is illegally catching fish off the Grand Banks and you decide to fire a warning shot when they don't pull over.

So where do lasers come in?

1. For defence, or incoming ballistics neutralization. The Phalanx (R2D2 / Dalek) can destroy most incoming ballistics BUT it goes through ammo like Charlie Sheen goes through hookers and Coke! (It fires 50 cal at 3000 RPM) so it's expensive to fire. Replace that with a laser and suddenly it's costing a gallon of fuel instead of $40k with of bullets. The target acquisition time with modern equipment is enough to destroy almost anything, and even better you can now destroy incoming shells with the lasers. You normally wouldn't be able to acquire / waste ammo on the smaller shells. Now you can.

2. For close-in target neutralization. If you can see the target, you can CUT OFF HER MASTS and then the ship is dark. There's no radar, no radio, and no way of acquiring targets without going outside and opening up a sextant and graph paper. And that's a warship. A civilian ship would be dead in the water.

3. Interdiction of small vessels. When the Cole was hit, even if they'd known that there was a threat there was a good chance they couldn't have repelled it. Warships are designed to hit warships, not two guys in a rowboat. They best they could have done was go down to the small arms locker and try to pick them off with machine gun fire. It wasn't until a few years later that they tried, and with remarkable success, using the Phalanx to hit small incoming craft. Again, that's a waste of money and ammo. With a laser, you can just cut them in half and throw the survivors a Kisby ring, OR switch carrier to a MASER and knock them out with the pain.

Chaff stays in the air for a very short time

[sean.peters]

And it would be very difficult to store enough chaff rounds onboard to do a continuous barrage, especially if you were a small vessel. And current chaff launchers would melt down if you tried to fire them this regularly. And small boats (the intended targets for this thing) mostly don't have room for even the chaff launcher, much less the ammo.

Chaff is not a practical countermeasure to this.

What a boondoggle

[bmo]

Ok, so this is for at range and close-in defense?

Fine.

Just attack the ship in a fog. Laser efficiency and focus goes out the window. Ask any land surveyor who's tried to work in a fog and can't get a beam to make a 10 meter round-trip. Not happening.

Yes it's more powerful than the laser in a total-station but condensed water vapor (fog, driving rain) is going to make your beam useless. Please note they tested this in a "high humidity environment" and not fog. There's a difference, and the difference is utter failure in fog. You can't defeat physics.

This is pants-on-head retarded.

--
BMO

Re:A Navy is essential for defense and trade

[perpenso]

History shows otherwise, both early American (1812) and more recent (WW2). Your idea of being safe behind fixed immobile defenses has been shown to be a failed strategy for millennia.

I said nothing about being safe behind immobile defenses first off, that's sheer fabrication.

"... but the same effect can be had for a fraction of the cost with ground bases ..." Ground bases are immobile.

Land-based aircraft are hardly immobile.

However they have historically failed at naval defense. Regarding "immobile", aircraft need infrastructure, lots of it. And in a land base that infrastructure is immobile, ie a target. Witness the plethora of decades old weapons systems that crater runways or bust bunkers protecting aircraft, munitions, fuel, etc. For thirty plus years we've have been watching gun/missile camera footage of land based aircraft being ripped apart, in part, by naval aircraft and missiles.

Littoral vessels are hardly immobile. Hunter-killer submarines are not immobile, and confining them to the vicinity of your coast rather than stationing them all around the world does not make them so.

However that surrenders the initiative to the enemy. Something that from Mahan to Clausewitz to Sun Tzu has been taught to be a losing strategy.

Additionally, it allows you to be strangled economically. England controlled its coastal waters during WW2 for instance, yet there was a danger of starvation and long range naval forces (surface and air) were necessary to break the blockade through convoy escort. Winston Churchill said:
"The Battle of the Atlantic was the dominating factor all through the war. Never for one moment could we forget that everything happening elsewhere, on land, at sea or in the air depended ultimately on its outcome."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Atlantic_(1939–1945)

Land based missile launchers are not normally immobile either, and there are plenty of other options. Drawing lessons from the War of 1812 as if the technologies involved havent radically changed the situation is laughable on its own, but you are drawing the wrong lessons from it to boot!

Actually what is laughable is to think that tactical technology somehow invalidates thousands of years of proven strategic thinking and history.

The British had absolute superiority on the sea, the worlds premiere Navy with over 600 military vessels, something the US was not able to even begin to compete with. And yet they did not win. Their Navy alone cost them far more than we even had to spend, we could not even dream of challenging it on the high seas, and yet we defended ourselves and won. Think about it.

Yet a seaborne force was able to land and take the capital Washington DC and burn various buildings including the White House. You consider that a successful defense? I consider that evidence of the failure of the Jeffersonian ideal of a shallow water navy.

Long range naval power foundation of everything

[perpenso]

Britains defense in WWII was overwhelmingly from land-based airfields, which produced much better results at much lower cost. I certainly never claimed that a Navy cannot be used defensively, simply that it makes no sense to build one for that purpose, given the options and the costs involved.

Winston Churchill seemed to think that long range naval power was the foundation for *everything* else that occurred during the war:
"The Battle of the Atlantic was the dominating factor all through the war. Never for one moment could we forget that everything happening elsewhere, on land, at sea or in the air depended ultimately on its outcome." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Atlantic_(1939–1945)

Re:Long range naval power foundation of everything

[perpenso]

Winston Churchill was a smart man, but he was not one that limited his military ambitions to defense by any stretch of the imagination. He declared war against Germany, not the other way around, and his goal was to defeat her, not to defend and preserve Britannia. So naturally he would see it that way - but his viewpoint isnt very relevant to the defense of a Republic which "does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy."

That is quite the dodge. Hypothetical causes of the war are irrelevant to the point being made, not even tangential. The fact remains that Britain was under serious threat due to its loss of seaborne supplies. They could have quite literally been starved into submission had they only possessed a coastal defense.

the US just had massive budget cuts

[Dan667]

this unneeded laser program should have been one of the first things cut.