Slashdot Mirror
Navy To Deploy Lasers On Ship In 2014
Velcroman1 writes "The Pentagon has plans to deploy its first ever ship-mounted laser next year, a disruptive, cutting-edge weapon capable of obliterating small boats and unmanned aerial vehicles with a blast of infrared energy. Navy officials announced Monday that in early 2014, a solid-state laser prototype will be mounted to the fantail of the USS Ponce and sent to the 5th fleet region in the Middle East for real-world experience. 'It operates much like a blowtorch ... with an unlimited magazine,' one official said."
Next up, sharks.
Somali pirates begin to feel the heat. Original recipe or extra crispy.
It's more complex than that. You want a laser in a frequency you can generate easily, focus well with optics, and that will not be absorbed by water vapor, gas, or dust. Higher frequencies don't necessarily net you any kind of energy efficiency yield (while per-photon energy is higher in higher frequency, you can just produce more photons for the same energy cost, so there is not efficiency gains from the physics). This [PDF warning] report gives quite a lot more technical details (including, yes, they do use IR), but not all of them.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
TFA(although horribly light on details) specifically mentions that these devices are too feeble and short ranged to pose any threat to such larger missiles. TFA also expresses uncertainty about hitting fast moving targets(I'd hope that the tracking capabilities are at least not-worse than existing CIWS hardware; but if it takes several seconds to set the target on fire, that would entail a greater delay...)
In fact, short of being a tech demo for something that might eventually be mature, it isn't entirely clear what this system can do that any of the better regarded WWII-era light cannon(retrofitted with modern targeting systems) couldn't...
The reasons are simple - it is easy to build solid state IR lasers and hard to build solid state lasers at other wavelengths. The bandgaps of most of the convenient materials, which are easy to work with fall into the infrared region. This is also one of the reasons why do we use IR for fiber optic systems (850 nm, 1300 nm and 1550 nm).
Oh Yeah? We not aflaid of laser. We have bigger better laser. Two of them. Will cut earth in half.
I've read a few articles about the future directions the US Navy wants to take for ship technology. Basically, they want the ship to have a huge amount of electrical generation capacity onboard, then multiple redundant busses to route the power all over. Propulsion will be giant electric motors driving propellers or waterjets. Power can also fire railguns and now lasers.
If they have multiple generators as well as multiple redundant busses the ships might not have any single spot where damage could put the ship out of commission.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_electric_propulsion
Railguns and lasers also have the nice property that they don't explode when hit. A magazine full of gunpowder, or a rack of missiles with liquid fuel, could explode when hit; but railgun projectiles just sit there, and the laser doesn't even have any consumables other than the electricity.
Let's just hope they don't use Windows 8 for the power management computers.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Lets see:
CIWS ammo 1 second fire: ~$250
Solid State Laser: ~$1
Yeah, no reason at all for the new system....
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
What it can do is not run out of ammo.
CIWS has 1550 rounds in its magazine - about 20 seconds of fire. At which point you'd better be praying that the other side doesn't have anymore missiles to toss at you, since you can't reload a CIWS quickly....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
War is about murdering the other people and breaking their equipment before they use their equipment to murder you. If you're using a laser, or a bullet, or a missile, or any of a myriad of weapons against a boat or an airplane, then it had damn well better pose enough of a threat to you that you are perfectly okay with everyone on it dying, and perhaps maybe even want to kill them. This isn't a "less-lethal" weapon (and I agree with your assessment of tasers and microwave pain rays); it's a "you, over there, die" weapon.
I'm quite critical of the US military contracting industry and of US military policy, but saying "this weapon is bad because it might kill people" is a little disingenuous. It's a weapon; it's for murdering people. If you don't think something's important enough to kill anyone who gets in the way of it, it's not worth going to war over, since that's what war is.
War is about murdering the other people and breaking their equipment before they use their equipment to murder you.
No it isn't, you nitwit. War is about achieving specific objectives by force. The force doesn't have to be lethal, and very often it isn't. As even Sun Tzu wrote, "Preserving the enemies army is best, destroying it second best." Your myopic, sociopathic way of looking at war is disturbing in the extreme. Thankfully, the modern military has no use for poorly-adjusted rambos like yourself.
If you're using a laser, or a bullet, or a missile, or any of a myriad of weapons against a boat or an airplane, then it had damn well better pose enough of a threat to you that you are perfectly okay with everyone on it dying, and perhaps maybe even want to kill them.
Terrorists have just taken control of an oil tanker in San Francisco's bay. They have over a hundred hostages and have threatened to blow holes in the hull and scuttle the ship, causing a massive environmental disaster, unless a dozen of their copatriots from Guantanamo Bay are released. You have twenty four hours to comply. Do you:
a) Blow up the tanker with your orbital ion cannon because war is about murdering other people, and thus causing a massive ecological disaster and billions of dollars in economic damages, or;
b) Sneak a small team of Navy SEALS on board, neutralize the terrorists, and retake the ship with minimal casualties.
As anyone who doesn't have a serious screw loose in their brain can see, there are military options that don't involve going all murder-happy... because, you know, the military, unlike you, doesn't have some deep-seated anger management issues.
If you don't think something's important enough to kill anyone who gets in the way of it, it's not worth going to war over, since that's what war is.
What disturbs me about your logic here is that murdering people is 'Plan A' in your world, and 'Plan B' isn't. The military isn't some gun-ho institution where people get to freely kill others. There are rules of engagement and a whole host of other things designed specifically to limit the loss of life whenever possible. And despite us having nuclear weapons, for example, we still rely on less damaging weapons all the way down to rubber bullets and tear gas. The military wouldn't need any of these options if it didn't make saving lives a priority. That's ultimately what our soldiers do: They don't take lives, they save them. Ours, to be precise. War is often about protecting what we value most, not just kicking sand in other people's faces.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Probably both. The cross section for Rayleigh scattering (scattering from things smaller than light's wavelength, like atoms in the atmosphere) goes as 1/lambda^4, so longer wavelengths scatter much less strongly. This scattering is what makes distant landscapes look hazy, and the sky away from the sun look blue (scattering bluer light back towards the earth instead of letting it pass straight through); as you move to the red and near IR, you can get much clearer views of distant objects (thus also more effectively laser-zorch them).
CIWS has 1550 rounds in its magazine
Oh, those damned new magazine limit laws, again!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The first airborne drone to be shot out of the sky with a (chemical) laser was back in 1979 or 1980 - there was a picture in Aviation Week. Interestingly, this was several years before the DoD admitted even doing research in the area.
There is lots of information on the web about all aspects of military lasers, what they work on, pictures and videos of tests, evaluation of every issue mentioned in every comment here. I've been following this topic casually for some time, and the data is out there. Google is your friend. But I know, nobody on /. reads TFA much less research the topic - not picking on you, this is just a general statement of fact. :)
I will note that the major 'win' for laser systems and to a lesser extent rail guns is logistics. A military organization is basically like UPS - it's all about getting parts, ammunition, fuel, and people delivered where it's needed. Ammunition in particular is a huge PITA - dangerous in transit, bulky, and dangerous when stored on a ship. The classic 'torpedo hit' in the movies is when the torpedo penetrates one of the magazines on a ship, which then explodes en masse, and the ship splits in two - or in dozens! The cost of delivering the ammunition to the ship exceeds the cost of the actual ammunition, and delivery of fuel is several times as expensive as the fuel.
For perspective, the guns on the old battleships like USS Missouri took several 100 lb. bags of cordite to fire off one shell. That's a lot of explosive. Eliminating that explosive makes more room for actual delivered shells, and eliminates a ship's greatest existential threat - an exploding magazine.
Using rail guns the only explosives would be whatever the shell being shot contains (which, if it is hypersonic, may be none - kinetic impact may be enough). Using lasers, a nuclear ship could essentially shoot continuously (at some rate) indefinitely - they would 'never' run out of ammo. So yes, this is still experimental. They are still working on increasing operational (as opposed to research) power output to the 100 KW range where things really get 'interesting'. But General Atomic already has a 150 KW laser running in research.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Obviously, for piloted aircraft they just order all hands on deck with laser pointers.
Exactly, lasers just can't deliver enough energy fast enough to take out missiles or anything but the slowest aircraft. Range is also a major problem because the light is refracted and dissipated in the atmosphere. It's a demonstration of the technology, with the hope that it can be developed into something more useful.
The ill-fated ABL program solved both the energy and refraction problems, but that was a larger and more expensive laser (you can overcome atmospheric dissipation almost entirely if you can shape your lens on the fly to exactly counter the distortion of the atmosphere, which I believe is old hat for spy sats).
The equally ill-fated DDX program promised huge amounts of power to feed lasers and railguns, but I believe the type of engine that was proposed has since been abandoned, so I'm not sure where you could get enough power to take out a distant, large missile. It should still be fine for CIWS though.
As for NK's missiles, if they have the range to hit the US then they are virtually impossible to stop. Shooting down ICBMs is pretty much impossible to do reliably, unless you are able to somehow hit them all during the boost phase.
Not all long-range missiles are created equal. Sure, if NK is using a still-working Russian cold-war era ICBM, with all of its countermeasures, that's a hard target during re-entry. But they won't be launching "missiles", nor getting the advantage of MIRV, if they only have one warhead (which is one more than they likely have). If it's some homebrew NK-built missile, then it will be the easiest possible target (and last I heard we can hit those now), on the slim chance it even makes it across the ocean. Not a danger to ignore, by any means, but we've relied on deterrence for 60+ years now - any actual missile defense is gravy.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
This laser is probably in the 10's of kilowatts, and even including inefficiencies, it's a pretty small load. The air conditioning in the bridge probably consumes more power.
A two litre diesel engine generator would produce enough power and run for hours on a jerry can of fuel. That's pretty good going for a weapon.
Terrorists have just taken control of an oil tanker in San Francisco's bay. They have over a hundred hostages and have threatened to blow holes in the hull and scuttle the ship, causing a massive environmental disaster, unless a dozen of their copatriots from Guantanamo Bay are released. You have twenty four hours to comply.
Do you understand that this isn't an example of war? Unless you agree with Bush's definition of the "War on Terror."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."