Navy's New Laser Weapon: Hype Or Reality?

Lasrick writes: MIT's Subrata Ghoshroy deconstructs the Navy's recent claim of successful testing with the Laser Weapon System. It seems the test videos released to the press in December were nothing more than a dog-and-pony show with scaled-down expectations so as to appear successful: "When they couldn't get a laser lightweight enough to fit on a ship while still being powerful enough to burn through the metal skin of an incoming nuclear missile, they simply changed their goal to something akin to puncturing the side of an Iranian rubber dinghy." Ghoshroy is an entertaining writer and an old hand in the laser research industry. He gives a explanation here of the history of laser weapons, and how the search for combat-ready tech continues: 'At the end of the day, good beam quality and good SWAP—size, weight and power—still determine the success or failure of a given laser weapon, and we're just not anywhere near meeting all those requirements simultaneously.'

Comments

The goal hasn't changed.

[Mr D from 63]

I don't think the goal has changed, only the writer of the article is saying that. This test is basically a status report, which tells us they still have a long way to go. The real question is how much $$ and effort should they keep putting in?

oy

[anzha]

LaWS is rather unique. Its just a proof of concept test to see if what they will encounter when they put a laser weapon on a ship operationally. This is a step past what they are doing with the X-47b. However, there are no 'X Planes' for lasers, really. LaWS ought to be viewed from that POV. OTOH, HELLADS is a step or two (or more) further along the technology curve than LaWS. Under current Pentagon procurement law, we'll have a laser weapon for ships and/or aircraft by 2020. If we didn't have to go through the insanity of that system, we could have one in a couple years. 2nd, I used to work at HELSTF. I regularly watched pundits claim things we did /that/ day were impossible with the current technology or that there was an easy counter to what we'd done (as if we hadn't tested that first). Talking heads, even ones which have some background in a subject, ought to be taken with a grain of salt. In fact, the BoAS has an axe to grind. Opposition to SDI-like weapons is historical at this point and ought to be taken in that light. Likewise, anything put out there by a defense contractor ought to be taken with an equally large grain of salt, especially one of the beltway bandits.