US Military Stepping Up Use of Directed Energy Weapons

An anonymous reader writes: At a conference on Tuesday, U.S. officials explained that all branches of the military would be increasing their use of lasers and other directed energy weapons. Lieutenant General William Etter said, "Directed energy brings the dawn of an entirely new era in defense." The Navy's laser deployment test has gone well, and they're working on a new prototype laser in the 100-150 kilowatt range. "[Navy Secretary Ray] Mabus said Iran and other countries were already using lasers to target ships and commercial airliners, and the U.S. military needed to accelerate often cumbersome acquisition processes to ensure that it stayed ahead of potential foes."

Comments

Other kinds of energy weapons

[abies]

Directed energy weapons are not that interesting. I'm more scared of undirected energy weapon and very curious about ballistic energy weapons.

Brag about your hypersonic missiles now

[Karmashock]

... what do you people think accelerated these programs and why do you think the Navy is the first to deploy them?

Russia and China started saying "ha ha, your carrier groups are powerless before our anti ship missiles... Tee hee!"

And that got some Admirals worried so they went over to the various companies that build these things like Stark Labs and Luthor's Starlabs etc... and they said "I want something that kills hypersonic missiles so my carriers don't get scragged!"... and here you go.

Hypersonic missiles nullified. Potentially anyway... Maybe they cover the missiles in reflectors or space shuttle like heat tiles or something. Its going to go back and forth.

They're going to pitch the weapon as a panacea because they always do that. But you have to consider why they specifically got interested in this... Its ICBMs and hyper sonic missiles that are worrying them. ... I can't think of anything the Iranians actually have right now that would take a laser to stop. The most threatening concept I've seen out of Iran was their swarm of small speed boats attacking a destroyer going through the gulf. But... first off the destroy can kill one of those little boats with anything. I mean, the close support phalanx cannons could kill the entire wave. And even if they were able to kill a destroyer that way... so what? I mean... congrats... you got a destroyer... now you're going to get a full strategic response... so... that was the last thing you ever did.

The US actually likes to start a war with someone else blowing up one of our ships. Remember the Maine and all that. I mean... read a book.