Navy successfully fires ship-mounted laser weapon

[Borgholio]

http://time.com/3628047/navy-laser-weap ... sian-gulf/

Service says ray gun can handle multiple threats at 59 cents a shot

For decades, the Pentagon has been saying that laser weapons are just around the corner. Thursday, the U.S. military finally turned that corner.

The Navy announced that it had deployed and fired a laser weapon this fall aboard a warship in the Persian Gulf. During a series of test shots, the laser hit and destroyed targets mounted atop a small boat, blasted a six-foot drone from the sky, and destroyed other moving targets.

“This is the first time in recorded history that a directed energy weapons system has ever deployed on anything,” Rear Admiral Matthew Klunder, chief of naval research, told reporters at the Pentagon. “A lot of people talk about it—we decided to go do it.”

The Navy’s laser weapon system—LaWS, in sea-service jargon—was fired from the USS Ponce, a one-time amphibious ship that was converted to an “afloat forward staging base” in 2012 and assigned to the 5th Fleet in Bahrain. Firing a laser from the surface of the Persian Gulf is challenging because heat, humidity, dust and salt water can reduce its power.

The Navy spent about $40 million over the past seven years developing LaWS, which actually consists of six commercial welding lasers lashed together and aimed at the same point. It has proven effective at ranges of up to about a mile.

A chief petty officer, sitting inside the ship’s combat information center, directs the solid-state laser with an Xbox-like controller. It generates about 30 kilowatts of destructive power, roughly equal to 40 horsepower. Three times as much power is lost as heat rather than light.

Navy officers say the weapon’s power is adjustable, ranging from distract to disable to destroy. They added it would be ideal for asymmetric threats, including small attack boats (a favorite tactic of Iran, which undoubtedly was paying close attention to the tests off its shore). U.S. Central Command has given the Ponce’s skipper approval to use the laser for self-defense, if needed.

“Light from a laser beam can reach a target almost instantly,” a July congressional report said. “After disabling one target, a laser can be redirected in several seconds to another target. Fast engagement times can be particularly important in situations, such as near-shore operations, where missiles, rockets, artillery shells, and mortars could be fired at Navy ships from relatively close distances.”

But lasers can be disabled by bad weather, and are limited to line-of-sight confrontations. Initially, they’ll complement a warship’s traditional longer-range guns and missiles. The lessons learned from the Ponce tests will be cranked into a new generation of laser weaponry, which the Navy hopes to begin installing on the fleet in the early 2020s.

Such weapons are safer than traditional shells and missiles, which are crammed with explosives and propellant. They’re considerably cheaper, too: the energy required to fire the Ponce’s laser costs 59 cents a shot, compared to a shell or missile, which can cost $1 million or more.

One mile isn't very long range though. Hopefully that's just the initial test range, because an incoming missile will close that distance in a heartbeat. Still, that would be very useful against small boats or attack craft.

[LaCroix]

It's a test mockup - a 30 kW laser is still in the "civilian" range of products available. Once they ramp the power of the single laser emitters (currently 5kW each) up into the double digit ranges, you will see range increase accordingly - effective laser range is marked by how much atmosphere it can burn through and still deliver more than just illumination on the target, and the curvature of the earth. This laser, if it can destroy things at one mile - at the same setting it can still disable things at say, 1.5 miles, and distract out to two miles.

Depending on how high up it is mounted on the vessel, LOS against small boats won't be much more than 4-5 miles, so it's already quite performant in this role. Ramp power up and replace/enhance the Xbox controller by an AEGIS link, and you will have a good point defense weapon. Actually, it might already work quite well as an AEGIS addon as point defense. Using AEGIS or similar data and a resonably well built automatic turret, it could shoot a lot of projectiles down at that last mile, like Phalanx does. Probably better, since you don't need to account for projectile travel time. Sure, there might be some blast waves and shrapnel impact for close intercepts, but that's want the hull is built for.

[Starglider]

The effective range of gun-based CIWS (e.g. Phalanx) is only a couple of miles, but that's sufficient to engage most threats.

[Sea Skimmer]

The realistic effective destruction range of a rapid firing CIWS is more like 300-500m. Oh sure, you can open fire when the target is somewhat further away, but the odds of actually destroying it outside of this kind of is not much better then chance. The close loop tracking systems cannot function until the bullets start missing. Even a very large deck penetrating system like Goalkeeper only intends to open fire at 1,500m, leading to a kill much closer. Thus ever more emphasis on point defense missiles these days, and much heavier gun systems such as the Italian 76mm firing short bursts of command guided rounds.

Lasers are super appealing for the fact that while even a megawatt class beam probably won't be effective past 20-30km depending on weather, assuming a low altitude target, the beam is going to start inflicting damage instantaneously, and wont be affected by plausible evasive maneuvers. Which is huge difference compared to the problem of putting gunfire onto a target in a constant 30G bathtub weave. And since you don't have an ammuntion limitation you can just fire constantly, even if conditions present a very low probability of a kill. At longer ranges damage may suffice to make a missile crash or miss from damaged controls or guidance, while by the time a 20-30mm gun can open fire the target must be detonated to avoid a kinetic hit.

The counterbalance is lasers will probably not be effective against warheads in very short range engagements, the beam has to burn through too much blooming junk to reach the warhead casing, and then might deflagrate rather then detonate it, since it produces no shock load, leaving the base fuse still able to at least partly detonate the rest on impact. So that isn't good, and that plus the weather limit means they aren't likely to actually replace existing gun and missile systems, but rather supplement them to reduce expenditure of missiles, and simply to give ships a better damn chance at all against future hypersonic weapons that will soon be falling out of the sky.

Estimates are at the moment we need about a 350kw beam to be a useful CIWS at 1-5km, and 1-2 megawatts for 20km and up. Being at sea level means the angle of fire will have a radical effect on actual effective ranges, in a strong haze you might be more effective against a satellite then against a biplane on the visual horizon. And you cannot brute force this, more energy will just cause even more thermal blooming and other problems. The chemical THEL laser was about 1 MW, Airborne Laser 3 MW for comparison.

[Starglider]

And you cannot brute force this, more energy will just cause even more thermal blooming and other problems.

That's true for single emitters, but you can put multiple emitters on the ship. Any pair of turrets separated by 10m or more won't experience significant combined bloom. Theoretically the cost and bulk could be reduced enough that an array of a dozen or more turrets would be possible - although the cost and efficiency of mature high-power solid state lasers is (of course) still speculative.

[Borgholio]

Any pair of turrets separated by 10m or more won't experience significant combined bloom.

With that said, a carrier wouldn't have a problem fitting a half dozen of these things on each side of the ship.

[Zeropoint]

LASER BROADSIDE! KEKEKEKEKE!

[Irbis]

With that said, a carrier wouldn't have a problem fitting a half dozen of these things on each side of the ship.

And then render it defenceless from front and back?

Multiple lasers are not very practical today, hitting missile going Mach 3+ is difficult on its own, and this ups the difficulty to hitting arbitrary point on such target or risking it absorbing the damage. Focusing array of independent lasers is difficult even on land, doing it on ship constantly moving in 3D is harder still.

[Borgholio]

And then render it defenceless from front and back?

Oh har har. You could fit two on either end as well, and some of the side units could face forward or back as well. Point is that a carrier would have plenty of deck space to mount several lasers without worrying about bloom.

[Irbis]

You could fit two on either end as well, and some of the side units could face forward or back as well. Point is that a carrier would have plenty of deck space to mount several lasers without worrying about bloom.

Out of curiosity, where?

Take a look at front of modern carrier. There is honestly no space to put anything heavy there, unless you redesign whole thing. Sides are iffy, too, on one side you have elevators, on other thin flight deck not capable of supporting anything heavy on that side. Frankly, mounting one concentrated battery somewhere near bridge (or on top of it) strikes me as more practical than dispersing it.

AA coverage is something we tried to perfect last 80 years and it never had been so simple as just 'bolt 2 in front'. I tried to think of any gun plan that would offer even adequate covering with multiple emitters in mind and IMHO that old Dutch cruiser-like one with 'concentrate it in one turret high on superstructure' would work best.

[Borgholio]

Take a look at the Phalanx on the starboard side. It's mounted underneath the flight deck on it's own platform. That could be done pretty much around the entire ship if they wanted.

[Sea Skimmer]

That's true for single emitters, but you can put multiple emitters on the ship. Any pair of turrets separated by 10m or more won't experience significant combined bloom. Theoretically the cost and bulk could be reduced enough that an array of a dozen or more turrets would be possible - although the cost and efficiency of mature high-power solid state lasers is (of course) still speculative.

Well of course you can multiply the number of weapon system carried to gain more effect on target. This is basically how we end up with the Soviet military and all its glorious awesome. Its not really a good approach to effective design though. If you mount more then one position for purpose, the value of the second position is highly in question compared to other systems that might occupy it, like very low cost interceptor missiles.

Another option is multiple wavelengths of laser on the same mount, large differences will reduce thermal effects. As well free electron designs can be made to have a narrow range of beam tuning, sufficient to avoid the worst blooming effects. In fact enough to negate them in some situation, leading to near optimal lasing quality. FELs also have a built in ability to serve multiple beam directors.

However multiple laser mounts run into alignment problems, while very accurate at ranges of 10km or more your probably going to be heating different parts of the missile, reducing the combine beam effect. You can't really expect that pin point of accuracy against non cooperative targets, and the airflow has some cooling effect, either by absorbing heat or on supersonics by creating a strong heat haze and even plasma effects for hypersonics to disrupt the beam.

Also while multiple mounts could mitigate thermal blooming in decently clear air, they wont reasonably solve the problem of effective range being almost entirely negated by blooming in really heavy haze or light rain. So dedicating a large potion of the ships sky arcs to laser weapons still has problems for a vessel intended to operate world wide.

Meanwhile the same tech advances are also going to improve defensive missiles, and offensive missiles, making both more capable, lower cost and in some cases much lighter weight for the capability. The US Army for example has test firings gong on for a hit to kill missile which only weighs 10lb, intended for vertical launch against artillery threats. A flatbed hummve is supposed to carry as many as 135 of them. Lasers are nice, but its just very hard to see large batteries of them actually making sense. We should be thinking more about just what it will mean in general terms, in the near future, when an effective guided weapon can be had for a thousand dollars. Lasers, are a thing, but oh god, CVN vs 10,000 incoming 100lb biplane drones? This could be happening.

[Simon_Jester]

At some point the defense against that is nuclear airbursts in the drone stream, better that than losing the carrier... usually. I think.

Also, against a threat like that, if anything conventional will work it'll be lasers, because they have the ability to engage lots and lots of targets in rapid succession for a long period of time. A RAM launcher can be shot dry a lot faster than a laser cannon- and little bitty biplane drones aren't going to be going fast enough to create massive airflow cooling or anything of the nature, so they're vulnerable in addition to being slower.

[Irbis]

Take a look at the Phalanx on the starboard side. It's mounted underneath the flight deck on it's own platform. That could be done pretty much around the entire ship if they wanted.

One, Phalanx is tiny, narrow 20 mm system weighting 5 tons. I doubt lasers are going to so small, much likely larger than that, even that low powered aircraft prototype weighted 14 tons. Phalanx in such mount had also very bad field of fire.

Two, this just proves my point. Nimitz class, despite being designed and built in an era of Soviet missile saturation attacks mounted just 2x Phalanx turrets. If bolting 6 each side was so simple, Navy would have done that.

Also, against a threat like that, if anything conventional will work it'll be lasers, because they have the ability to engage lots and lots of targets in rapid succession for a long period of time.

All military weapon systems I have seen so far had big issues with sustained fire, though, due to overheating, overdrawing energy supply, exhausting chemicals, or other causes. Fixing one drawback seemed to always introduce a new one, so it would be interesting what they came up with this time.

[Adam Reynolds]

At some point the best solution to the opposition using cheap drones is to attack their drones with your own equally cheap drones and interceptor missiles. If you can fit 135 missiles in a humvee*, you could probably fit 10,000 on a carrier. Interception range would obviously be less than ideal for naval applications, given that the system is intended to kill incoming artillery at a range of a few km, though it would make one immune from battleships and their corresponding wankers.

The additional problem this creates is that if the defender's missiles are as expensive as those of the attacker, the attacker would eventually win through attrition if nothing else. Obviously the solution to that is for both sides to attack. Though that solution leads to a scenario that resembles that of ICBMs without ABM, attack quickly dominates and it becomes a case of MAD.

Another major issue with an interceptor system is targeting each drone without overlap, while this is what AEGIS was designed for, it can't handle 10,000 targets(the official number is over 100). This is obviously not a problem for the attacker, who just has a single target. This problem would be even worse on land, where the ground clutter would allow such craft to be even more effective than at sea. Though increasing computing power would also negate this somewhat, this becomes quite expensive to create.

As a random idea, I wonder how well high tech flak rounds would work. I just got a mental image of using the flechette alternative warhead MLRS round, meant to comply with cluster munition bans, against such a formation. Obviously that specific shell wouldn't work, but something designed for the purpose might. If one had a formation of 10,000 drones they would have to bunch up a great deal. Though obviously staggering them would work quite well against such a defense.

Sea Skimmer, is the humvee launched system you are referring to Lockheed's EAPS?

[Purple]

Why is everyone so fixated into turning a carrier into a mobile AA platform? That's what escorts are for. The carrier only ever needs to be capable of intercepting what ever little gets past the rest of the flotilla.

[Sky Captain]

We should be thinking more about just what it will mean in general terms, in the near future, when an effective guided weapon can be had for a thousand dollars. Lasers, are a thing, but oh god, CVN vs 10,000 incoming 100lb biplane drones? This could be happening.

I'm curious how attack like that could be launched quickly. A cheap attack drone probably would be like a bit oversized RC airplane so you would need a large runway to fit all 10 000 drones and allow all of them to take off quickly which would be fairly large operation vulnerable to be spotted by recon from carrier battlegroup. Or simple fuckup like a drone in the front row crash on takeoff blocking the rest of the swarm with burning wreck
Launching from other ship at sea probably would not be possible because of limited deck space and it would take too much time to bring the entire swarm into air if you have to put few hundred drones on deck, launch then bring the next batch from cargo bay up and launch again.

[Zeropoint]

It's simple: folding-wing drones in VLS cells with pneumatic or pyrotechnic ejection systems. The drones get shot out, and deploy their wings and fire up their engines before they lose airspeed, and off they go. Such launch systems already exist for small recon drones.

[Purple]

Why would you be spamming your enemies with attack drones when you can just use missiles?

[Starglider]

Why would you be spamming your enemies with attack drones when you can just use missiles?

LRASM-A is an 'attack done', just a fairly large and expensive one; it has the full suite of preprogrammed waypoints, threat-detection, reactive re-route, mid-course update, swarming with data-links etc. At this point the difference between 'missile' and 'attack done' is mostly the range/speed/cost tradeoff (prop vs jet vs rocket propulsion and fuel to warhead mass ratio). If Zeropoint is thinking of cheap prop-based drones though I agree it's pointless, LRASM already has a 200 nm to 1000 nm range (depending on configuration) with significant loiter, and if you're taking up VLS cells on destroyers then the cost of a turbojet cruise missile vs a prop 'attack drone' is not a significant issue.

Even if you're trying to stuff several tiny drones in each tube, turbines scale right down to R/C aircraft size now and I can't think of a scenario where even more range (from making the round look like a tiny predator instead of a tiny tomahawk) would be worth the (much) lower speed and increased time window for active defences to defeat it. If anything effective laser CIWS would favour faster missiles i.e. LRASM-B might be resurrected. Also even with cheap electronics swarms of drones experience dis-economies of scale with duplicated seeker heads, or degraded/cheaper/easier-to-spoof sensors, and if you keep going down the 'loads of tiny drones' route at some point the warheads would be so small that bringing back armored hulls would be enough to defeat them.

[Starglider]

Although if Purple was responding to Sea Skimmer, I assumed Sea Skimmer was talking about asymetric threats, e.g. rouge state launching cheap drone swarms from old fishing or cargo hulls, because the result is a more effective attack than buying more missile boats. If you have the luxury of chosing the time and location of attack, you can get away with really cheap drones that don't work in stormy weather and don't have datalinks. That isn't an option for a general surface combatant.

[Zeropoint]

Why would you be spamming your enemies with attack drones when you can just use missiles?

Eh, you probably wouldn't be, really. I was just trying to suggest a possible solution to Sky Captain's questions about how you'd deploy your drone swarm if that's what you were trying to do.

Sometimes it's fun to think about how to overcome a technical challenge for its own sake, regardless of whether there's a practical application.

[Traveller]

Yes! three cheers for more 'defence'(war) spending. Whats the matter?, the trillion dollar+(projected) costs for other high-tech lemons like the F-35, and countless other boondoggles in the amerikan (war) empire not good nuff for yall? I guess not, now, lets add ship mounted lasers to the list. Because nothing screams 'national priority', like ship mounted lasers(to be sent to the middle east, apparently), right?....

Q/Navy officers say the weapon’s power is adjustable, ranging from distract to disable to destroy. They added it would be ideal for asymmetric threats, including small attack boats (a favorite tactic of Iran, which undoubtedly was paying close attention to the tests off its shore). U.S. Central Command has given the Ponce’s skipper approval to use the laser for self-defense, if needed.

What?! No stun or dematerialize? Send it back. I mean, those shifty Iranians are such a threat right? With their ~17 billion(USD) FY2013, budget for its entire military, I am sure they can afford lots of kodiak's to take all those amerikans camped out just a few miles offshore from their border.

Ohhhh but wait a second,not so fast Captain Kirk, the article also says this:

Q/The Navy’s laser weapon system—LaWS, in sea-service jargon—was fired from the USS Ponce, a one-time amphibious ship that was converted to an “afloat forward staging base” in 2012 and assigned to the 5th Fleet in Bahrain. Firing a laser from the surface of the Persian Gulf is challenging because heat, humidity, dust and salt water can reduce its power.

IoW, Lasers don't seem to work very well in the Persian Gulf.LoL, Idiots.....

[Borgholio]

IoW, Lasers don't seem to work very well in the Persian Gulf.LoL, Idiots.....

That's not what it says, dude. It says it's challenging. If you knew anything about the parts of the world in which the Navy operates, you would know that pretty much all of those environmental attributes except for the dust are commonplace. You can't have a laser weapon mounted on a Naval warship ANYWHERE without dealing with salt water, humidity, often heat, and sometimes dust too.

With that said, having a laser built out of commercial-grade components that can burn a hole in a boat or a small plane from over a mile away is still pretty good for a prototype.

[Simon_Jester]

Another major issue with an interceptor system is targeting each drone without overlap, while this is what AEGIS was designed for, it can't handle 10,000 targets(the official number is over 100). This is obviously not a problem for the attacker, who just has a single target. This problem would be even worse on land, where the ground clutter would allow such craft to be even more effective than at sea. Though increasing computing power would also negate this somewhat, this becomes quite expensive to create.

Although realistically, if you try to send ten thousand drones in on a low-altitude attack profile, they'll be crashing into each other and knocking each other out of the sky with prop wash a lot. Also, they'll be so dense that just building rapid-firing flak guns and shooting blindly into the mass of drones becomes a viable tactic.

Ten thousand individual munitions simultaneously is more likely to be a threat that comes in streams over a period of time, I would think.

Why is everyone so fixated into turning a carrier into a mobile AA platform? That's what escorts are for. The carrier only ever needs to be capable of intercepting what ever little gets past the rest of the flotilla.

The escorts themselves are much smaller and yet still must mount heavy anti-air weapons fits. So the problem of "where are you going to put the weapons" remains, even if the exact nature of that problem changes.

Yes! three cheers for more 'defence'(war) spending. Whats the matter?, the trillion dollar+(projected) costs for other high-tech lemons like the F-35, and countless other boondoggles in the amerikan (war) empire not good nuff for yall? I guess not, now, lets add ship mounted lasers to the list. Because nothing screams 'national priority', like ship mounted lasers(to be sent to the middle east, apparently), right?....

While I'm not sure I should even engage with you as though you are capable of serious argument...

...Let me point out that most of the weapons the US uses now are mildly updated forms of weapons it bought in the 1970s or 1980s. The weapons that are currently being designed are intended to remain in use through and beyond 2050. Thus, things like experimental laser systems and F-35 fighters are NOT meant to counter whatever happens to be dangerous in 2014. They are meant to be capable of handling any unknown or unforeseen threat that emerges within the next thirty or forty years, with enough flexibility and capacity to be adapted to fit evolving threats.

Sure, right now everyone is still using Uncle Alski's Used Soviet War Surplus, and lasers and stealth fighters are overkill. But if these weapon systems are not developed now (while the US still has a technological lead), it may not be possible to develop the things when they do become needed. Because an item like the F-35 fighter has a twenty-year lead time from when it is first conceived to the time it becomes operational.

If in 2035 we have to go "shit, this bunch of violent radical politicals just took over a nuclear power and are threatening war with everyone on the same continent, and they have fighter jets that make the F-15 look like a paper airplane," then suddenly we will need a fighter that itself makes the F-15 look like a paper airplane. And it will be too late to invent a new one at the time, so it'd be a good idea to already have it and have all the bugs worked out in advance, no?

Likewise, if at any time in the next forty years our ships get shot at with missiles, then we will be pretty fucking glad that we spent all this time and money preparing ourselves to shoot down missiles with rockets and lasers and whatnot. Because after the time at which the missiles are fired, it is too late to invent your way out of the problem, because life isn't a TV show and your chances of inventing a response to an unknown enemy tactic or weapon during a forty-minute episode are not stellar.

What?! No stun or dematerialize? Send it back. I mean, those shifty Iranians are such a threat right? With their ~17 billion(USD) FY2013, budget for its entire military, I am sure they can afford lots of kodiak's to take all those amerikans camped out just a few miles offshore from their border.

Q/The Navy’s laser weapon system—LaWS, in sea-service jargon—was fired from the USS Ponce, a one-time amphibious ship that was converted to an “afloat forward staging base” in 2012 and assigned to the 5th Fleet in Bahrain. Firing a laser from the surface of the Persian Gulf is challenging because heat, humidity, dust and salt water can reduce its power.

IoW, Lasers don't seem to work very well in the Persian Gulf.LoL, Idiots.....

OK, shut up and try again when you're sober.

I mean, really, at this point you're just not reading the article, you're just reading occasional snippets and making idiotic frat-boy jokes while not bothering to comprehend the material.