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http://www.newscientist.com/article/...in-midair.html
We're getting closer and closer to sci-fi weapons.Raytheon just successfully put a 32kW IR laser on a ship and was able to fry some drones. Now, we can these things in the MW output range, we'll be talking.
-Richard
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Originally Posted by publius
Established Member
To have that kind of effect with only 32Kw isn't bad - but the article didn't say how close the drone got before "it plunged into the sea". (Why can't they just say it crashed - and forget the spin?)http://www.newscientist.com/article/...in-midair.html
We're getting closer and closer to sci-fi weapons.
-Richard
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32kW in a tight enough beam is pretty impressive, really. For example, consider typical welding power levels. For stick, you're talking roughly 100A at 25-30Vish, which is just 3kW. That's enough to keep a little puddle of molten metal going for 1/4"+ base metal, and will burn a hole through thin sheet metal in no time.
I don't know what the beam cross section is, but if ten times bigger than a welding puddle and can transfer all the energy to the target, that's still the same power per area and enough to really burn up thin material.
-Richard
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You don't need megawatts to fry an attacking airplane or missile. Going SuperSize would result in a weapon that's too large and has too high an energy draw for use on ships. This effort is working to field a practical weapon that could be retrofitted to existing ships, not require a completely new fleet. The key is that it's powered by electricity, not those nasty chemicals used on the airborne laser lab. From what I've read, that airborne setup requires a 747 to carry enough chemicals for about 20 laser shots. A working laser defense weapon needs to be able to fire repeatedly fire to protect against a swarm attack (e.g., anti-ship missiles) with little warmup time. I don't know if this is intended to replace CIWS or merely augment it.
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It seems the US Navy is moving to integrated electric drive for their new ships (at least their nuke ones), so presumably they would be able to divert power from the propulsion unit to the laser when needed.
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87...er_system.html
Nick
Established Member
Next up: inventing the photon torpedo.
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Interesting. So when are they going to have some sort of balloon or satellite based laser that can mow my lawn for me?
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It is meant to augment it. As I understand it, the earlier prototype devoted the entire mount to just the laser, but they were later able to make a combined mount with both the original 20mm gatling gun armament as well as the laser armament.
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I don't know, but I'm sure that we can destroy your lawn any time . . .
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It is meant to augment it. As I understand it, the earlier prototype devoted the entire mount to just the laser, but they were later able to make a combined mount with both the original 20mm gatling gun armament as well as the laser armament.
That sounds pretty slick. You could leverage the CWIS tracking system to operate the laser and have the fallback capability of going 20mm. I wonder how they protect the laser optics from the vibration of the cannon.
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I don't know, but I can take a guess. The laser appears to be bolted onto the large dome which houses the radar. My guess is that the radar system already needed to be protected from the vibration, so the problem was already solved.
Newbie
The problem with laser weapons has always been the energy needed to inflict damage compared to there efficiency. Laser efficiency is improving but so is energy storage. If someone invents a realy effective superconductor then laser weapons will appear routinely on naval ships.
Still before we have laser weapons we will have mass drivers and those are the future. They will be the weapons that replace the main guns of naval combatatants.
Established Member
The biggest problem with lasers has been they use up their energy on every molecule of air (and spec of dust, or moisture) between them and thier target. For a long time it was believed they would only be useful in space. Good to see they are making progress.
Do naval ships still have guns? It seems they have almost been completely replaced by missiles.
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I don't know, but you might eventually be able to buy a mosquito tracking laser system:
http://www.popsci.com/technology/art...s-pesky-skeets
I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?
The Leif Ericson Cruiser
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See, *I* thought the problem has always been that they don't actually shoot visible line segments and make a *pew pew!* sound. Hmm. . .
Now that will really be interesting when pitted up against laser equipped mosquitos!
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US Navy destroyers still have a 5in/54 caliber gun.
Nick
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You've been reading my old posts again?
This could bring back the age of the airship. Muhahaha!
Et tu BAUT? Quantum mutatus ab illo.
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I'm definitely not the right person to answer this. But from my extremely limited knowledge, I seem to remember that a signal for a ship to warn another ship to stop is to shoot across its bow. I think that they would probably rather have a gun to do that rather than using missiles. So if for no other reason, they probably still keep a gun.
As above, so below
Established Member
Most ships still have at least one gun although it is rare to find one with more than a 6-inch bore. The standard these days is a 76mm such as the one on the US Perry class frigates. The Burke class destroyers have a 5-inch gun. Pretty much every ship has some sort of close-in weapon system. In general the laser systems are intended to replace these. The problems with beam spreading, blooming (de-focusing caused by the heating of the air by the beam), as well as absorbtion by sea-spray and humidity limit the effective range of a laser. Picking the right frequency is hard since the quantum mechanics of available lasing media limit the choices. The US Navy's current research on this is working on a Free Electron Laser. Since these use the energy of an electron beam and synchrotron radiation to form the beam you can build one to an advantageous frequency. It does mean putting a small electron accelerator onto the ship, which may be problomatic.
"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin
"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee
This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli
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Reading some more about this, the range was apparently 2 miles and the drone was moving at 300mph.
Speaking of naval guns, they don't have ships in service any more with those big 16" guns they used on the Iowa class battleships?
-Richard
Established Member
No.
Nick
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The other problem with lasers is Line of Sight. No over the horizon bombardment like you could do with the old ballistic weapons.
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So you send up a drone, first, with a mirror on it and... oh... hang on...
Get up, a get-get, get down.
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Thats what railguns are for!
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Cruise missiles will probably do fine for those times when you need to "Reach Out and Touch Someone".
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Speaking of bombardment, I got worried about the fact the biggest guns the Navy has in service now are the 5" ones. What about naval gunfire support for an amphibious landing and the like, I worried, and I got to reading. Apparently I'm not alone, as there are factions in the Marines and to a lesser extent the Army that worry about this as well. Nothing can beat those 16" guns on the Iowa class for that. The Navy brass didn't want to keep up the battleships as they considered them way too expensive for the benefit.
They say it would cost $500M to bring the Iowa and Wisconsin back to duty. The Secretary of the Navy stuck those two ships from the naval registry back in 2006, but Congress, in the 2007 Defense bill, put in a provision that required the Navy to be ready to bring Iowa and Wisconsin back to duty if needed. This required them to not modify the two old girls in any way that would prevent them from military duty, maintain preservation systems to keep them from detirioration, and preserve spare and unique parts for them.
-Richard
Established Member
I would have thought a few flocks of predators armed with hellfires would have worked just as well...
Wasn't there a study about twenty years ago that found targeted munitions were 20 times more effecctive than bombardment? Wasn't that used as the justification to bring in hoards of tomahawks and retire the old lady (B-52) ? I'll have to check General Dynamic's web site to see if that study is still available.
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A lot of times, capitalizing words is English is fairly superfluous, but when you're using names like that it helps to know that you are using product names. I wasn't sure what you meant by "predator" until I googled it and found there's an unmanned plane with that name, so a Predator.
As above, so below
Established Member
Sorry Jens, my bad
I thought that all those weapons systems were so well know that everyone would know them - working in the industry has given me a bit of a bias I guess.
Predator, Tomahawk, Hellfire and Old Ladies are all weapon systems...
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