"How Navy’s New Laser Cannon, Mounted on a Ship, Kill a Drone" Topic

"The video above is what the Navy's top officers view as the future of their dominance on the surface of the world's waterways. A laser cannon, its magazine limited only by the amount of energy pumped into it and costing pocket change to fire, punching through an adversary's cheap anti-ship weapons — at the speed of light.

Long in testing and even older in ambition, the chief of naval operations, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, triumphantly heralded the dawn age of the shipboard laser gun during the Navy's annual conference outside Washington. In tests aboard the destroyer USS Dewey last summer off the California coast, the Laser Weapon System successfully shot down surveillance drones and fast boats in its first round of sea trials aboard a surface combatant, according to Rear Adm. Thomas Eccles, one of the Navy's top engineers. (Three of the shoot-downs were aboard the Dewey, while nine others happened on shore, Eccles clarifies.)

"This system," Greenert told the naval community at the Sea Air Space conference, showing the above video to a hushed crowd, "it works."

The tubular Laser Weapon System (LaWS) is a solid-state laser that's been in development for six years, at a cost of $40 USD million. It's a directed-energy descendent of the the radar-guided Close In Weapons System (CIWS; it rhymes with "Gee Whiz") gun already aboard surface ships. In December, following the successful Dewey tests, Greenert ordered the laser "out to the fleet for an operational demonstration," said Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, the Navy's chief of research. And so next year, LaWS will have its trial by fire, when the Navy puts it on the deck of its new afloat staging base USS Ponce for its maiden voyage to the Middle East.

It just so happens that the LaWS' ability to track and kill surveillance drones and swarming fast boats matches with Iran's development of surveillance drones and swarming fast-boat tactics. And it just so happens that the Ponce will spend most of 2014 deployed in Iran's backyard.

"Any country that operates the kinds of threats this system is designed to deal with should pause and say, ‘If the United States Navy can take a challenge like that and muster the scientific expertise from industry, academia and inside the government and pull together a solution that can be fielded as rapidly as this one's been fielded, and go from a test environment directly to a forward-deployed unit for demonstration in the field and in the Fifth Fleet,'" Eccles said, "they should recognize that when we say ‘quick-reaction capability' we truly deliver on a quick reaction capability…"
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Amicalement
Armand

"…its magazine limited only by the amount of energy pumped into it and costing pocket change to fire…".

Completely ignoring the issue of the power to feed the laser, which will probably be very limited, and the high costs of the systems and R&D to come up with them.

Still, I guess it's good that weapons development is progressing forward.

Hope it'll work as advertised, when needed.

Thanks for sharing the article.

Every now and then, the US defense community can pull off a well thought out, cost effective weapon system. Hopefully, this one will live up to its hype and deliver as advertised.

At $40 USDmil that's a bargain.

I concur, but doubt all the USA has paid for laser research in the past is rolled up into that figure.

Seems far too economical to me.

If it's true, I hope they are simultaneously working on disruptor, photon torpedo, wave gun, shield, and FTL tech too.

And, I'm still waiting for my reasonably priced jet pack, and air car as well (a sports model, if you please).

Glad you had enjoy it my friend Mako11.

Amicalement
Armand

What's the point of it?

Lasers are useless in anti-piracy ops or anti-criminal ops.

They're also useless in the kind of combat operations the navy has actually participated in – naval gun fire support and lobbing Tomahawks cruise missiles.

And in WWIII, will lasers be able to stop swarm Anti-ship missiles any better than a current CIWS?

Maybe money spent on laser development would've been better spent making the LCS less of a toothless tiger. Or maybe upkeeping training for current combat forces.

"Lasers are useless in anti-piracy ops or anti-criminal ops."

Such pirate boats are usually wood or fiberglass. Seems that if the laser is powerful enough it will cause them to burn or get holes that fill will water. Plus you blind the fool at the helm. You don't generally kill the pirate/criminal, but they will surrender and be captured for criminal prosecution.

Current CIWS use up allot of expensive ammo. Using lasers you don't have to buy and store that ammo.