They are obviously getting ready to implement laser weapons whichwill be first generation and at the first threshold of effectivepower. In other words good enough to replace something.
The rest of the weapon suite will take a little longer if not muchlonger. Yet crews will now become familiar with them and learn totrust them.
This also suggests that they could be installed on aircraft as weknow that they have experimentally.
Obviously the power output is presently huge. It must be able toknock something down.
Navy’s Top GeekSays Laser Arsenal Is Just Two Years Away
- By Spencer Ackerman
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/10/lasers/
Never mind looming defense cuts or residual technical challenges. The Navy’s chief futurist is pushing up the anticipated date for when sailors can expect to use laser weapons on the decks of their ships, and raising expectations for robotic submarines.
“On directed energy” — the term for the Navy’s laser cannons, “I’d say two years,” Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, the chief of the Office of Naval Research, told Danger Room in a Monday interview. The previous estimate, which came from Klunder’s laser technicians earlier this year, was that it will take four years at the earliest for a laser gun to come aboard.
“We’re well past physics,” Klunder said, echoing a mantra for the Office of Naval Research’s laser specialists. Now, the questions surrounding a weapon once thought to be purely science fiction sound almost pedestrian. “We’re just going through the integration efforts,” Klunder continued. “Hopefully, that tells you we’re well mature, and we’re ready to put these on naval ships.”
Klunder isn’t worried about the ships generating sufficient energy to fill the laser gun’s magazine, which has been an engineering concern of the Navy’s for years. “I’ve got the power,” said Klunder, who spoke during the Office of Naval Research’s biennial science and technology conference. “I just need to know on this ship, this particular naval vessel, what are the power requirements, and how do I integrate that directed energy system or railgun system.”
That’s a relief for the Navy. It means that the Navy’s future ships probably won’t have to make captains choose between maneuvering their ships and firing their laser weapons out of fear they’d overload their power supplies.
But shipboard testingis underway. Klunder wouldn’t elaborate, but he said thatthere have been “very successful” tests placing laser weapons onboard a ship. That’s not to say the first order of business fornaval laser weaponry will be all that taxing: In their early stages,Pentagon officials talk about using lasers to shoot downdrones or enable better sensing. Klunder alluded to recent testsin which the Navy’s lasers brought drones down, although hedeclined to elaborate.
Then come the unmannedsubmarines. Current, commercially available drone subs typicallyswim for several days at a time, according to Frank Herr, an Officeof Naval Research department head who works on so-called unmannedunderwater vehicles, or UUVs. That’s way behind the capabilitiesthatsuccessive Navy leaders want: crossing entireoceans without needing to refuel. So Klunder wants to raise thebar.
“The propulsionsystems that I think you’re going to see within a year are going to[give] a UUV with over 30 days of endurance,” Klunder said. By2016, a prototype drone sub for the office’s Long Duration UnmannedUnderwater Vehicle program should be able to spend 60 daysunderwater at a time: “That’s ahead of schedule of what we toldthe secretary of the Navy a year ago.”
That’s a challengefor the subs’ propulsion and fuel systems. Typically, Herrexplains, the commercially available batteries built into prototypedrone subs take up a lot of the ship; but building bigger subs justincreases the need for power. The nut that the Office of NavalResearch has to crack is using more efficient fuel cells whiledesigning subs that don’t need as much energy to run. “We’rethinking about power requirements for these systems as well as thepower [sources] available for them,” Herr says.
“The breakthrough,”Klunder explains, “was really on getting past your more traditionallead-acid battery pieces to more technically robust but also maturelithium ion fuel cell technology and the hybrids of that.”
None of that is to saythe lasers will be actually on board by 2014 or the drone subs willdisappear beneath the waves for 60 days by 2016. That depends in parton the Navy’s ability to afford it — and at the conference thismorning, Adm. Mark Ferguson, the Navy’s vice chief, warned that“research and development is part of that reduction” in defensebudgets currently scheduled to take effect in January. But it mightnot be long before Klunder is finally able to hand over abattle-ready laser cannon to Big Navy.
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