Navy's Laser Weapons Just 2 Years Away, Admiral Says

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

http://news.yahoo.com/navys-laser-weapons-just-2-years-away-admiral-173636089--abc-news-topstories.html

By Lee Ferran | ABC News – 10 hrs ago

Whoever wins the upcoming presidential election, by halfway through the new term the Commander-in-Chief could be wielding a new weapon straight out of science fiction: laser cannons.

That's how close the U.S. Navy is to being able to field the first generation of "directed energy" weapons aboard ships, according to Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, the chief of the Office of Naval Research. Klunder made the claim Monday to WIRED.com's Danger Room, which has been following the development of the futuristic laser arsenal.

Earlier this year Klunder's office had said the Navy was four years away from mounting the laser weapons, but he told WIRED Monday that recent tests had been "very successful" and the Navy has figured out physics issues that plagued early concepts.

"We're well past physics," he said. "We're just going through the integration efforts… Hopefully that tells you we're well mature, and we're ready to put these on naval ships."

The weapons are designed to track and fire on threats to a warship that could include anything from armed drones and small "swarm" boats to incoming missiles and aircraft.

In April 2011 the Navy released a video of a test in which its prototype Maritime Laser Demonstrator blasted a hole in the engine of a small boat at sea off the California coast, leaving it dead in the water.

A year later, an officer in the Solid-State Laser Technology Maturation (SSL-TM) program said the Navy believed it was " time to move forward with solid-state lasers and shift the focus from limited demonstrations to weapon prototype development and related technology advancement."

Solid-state lasers are one of several types of laser-based weapons systems currently under development by the Navy and other military services in conjunction with several major defense contractors. A recent Congressional report on the Navy's laser program noted that such devices could be "ready for installation" in "the next few years," but it criticized the Navy for not yet developing a procurement plan or a roadmap for installing the weapons on specific ships.

DOWNLOAD: Navy Shipboard Lasers for Surface, Air and Missile Defense (PDF)

The military has spent hundreds of millions on the development of the various systems, but once they're installed, the government predicts that they would be relatively cheap to operate, considering they're not using conventional munitions. The Congressional report estimates that it will cost the Navy the equivalent of less than a dollar per shot to use the laser weapons versus, say, short-range air-defense interceptor missiles that generally cost around $800,000 to $1.4 million each.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Obama was right. We don't need more ships. We've got the tech.

[james&olya 1,121]

Photon Torpedoes!

[one...two...tree 2,762]

this is pretty funny from an artist/illustrator...

An aircraft carrier is a ship that is capable of operating fixed wing aircraft, including jump-jets such as the Harrier. America has nearly twice as many aircraft carriers - 20 - as the rest of humanity combined - 12 - and America's aircraft carriers are substantially larger than almost all the other's aircraft carriers. The Navy likes to call the big Nimitz class carriers "4.5 acres of sovereign and mobile American territory" — and all twenty American carriers of all classes add up to nearly 70 acres of deck space. Deckspace is probably a good measure of combat power. The rest of the world's carriers have about 25 acres of deck space, approximately one third that of America's [until 2011, this number was only 15 acres, but new Chinese and Italian vessels upped the total appreciably].

Important to know as Romney is trying to scare people into thinking our Navy is a joke. Quite the opposite.

http://blog.sirmitch...rcraft-carriers

[Ban Hammer 13,567]

note that the entire listing on the left is marine assault carriers - the only fixed wing aircraft they carry is harriers, which isn't that capable of a fixed wing versus other fixed wings.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Evidently, Russia doesn't seem to rely on aircraft carriers, nor does Europe. One reason could be that the US needs to project it's air power far from its own coast, which should be a clue that we may have overextended our welcome in the rest of the world.

[Pooky 3,833]

Stuff lasers - give me a working rail gun