The U.S. Navy has one working laser cannon. Now it wants a bigger one.

"The U.S. Navy has one working laser cannon. Now it wants a bigger one. On Oct. 22, the U.S. Office of Naval Research awarded Northrop Grumman (NYSE:NOC) a contract to begin developing a Laser Weapon System Demonstrator (LWSD) -- a 150-kilowatt beast of a weapons system powerful enough to blast a ballistic missile right out of the sky."

So why haven't they shown this laser cannon actually hitting a missile when it is flight? Because they can't bring down a missile from a distance of greater than half a mile and even they would need to keep the laser on target for sometime to penetrate the hard metal that encompasses it. So far I've not seen that done anywhere on the net and if someone has will they please post the actual footage.

 

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Uh, like this one:
Or these: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=l...5f_JAhVH2RoKHeh5AUEQ_AUICSgD&biw=1902&bih=904

 

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The US Navy has, for more than a year now, had laser weapons deployed on warships and continues to deploy laser weapons on US naval vessels.
http://www.gizmag.com/us-navy-laser-weapon/35147/

http://news.discovery.com/tech/gear-and-gadgets/zapped-u-s-navy-deploys-laser-weapons-141211.htm

 

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So let me understand this. A missile traveling at supersonic speed is somehow acquired by the plane which is how far away from it? Oh no they don't disclose that , wonder why not. Just to find a missile would be a great job but then to actually be close enough, they never disclose that, and kill it is hard for me to understand. So what is the distances that this is good for and how long on target would it be before it destroys a target. Another question would be if the missile is wrapped with reflective mirror like substance it could reflect the ray away making it inoperable.

 

Really?
How big a thermal signature do you think a supersonic missile has?

How close do you think it needs to be?

This is nonsense.
Lasers kill by thermal shock - rapid heating of the target causes mechanical failure. Unless the mirror is perfect then all it would do is shatter.

 

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Here is a British missile. It is laser guided and is supersonic. It would be very difficult for anyone to know where this missile is located let alone hitting it with a laser long enough to destroy it. How would it be acquired , then how could it be kept on target as it as well as the aircraft are both traveling at different speeds and directions. I'm just saying that lasers won't work as well as anti missile missiles would.

 

Yeah, that just happens to be a Starstreak - a short-range man portable anti-aircraft system.
In other words it's not even close to the type of missile that lasers are intended to counter.
I agree that a laser wouldn't really be effective against it (not least because an aircraft can't - currently - carry a laser[1]) but the fact is that neither would an anti-missile missile.
The thing has a range of ~5.5 km and a speed in excess of Mach 4 (1,325 m/ sec) that's a flight time of around 4 seconds: apart from the interception problem acquisition is going to be more than difficult in such a short span of time.
It would help your argument if you weren't trying to compare apples and oranges.

1 Well the ABL does, but that's a 747: hardly likely to be in the immediate area of a battlefield to be engaged by Starstreak.

 

Sorry to get off track but I think that air to air missiles like the Molniya (now Vympel) R-60 (NATO reporting name: AA-8 'Aphid') is a lightweight infrared homing air-to-air missile designed for use by Soviet fighter aircraft. It has been widely exported, and remains in service with the CIS and many other nations would be a missile that would be along the lines I'm talking about.

 

And again, Aphid is an anti-aircraft missile (although this one is air-launched).
It's not the sort of missile - or role - that lasers are intended to engage.

 

Cosmictraveler, the article is about a laser weapon capable of knocking ballistic missiles out of the sky, but you complain that you can't see how it would take out non-ballistic missiles?

I'm assuming you know the difference between a ballistic and non-ballistic missile?

 

Because a plane that size carrying the laser would be easily detected and would be attacked by missiles which the laser couldn't kill. So my point is why have such a weapon that only works, but at what distances, to kill only one kind of missile when during an engagement all kinds of missiles would be flying around. So while it tries to kill one kind of missile another takes the plane out. I still do not know the distance that the laser was at when the video was made so I'm not yet convinced that this laser would be of much use trying to kill anything over a half a mile away. So then if that is the case the plane carrying the laser would need to be on top of the target in order to try and kill it which would not happen because the ballistic missile is much faster that a 747 ever will be.

" The giant TOPOL-M road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile is one frightening creation of mankind. It can hide in cities, forests, or even nuclear-attack hardened bunkers. It'll travel at over 15,000 MPH while taking evasive action and pumping out decoys on the way to its target."

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...Pdi8EltlCL32fYNZYloLRA&bvm=bv.110151844,d.cWw

 

Because, of course, the US would send a high-value aircraft into action on its own wouldn't they?

So basically you're saying that you DON'T KNOW but you feel justified in making assumptions and THEN basing your objections on those assumptions.
A 30-second Google search says that early tests were done at ranges of tens of kilometres - somewhat more than your "half a mile".
The fact is that lasers are getting more powerful for a given size, which increases their effective range AND that the tests done so far were done at relatively (compared to planned operational systems) low altitude in thicker air which also limits range.
The current target is several hundred kilometres for effective range - hardly "on top of the target"
As for "the ballistic missile is much faster that a 747 ever will be" that's irrelevant - the ballistic missile isn't faster than light and the idea is to hit them during the boost phase: while it's climbing - a period in which its ground speed is massively lower than the quoted 15,000 mph. Nor, during that phase, is it taking evasive action OR "pumping out decoys".

 

Um... the laser is being designed to be carried on board ships, not aircraft.
There is one inside a 747 but that is predominantly a test vehicle.

Because the missiles such lasers are designed to take out could flatten cities. The one that takes the aircraft out... not so big. Risk an aircraft to save a city... seems a fair trade-off, even if only a small chance of success.

And how fast is a laser beam? Oh yes, that's right, it's light-speed. The plane or ship is basically just a mobile platform to be able to get as close as possible to the target. As long as the laser can be focused on the target long enough, it doesn't matter if the platform is stationary or in orbit or somewhere in between.

 

So if this laser isn't going to be put into aircraft then why are they testing it in aircraft? That , to me , is not where the laser should be tested but instead on a ship for that would be much better to see what actually happens where it is going to be used.

So now you say that this laser is going to be used to only take out ballistic missiles not on board ships, which way are you going to stick with?

Lasers on board a ship would not be able to acquire a missile coming just above the ocean quickly enough to kill it. Since the curvature of the earth makes the missile impossible to see until it is only a few miles away it would be hard to hit the missile and kill it before it hit the ship. So a missile traveling at over 500 MPH would be very difficult to see and then if it is there's no time to kill it before it gets to the ship.

Success in killing a well hidden ballistic missile would be next to impossible for you don't know where it will be launched from so that aircraft carrying a laser won't be in the areas that the missile is fired from to be able to kill it as it takes off. Again I will say that lasers are not that destructive at any distances more than a half mile even though we have been lead to believe they can kill a missile at over 15 miles. Videos of an object being killed by the laser as has been shown on this thread do not show distances but only say what they are. Put an object 15 miles away from a laser that is on the ground and see what happens is all I would like to see to confirm what they say the laser can do.

 

Sorry I do not buy that story about distances. I'd like to see an object hit and killed by a laser on the ground at 15 miles. Not just them saying it can do this but to watch an actual demonstration with the 15 miles measured somehow and be able to see how well the laser does in killing the missile at that distance just standing still.

 

You're seriously confused.
The NAVY isn't testing it on aircraft (it would have helped if you'd provided a link to your original quote, here it is: http://www.fool.com/investing/gener...nalysis-northrop-grumman-navy-laser-cann.aspx).
The aircraft-mounted weapon is a test bed, but not for the navy. The navy's weapon IS ship-mounted - as it states quite clearly in the article: "at-sea tests aboard the U.S. Navy's Self Defense Test Ship".

Again, this is confusion (not helped by the failure to provide the link).
Simply because the article says "powerful enough to blast a ballistic missile..." doesn't mean that's what it's for, the wording is journalistic hyperbole (and, perhaps, gross ignorance).

The rest of your objections are irrelevant since that's not the navy's intention.

 

Right, you don't believe 15 miles (although, since I said "tens of kilometres", I'm not sure where you got that figure from) but you DO believe the rest...
What, specifically, is your objection to the stated range?

 

Because we only are told the range and not shown a test done on the surface of the earth at a MEASURED distance of 15 miles on a static subject like a missile loaded with explosives which , if those who say lasers are that good, will show us it is true and not made up stories as to how far the airplane laser is good for.

 

But I was discussing, at first, the 747 with its testing of its laser.

 

Again, what does a surface-mounted weapon have to do with bringing down ballistic missiles?
I note that you still haven't come up with any specific reason to disbelieve the ranges stated.

Right. That's why your first post was about the navy laser...