Navy unveils powerful ship-mounted laser weapon

[frigidmagi]

NBCNews

The U.S. Navy announced Monday that it is preparing to deploy a new weapon that can disable a hostile boat and even destroy a surveillance drone overhead — all without dispensing any expensive ammunition.

It is the Navy's Laser Weapons System (LaWS), a laser mounted on a ship that is so strong it can ignite a drone, sending it crashing and burning to earth in mere moments.

The USS Ponce, an amphibious transport docking ship, will be the first Navy vessel to deploy with the LaWS, officials announced Monday.

The new laser will be installed on the Ponce over the next year and operational in summer 2014. The Ponce is now based in the Fifth Fleet area, which covers the Persian Gulf and the Horn of Africa.

The LaWS will initially be used to combat small boats that pose a threat to larger U.S. Navy vessels — much like the small Iranian fast boats that pester U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.

The Navy plans to use the laser to combat missiles and other threats from the air, to ward off threatening ships and to stop other foreign threats. Eventually the system will be able to stop an incoming missile.

While making the announcement in Maryland today, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert praised the LaWS ability to take out targets at a tiny fraction of the cost of other conventional weapons.

He claimed that the LaWS can shoot down a small drone for about $1 worth of electricity and, once the laser is operational, it should be able to replace a Gatling gun, whose rounds can cost several thousand dollars each.
A defense official also stressed that the laser will not have full capability to take down a larger target for a decade or so.

Despite speculation the laser is deploying to the Fifth Fleet to warn Iran, a U.S. military official says that the real reason it's going to that region is that it is "the hardest environment" the Navy has available to test the new system.

Soon naval gunnery sgts will be able to yell "FIRE THE LASER!" as an actual order.

Yeeessss...

[Batman]

Wait. What? One lousy 20mm round costs several thousand dollars? It's a miracle they can afford any warships and aircraft at all.

[B4UTRUST]

Wait. What? One lousy 20mm round costs several thousand dollars? It's a miracle they can afford any warships and aircraft at all.

Welcome to military spending. We are also known to pay $15 for single screws.

[General Havoc]

Wait. What? One lousy 20mm round costs several thousand dollars? It's a miracle they can afford any warships and aircraft at all.

It's a 20mm ramjet made of depleted uranium. You can't exactly buy one at Target for a dollar fifty.

[Batman]

Since when does CIWS fire ramjets? I always assumed that since is utilizes the M61 Vulcan cannon, it would naturally use the standard ammunition associated with it.

[General Havoc]

Since when does CIWS fire ramjets? I always assumed that since is utilizes the M61 Vulcan cannon, it would naturally use the standard ammunition associated with it.

First of all, the CIWS is not a weapon, it's a class of weapons. There are twelve different CIWS weapon systems that I am familiar with used on fleet navies alone, and probably as many that I've never heard of. This article does not specify which CIWS they are speaking of.

But the primary CIWS that the US navy uses, and thus the one I'm assuming you mean, is the Phalanx, which is indeed based on the M61 Vulcan 20mm Autocannon. The key though is that the Phalanx also carries specialty ammunition, such as the M940 HEIT-SD (High Explosive Infantry Tracer - Self Destruct) round, and other, more specialized munitions. These sorts of things are, I believe, what the article is referring to when they say that Gattling Gun rounds "can cost thousands of dollars each". Moreover the article does not specify American weapons. The Russian/Soviet AK-630 30mm CIWS, for example, fires tungsten-cored sabot-discarding rounds that have to be specialty-made for the weapon system (jamming problems in the 60s precluded an intended wider-use for the round). The Kashtan CIWS, also of Russia, fires (among other things) micro-rockets with continuous-rod warheads and steel-cube fragmentation. And if you want to get really fancy, the Oerlikon Millennium NRGS fires 35mm range-tagged fragmentation shells that are vector-detonated by computer tag at radar identified airpoints. All of the above weapons are CIWS.

As I said, nothing you can expect to pick up at Target.

[Batman]

I was rather assuming that in a thread dealing with replacing CIWS in the US Navy, we'd be talking about ammunition costs as occur in the US Navy, and last I checked, that means Phalanx and 20mm rounds. And no offense, but High Explosive Infantry Tracer-Self Destruct? Not only would that be an incredibly stupid ammunition to use for an anti-missile system, the High Explosive makes the Self Destruct not inconsiderably redundant, and from my admittedly far from complete experience in US armed forces ammunition designation acronyms 'I' tends to stand for 'incendiary'.

[General Havoc]

I was rather assuming that in a thread dealing with replacing CIWS in the US Navy, we'd be talking about ammunition costs as occur in the US Navy, and last I checked, that means Phalanx and 20mm rounds. And no offense, but High Explosive Infantry Tracer-Self Destruct? Not only would that be an incredibly stupid ammunition to use for an anti-missile system, the High Explosive makes the Self Destruct not inconsiderably redundant, and from my admittedly far from complete experience in US armed forces ammunition designation acronyms 'I' tends to stand for 'incendiary'.

Well then perhaps you shouldn't make that assumption, Batman. The article says nothing about US Navy ammunition costs, merely that Gatling gun rounds can run thousands of dollars. I have cited to you many such Gatling rounds that can indeed run to that price level, some American and some not. Moreover, to be precise, this laser isn't supposed to replace CIWS, it's supposed to be a CIWS. CIWS just means it's a weapon for dealing with fast-moving targets at close range. What it may replace is minigun-based CIWS such as Phalanx or Centurion.

As to the HEIT-SD, you are correct in that the I stands for incendiary. I mis-typed as I was copying over the full designation. It's proper name is High Explosive Incendiary Tracer-Self Destruct. But as to the round itself, I assure you, it is very real, and exists for a very real purpose. Skip ahead to about 55 seconds in this video, and you will see it in action.

[youtube][/youtube]

The reason the round is called HEIT - SD is to distinguish the fact that these rounds self-destruct if they do not hit a target. Call the nomenclature redundant if you like, but there have been multiple incidents in the last thirty years where US navy ships accidentally hit one another with their Phalanx systems while engaging missiles or enemy aircraft. One such incident resulted in a fatality. As such, these rounds were designed to either explode on impact with the target, or do so upon tracer burnout, eliminating or at least greatly reducing the collateral damage involved. That's why you see the tracer rounds exploding at the end of that video, despite having hit nothing.

I don't know if the HEIT-SD round runs to that price level, but as I said, the article doesn't specify anything beyond "Gatling gun rounds". There's a whole family of those out there, and some can get pretty pricey.

[Josh]

Guys?

Lasers?

Can we not shit up a thread about FUCKING LASERS with arguments about soon-to-be-obsolete munitions?

(Just wait, Westinghouse or whoever is producing this system will figure out how to charge by the photon.)

(If we had lasers on our torpedoes, could we call them photon torpedoes? Can we make those? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease?)

[Josh]

Soon naval gunnery sgts will be able to yell "FIRE THE LASER!" as an actual order.

Yeeessss...

All enthusiasm aside, though, this being the military they'll find a way to make god damn lasers boring. Just you watch.