U.S. Navy Deploys First Laser Weapon in Persian Gulf | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Navy Deploys First Laser Weapon in Persian Gulf

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61 pointsrbc64 comments

The ever-excellent Congressional Research Service report has all the pew-pew detail that you could possibly ask for: http://fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R41526.pdf

Neat, Boeing has a 'Directed Energy Systems' division.

Nice. The article said that the range is classified, but the reports says about it:

""" Department of Defense (DOD) development work on high-energy military lasers, which has been underway for decades, has reached the point where lasers capable of countering certain surface and air targets at ranges of about a mile could be made ready for installation on Navy surface ships over the next few years. More powerful shipboard lasers, which could become ready for installation in subsequent years, could provide Navy surface ships with an ability to counter a wider range of surface and air targets at ranges of up to about 10 miles. """

A mile? 10 miles? Freaking sweet.

When I was in Malaysia earlier this year, one of the more popular conspiracy theories about the downing of MH-370 was that it was an accident brought about by testing of these laser weapons by the US Navy. I wonder how likely it is that a missed target would lead to a mistake on that scale, inadvertently, ten miles away?

Even at its full range of 10 miles it would have a tough time hitting a commercial plane. 10 miles is 52,800 feet so the warship would have to be very close to the plane to hit it (almost under it), and within visual range for sure, meaning it wouldn't happen by accident. A ballistic missile on the other hand can travel 1-3,000 miles to hit a target.

It's not like the laser stops dead at 10 miles (or 1 mile). It's just not able to take down a rocket at that range. While I don't think it's very likely that a laser took down the plane, who's to say it wouldn't be able to burn through one layer of wing, and expose/ignite the fuel? I'd imagine the difference between hitting a rounded missile almost head on, and a flat aircraft wing from underneath, is almost like the difference of igniting paper and wood with a laser pointer...

Burning through metal requires the laser to stay focused on the target for a few seconds. That's not going to happen by accident with an airliner moving at hundreds of meters per second and a different velocity than the intended target.

That's the real advantage of the lasers. The beams will essentially travel at the speed of light. At 10 miles, and a C of 186,000 miles per second, that's 10/186000 seconds to go 10 miles. At that distance, refraction and diffusion are probably bigger problems than anything.

I bet you could handle refraction by tracking the target optically, using a camera of the same wavelength as the laser light. The refraction would be the same in both directions.

This is why the Ford Class aircraft carriers are so ridiculously over provisioned electrically. They have had this stuff in the pipeline for years and had to make sure that this new class of aircraft carriers could handle it when it finally becomes feasible or necessary.

Both this and all the railgun technology the Navy has been developing. Undoubtedly part of the reason the new Zumwalt class destroyers are electric drive.

It doesn't seem to mention HF. It's a chemical laser. There are ways to recirculate the gas, meaning lesser electrical requirements.

Not sure if even Viton O-rings can deal with it though...

I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about. Are you sure you meant to reply to me rather than some other commenter?

I was hoping for technical details on HF lasers. A lot of defence budget money was put in them.

well, given that cheap drones (glorified RC planes, google North Korea drones for how cheap and glorified it can get:) are being actively developed and started being used by everybody (including Iran), the laser is one of the best (price/performance-wise, not that anybody counts money here, yet using full fledged anti-aircraft missile against a much cheaper drone - you can just run out of the missiles :) tools for the job.

Not sure about that specific laser, yet US has also tested a truck mounted laser able to hit various projectiles like mortars and unguided missiles (and probably artillery shells with some success) - the targets that classical navy CIWS systems may have some troubles with.

Hopefully we don't shoot down any more passenger jets with it. :/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655 For those who don't know the relevant history.

Interesting. Thanks for sharing. What surprised me was this section:

  The United States government did not 
  formally apologize to Iran.[14] In 1996, 
  the United States and Iran reached a 
  settlement at the International Court of
  Justice which included the statement 
  "...the United States recognized the 
  aerial incident of 3 July 1988 as a 
  terrible human tragedy and expressed deep
  regret over the loss of lives caused by
  the incident...".[15] As part of the 
  settlement, the United States did not 
  admit legal liability but agreed to pay 
  on an ex gratia basis US$61.8 million, 
  amounting to $213,103.45 per passenger, 
  in compensation to the families of the 
  Iranian victims.

Is the refusal to accept responsibility policy, monetary or simply down to arrogance?

I've wondered that too. It makes no sense rhetorically to say "I refuse to apologize for the United States." I would think the shooting was an accident. and what do you do when you do something accidentally? apologize. Not doing so makes me fee like were saying that the shooting is somewhere higher up the mens rea scale: http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=188

The best part? They're using commercial welding lasers:

> The prototype focuses the light from six solid-state commercial welding lasers on a single spot, according to a July 31 Congressional Research Service report.

What I find interesting is how the laser wasn't even considered useful when it was first being developed.

http://www.economist.com/node/4031227

Is it useful now? I don't see much in the way of benefit over a .50 cal, and a lot of drawbacks.

The LASER as a technology was considered useless when scientists were first working on it back in the old days.

When do you think those old days were, exactly?

When I was a kid, darn it! The laser was called "a solution in search of a problem."

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/284158_townes.htm...

1960.

When the first laser appeared, scientists and engineers were not really prepared for it. Many people said to me—partly as a joke but also as a challenge—that the laser was "a solution looking for a problem."

Einstein predicted stimulated emission in 1917. Light amplification was predicted in 1939. Once the maser was constructed things proceeded rapidly.

...I really dislike HN's downvoters.

Well, as a weapon it's still considered useless.

I'd like to see a test fire video of this. The question I have is how long is a damaging shot? In rough seas the boat can rock and pitch. If the shot has to continue for several second, you would probably need to stabilize the assemble since a small change in position could mean moving from the target to well off the target.

I would expect that most naval weapons have included autocompensation for pitch and roll for quite some time.

For the split second it takes a round to leave the barrel, thats why GP was asking about the length of time that stabilization would be required.

EDIT: Adding to that though, the reality is that ships large enough to be the platform for something like this don't get affected much by normal seas. Seems like it would have to be some really rough seas, and ones that wouldn't have targets flying over them due to storms anyway, to cause much pitching/yawing?

Well, I would think that the gun barrel is continuously stabilized as:

1) That's how tank guns work 2) To enable manual single shot capability, the barrel must always be correctly oriented (as much as possible), since a computer cannot predict when the operator will actually say fire 3) Many naval guns have quite high rates of fire. Even outside of low caliber close in defense weapons (like the Phalanx), even larger weapons (~76mm) can fire more than once a second. At these rates of fire, you're basically continuously stabilizing anyways.

I lived and worked on a Nimitz class aircraft carrier. We were always pitching and rolling.

It made some parts of my job interesting as it doesn't take long for your body to get used to it and filter the sensation out. Outside there are visual cues built into the horizon and inside I usually use a glass with some water in it to help me know which way we were leaning.

Interesting. I relate to getting used to it, do a fair amount of offshore fishing (very different scale I realize) and by the end of the season I have my legs under me but the first trip of two I'm falling all over myself.

I really would have through carriers with with such a depth and width would have little motion, at least near the waterline.

It's less than smaller boats but still noticeable. I have to say I have a ton of respect for the guys who fish in those little boats. The reason I love the show Deadliest Catch is I did a cruise up around the Aleutians. (PACEX '89) I remember how crazy it was up there on a carrier, in the fall. I can't imagine doing it in the winter on one of those little fishing boats.

One of my jobs for a little while was on the flight deck, manning the push pull bar. The job is not rocket science. When an aircraft is recovered, it pulls out quite a bit of cable onto the flight deck. Once the aircraft is unhooked from the cable there is a period of time where, due to rolling, the cable can slide towards the starboard side of the ship and out of the landing area. This could potentially cause damage to equipment or people, once it retracts. So I stood there with a long metal rod that had a metal block at the bottom. My job was to push the cable back so that it did not come over the foul line. My training consisted of being told, "If you look that way (he pointed off the port side) and you see a lot of water, push. If you see a lot of sky, you don't have to push."

The Ponce is an LPD and considerably smaller than a CVN. My guess would be that the aiming is completely automated.

I did reserves after active duty. I spent a couple weeks on a frigate once. They did some practice with the gun the boat had. They put out a target and first did things manually. They couldn't come close to hit that target. Then they switched over to the computer and it never missed.

heh, Im not sure if respect is the right word. We've got a 30ft walkaround (got lucky with a father in law has always had a thing for boats), and seas over ~4ft with a short period make me want to get back home ASAP.

On clear days we occasionally see some really crazy guys way out in little single engine flat bottom john boats. Don't care how much fun it is to pull in a nice mahi, its not worth that kind of risk.

Since before WWI. I'm reading up on that war, and am in the middle of the overview of all naval action in that war (not just the North Sea/Jutland): http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0870212664/

Quite good, e.g. one Admiral really needed a Nelson era signal in one early battle, a not uncommon way to deal with submarines was to run over them. And it really brings home how it was a "World War" (although not called that at the time).

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/03/gears-...

the analog computers used for that were really cool, check out some of the videos

Shows some videos of anti-mortar tests.

http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/ic/des/hel_md_0514_vid.h...

Oh, it's definitely stabilized. Otherwise they wouldn't even bother. The real question is how long you have to keep it on a target before you can move to the next, i.e. if you can set a speedboat on fire in 200 milliseconds (seems unlikely) it might be useful in a swarm attack. But if you need to dwell on each target five minutes it's a different story.

The U.S. Navy has been looking for some option to use against small boats short of blowing them out of the water. US Navy ships have at times swamped suspected pirate boats with the wake from a warship, but it took a few tries before the boat gave up. A moderately powerful laser weapon is a useful option for that. The Navy can start with "dazzle" and crank up the power to "punch holes in boat" if they don't surrender.

Or it could start with "spotlight and loud hailer", and crank up the power to "a few rounds from a Browning M2" if they don't surrender, and get pretty much exactly the same effectiveness in the operational context at hand -- specifically, that of needing to be able to keep a swarm of small kamikaze boats from getting close enough to blow a hole in a warship. If an M2 doesn't do the job, a few shells from a 20mm Oerlikon certainly will, and neither requires the development of delicate and expensive boondoggles.

(Oh, and don't buy that "this has nothing to do with Iran" nonsense, either. On the one hand, you can scare pirates into surrendering easily enough with real guns too; on the other, it's no accident when you get a phrase like "the Arabian Gulf", which couldn't be better calculated to piss off any Persian who hears it, in press release like this one.)

Well, lasers are multi-purpose, and their device covers nicely small boats, UAVs, anti-ship missiles and other types of projectiles at the same time. Also shots are dirt cheap ([0] says cents to a dollar) and well suited for warships that have abundant electricity anyways.

[0] - http://fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R41526.pdf

> The Navy can start with "dazzle"

Best not.

The use of blinding weapons is prohibited by Protocol 4 of the 1980 Geneva Accords.

https://www.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/States.xsp?xp_viewSt...

It is prohibited to employ laser weapons specifically designed, as their sole combat function or as one of their combat functions, to cause permanent blindness to unenhanced vision, that is to the naked eye or to the eye with corrective eyesight devices.

Emphasis on permanent. Otherwise even flashbangs and tear gas would be prohibited.

Be careful not to fire that in the rain ;) atmospheric effects on this weapon would be very interesting to read about

Might be a reason they're deploying to the Persian gulf..?

Maybe that's their real goal.. https://what-if.xkcd.com/119/

I doubt that this will be more effective than conventional projectile-based weapons. Also, lasers that need this kind of power usually require and release chemicals that are very damaging to the environment. It'd make a lot more sense to install this on a ship with a nuclear reactor as a power source. But then again, I guess it'd be unlikely that the laser is used because those ships usually aren't at the front line.

It depends on target. Lasers will work much better against optical sensors (on drones, missiles, etc.).

The press release explicitly excludes that use: "Those efforts are separate from military laser designators to guide precision munitions, non-lethal crowd control devices or discontinued instruments intended to blind enemy electro- optical sensors."

Well, just because the laser wasn't obtained from an acquisition program intended to defeat enemy EO sensors doesn't mean that it won't be useful for that purpose, either by destroying the EO sensor's platform or getting a lucky shot and hitting the sensor itself.

Effective has many parameters. It's already more effective in that it doesn't require ammo logistics and it has multiple modes from warning to lethal. I bet it sucks in the rain and has no over the horizon capability. But systems are trade offs and it is rare for one to be best in every way / situation.

Also comparing results of hundreds of years of engineering (modern naval gun) to 1st gen / prototype is disingenuous.

> Also comparing results of hundreds of years of engineering (modern naval gun) to 1st gen / prototype is disingenuous.

Disingenuous? It is the logical thing to do. You don't compare electric cars to golf carts, you compare them to other cars trying to compete in the same market segment.

The same is true here. You compare this new laser gun to the thing it hopes to replace (which in this case are projectile based weapons).

Maybe, just maybe, an argument could be made that it would be unfair to compare a prototype to a production gun. But this laser is now production ready, so that complaint is now moot.

Who says that laser is meant to replace projectile weapons? It's an additional weapons system that may replace or augment one of many others already installed. Kinetic energy weapons have some clear military advantages over rayguns, so total switch won't happen soon, if ever.

The press release says that this particular system is basically just 6 welding lasers focused on a single point. Welding lasers are usually solid state or gas lasers (not chemical lasers).

In general, while the Airborne Laser used chemical lasers, and some mobile land lasers also use chemical lasers, those applications have a clear limitation on power generation. It's hard to get all the electricity to power a big solid state laser on a plane, or on a truck. But its a lot easier on a ship.

>Also, lasers that need this kind of power usually require and release chemicals that are very damaging to the environment.

welcome to solid state laser revolution. No chemicals and very high (compare to previous generations of lasers) efficiency - >20%. These military lasers are in 50Kw range - can be driven from a small (Navy notion of "small" :) generator. (more precisely - banks of high efficiency solid state semiconductor lasers pump one or few large crystals like Nd:YAG)

There is no need to release the hydrogen fluoride into the environment. It can be neutralized in for example calcium.

They have had this technology since the 70's

Which debuted with Operation Sky Pebbles. Treat this as a military declassification.

one step closer to light sabers!

Anyone else think of popcorn and Real Genius when they read the title?

Can you say Tesla Death Ray technology?

Too bad he wasn't given the credit he deserved.

Tesla's "teleforce beam" was intended to be a particle accelerator, not something that shoots out photons!

Shameless plug: That said, if you want a $200 laser cutter, I sell them: http://igg.me/at/minilaser/

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