It appears we will be arming our ships with Lasers. Isn't there some International Ban on the use of lasers? What say ye? The Navy has awarded a $53 million contract to Northrop Grumman for development and systems integration for a 150 kW laser weapon system, to be installed for evaluation on the Self Defense Test Ship (USS Paul D Foster). Northrop has designed its system to be installed on the Navy's Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. If the Navy Office of Naval Research (ONR) exercises all of its options, the contract could grow to $93 million. A similar system is also being developed by Lockheed as an option for the F-35 fighter.....snip~ http://maritime-executive.com/article/navy-invests-in-powerful-laser-weapons-system [video=youtube;D0DbgNju2wE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0DbgNju2wE[/video]
Cool website, I just subscribed to their magazine. Re: Laser Already figured out how to defeat the laser, attack the ship from the rear.
Lasers wont work in fog or rain. It's just not the U.S. Navy and Air Force who's playing around with weaponizing lasers, the Ruskies are doing the same.
I heard North Korea has been using lasers for some time. Which is why I brought up the ban on Lasers.
Just a guess, I don't know. Perhaps there's a ban on offensive lasers and not defensive lasers. Seems ludicrous attempting to discern the two but the world is full of suits capable of ludicrous discerning.
Mornin EK. I remember a couple of years ago that it was mentioned that N Korea would use lasers. Which would be against some International Law. That it would be something for our people and the S Koreans to deal with. As they know N Korea will not comply with any Ban.
The carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford should be ready for sea trials in 6 months and it radar etc are nothing like the old systems the Navy has used prior. One of our Christmas guests was a young guy (electronics specialist) from Norfolk.. He is teaching crew how to use the new technology as it is installed.
Granny says, "Dat's all well an' good... ... if ya wanna zap jihadis inna boat... ... but what dey really need... ... izza hand held lazer... ... so dey can zap dem jihadis inna butt."
Yeah but they haven't mentioned putting Lasers on a Carrier.....just the Destroyers, and talk of them on the F-35.
The Navy is just hoping that some day in the future that the Ford class carriers will have lasers since lasers are still in the R&D stage. But as we have seen over and over, any time the military has a weapons platform that actually works, the young geeks call it obsolete.
What they're showing is a leetle teeny thing, compared to the Megawatt class monster that is in the works: http://www.onr.navy.mil/Media-Center/Fact-Sheets/Free-Electron-Laser.aspx
New weapons comin' down the road to fight jihadis... Laser Weapons Edge Closer to Battlefield Use 29 May 2017 - The toy-like drones destroyed during an Army field exercise at Fort Sill, Okla., last month weren't anything special; however, the way they were brought down -- zapped out of the sky by lasers mounted on a Stryker armored vehicle -- might grab people's attention. See also: Next-Gen Fighter, Nuclear Cruise Missile Eyed for Funding Boost May 24, 2017 - The Air Force wants to boost funding for next-gen technologies such as a sixth-generation fighter and a nuclear cruise missile.
No bans on military lasers; if there were I would have been unemployed from 1991 to 2002. Fog and rain can render many of them ineffective, but newer wavelengths and other factors have gotten around that to a large extent; with scaling down of sizes, multiple wavelengths are going to be the norm, if they aren't already, for one, and there are some other physics developed that extend the ranges significantly. Since I don't keep up with what is or isn't classified any more, and I'm also still bound by non-disclosure contracts and regs anyway, the Peanut Gallery can find some of that themselves, maybe. The new optical guidance and electronics systems out now are far less affected by the 'old' ECM and EMP warfare tactics, and the 'arms race' has moved on to new horizons, so to speak, so you have to screw with them optically. Hint.
I haven't heard lasers, but I have seen articles about the nuke power plants on a carrier having enough power that the spy-1 radar can be weaponized by shooting enough power at an incoming missile or aircraft (cant rememeber which) to fry it's electronics.
Our family has a young friend who is USN and he's been on the Gerald R Ford for a couple of years.. He helps the installers with the computers and teaches other guys how to operate them. I don't know much.. just what he talked about and most of that was over my head.
It's frequency dependent. You might like this forum; it has a lot of discussion on that sort of thing: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/jsf-raptor-radar-can-fry-enemy-sensors.84379/ "It could cause actual physical damage to a system … providing it’s on the X-band," a common frequency for military radars, said Wayne Wilson, the director of fighter business development for Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems. It appears it would have to be pretty close. I would rather they be screwed up long before they get within that range band.
There's an article out there on the AEGIS somewhere, from around 2005 on it. Can't find my links for it, nor the link the Wiki article to the new laser physics I posted in another thread a while back, I guess it didn't make the transition to the new forum software archives, but basically the laser arrays are much better and far faster with less energy being sucked up for better results than one will get from using radar wavelengths. UV wavelengths are much better.
