US Navy warship destroys aircraft mid-flight with high-energy laser weapon

[SugarDaddy1]

Video shows a U.S. Navy warship successfully shot down an aircraft out of the sky using a high-energy laser weapon. The USS Portland, a San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship of the United States Navy based out of San Diego, used a high-energy class solid-state laser to destroy a drone mid-flight.

The Navy said that the test was the "first system-level implementation of a high-energy class solid-state laser." The 150-kilowatt weapon system has three lasers that were developed by Northrup Grumman.

"By conducting advanced at sea tests against UAVs and small crafts, we will gain valuable information on the capabilities of the Solid State Laser Weapons System Demonstrator against potential threats," Capt. Karrey Sanders, commanding officer of Portland, said.

Source

 

[MartinHeidegger]

This is fucking cool. The Navy is a testbed for high energy directed energy weapons and railguns. Especially with next generation energy plants to provide the necessary power.

 

[Rotadom]

https://i.redd.it/8ngierainzb11.jpg

 

[Biggs_Darklighter]

https://i.redd.it/8ngierainzb11.jpg

Hopefully before I die. I'll go out knowing humanity had reached its peak.

 

[bellisarius]

I wonder if this foretells a conversion of the three Zumwalt's? The two "super guns" on the ships turned out to be too damn expensive to utilize. $800,000 to $1,000,000 per shot.

BUT

The were designed with 58 MegaWatts of reserve power. You can do a whole lot of lasering or railgunning with that kind of power available.

 

[hobbit.]

I was taking this seriously until....

"In 2017, the 30-kilowatt Laser Weapons System was equipped on the USS Ponce amphibious transport ship, "


you have a ship called 'Ponce"

 

[Rightguide]

This is fucking cool. The Navy is a testbed for high energy directed energy weapons and railguns. Especially with next generation energy plants to provide the necessary power.

I think the rail gun program is all but dead. The Navy is probably going to go with the hyper velocity projectile (HVP) system as it doesn't require building a new fleet around the rail gun technology and it already has 120 5 inch Mk 45 guns in the fleet and they're planning on upgrading existing 155mm platforms on the Zumwalt class ships with the HVP projectiles.

 

[MartinHeidegger]

I think the rail gun program is all but dead. The Navy is probably going to go with the hyper velocity projectile (HVP) system as it doesn't require building a new fleet around the rail gun technology and it already has 120 5 inch Mk 45 guns in the fleet and they're planning on upgrading existing 155mm platforms on the Zumwalt class ships with the HVP projectiles.

You could be entirely correct about this. Railgun technology is promising, but its future seems to hinge now on procurement, rather than successful R&D.

 

[Rightguide]

You could be entirely correct about this. Railgun technology is promising, but its future seems to hinge now on procurement, rather than successful R&D.

We keep hearing about the extreme velocity and ranges out to 120 miles of the rail gun, but the question has always been, what is the terminal lethality of that nonexplosive penetrator at longer ranges as its velocity diminishes? On the other hand, regardless of velocity and range we all know exactly what kind of terminal lethality a conventional high explosive 155mm round will deliver, no matter what the range and final velocity.

 

[bellisarius]

We keep hearing about the extreme velocity and ranges out to 120 miles of the rail gun, but the question has always been, what is the terminal lethality of that nonexplosive penetrator at longer ranges as its velocity diminishes? On the other hand, regardless of velocity and range we all know exactly what kind of terminal lethality a conventional high explosive 155mm round will deliver, no matter what the range and final velocity.

It still comes down to cost per round. The Navy is playing around with the Excalibur round (approx. $80K/shot) but even the Excalibur doesn't have the range they were looking for.

 

[MartinHeidegger]

It still comes down to cost per round. The Navy is playing around with the Excalibur round (approx. $80K/shot) but even the Excalibur doesn't have the range they were looking for.

Not every promising technology is adopted by the military, technological and cost per round advantage or not. It still depends on overall budgets, compatible systems and extant infrastructure, and politics.

 

[Rightguide]

It still comes down to cost per round. The Navy is playing around with the Excalibur round (approx. $80K/shot) but even the Excalibur doesn't have the range they were looking for.

The main part of my point is in order to arm the fleet with rail guns, the fleet will have to be rebuilt, on this realization alone the cost per round benefit becomes secondary. The truth is the gun cost 500 million to produce. In the beginning it's funding was huge but it has dropped to around 7 million this year, it isn't quite yet dead, but it is stalled.

Getting past the much heralded mach 6 velocity and the minor cost of its nonexplosive penetrator, what is its effect on the battlefield, say in the role of naval gunfire support of amphibious forces. What is its actual terminal effect after traveling a 120 miles, as it arcs in on a point on the ground? What is it's kill radius, does it even have one at the end of its range? Is it effective in interdicting troop concentrations deployed on the battlefield? It does seem to be devastating on point targets it can engage at higher velocities but there's something wrong here. It could be the limited benefits do not outweigh the costs.

 

[LupusDei]

Getting past the much heralded mach 6 velocity and the minor cost of its nonexplosive penetrator, what is its effect on the battlefield, say in the role of naval gunfire support of amphibious forces. What is its actual terminal effect after traveling a 120 miles, as it arcs in on a point on the ground? What is it's kill radius, does it even have one at the end of its range? Is it effective in interdicting troop concentrations deployed on the battlefield? It does seem to be devastating on point targets it can engage at higher velocities but there's something wrong here. It could be the limited benefits do not outweigh the costs.

Well, at those velocities the explosive kinetic energy transfer on contact already exceeds energy the same mass of explosives could carry, or at least that's the theoretical ground for that weapon.

At any rate, my information may be out of date, but as far I know it's not battlefield efficiency that stalls that program. The turret itself is quite compact as well, and the capacitor block is flexible, so there's not much technical difficulty to deploy it, apart from energy requirements, sure. The main roadblock however is the rail material, what would be barrel in traditional gun, it deteriorates way too fast. While navy is no stranger to changing barrels every X shoots, traditional gun barrel is a rather simple piece of metal, not so simple for a railgun, and worse, the number of shoots before repair was something under a dozen last I heard about. Of course, that's impractical, and also makes cheap projectile kind of moot point, of course. So basically the program is on hold waiting for another breakthrough in materials science, or another bright idea of a hack.