Boeing's Enormous Navy Laser Cannon 291
An anonymous reader writes "Boeing is working to build a huge, incredibly powerful, soon-to-be-seafaring laser for the US Navy. This free electron laser can produce light of any wavelength (ie, color) directly from an electron beam, and gets an energy boost from a superconducting particle accelerator. Once it's onboard ships, the laser could be used to shoot down cruise missiles and artillery shells."
Does it make (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow! (Score:3, Funny)
Imagine the size of those sharks required for such huge laser weapons.
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Informative)
Imagine the size of those sharks required for such huge laser weapons.
That joke is now 14 years, 1 month, and 19 days old.
Re:Wow! (Score:4, Insightful)
And still just as fresh as the day it was first memed.
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Imagine the size of those sharks required for such huge laser weapons.
And you thought Jurassic Park was only fiction and the DoD didn't have special secret black ops program for bringing these back. [wikipedia.org]
gotcha!
Re:Sharks (Score:2)
Veni Sharks Vici.
Came for the Sharks. Left satisfied.
Why Navy? (Score:3)
Why not, say, Forest Green, or Taupe?
Re:Why Navy? (Score:5, Funny)
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Apparently your humor doesn't.
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Aircraft carriers (Score:2)
Old equipment never dies. It just gets reused: (Score:3)
If you look closely at the upper left in the 10th photo in the linked article, the one of the control room:
Is that a nixie tube display in the top slot of the third rack from the right?
Is it feasible to bounce the beam off satelites? (Score:3)
Could you bounce the beam off a satellite and back down to earth targets? Or to air and space targets that are over the horizon? Could you do it with something flying lower, like a mirror mounted on a aircraft?
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The illustration in TFA shows the beam bouncing off something- I would guess it was a plane or satellite.
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I would not want to be the guy flying the giant-mirror-for-the-superlaser aircraft
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Could you do it with something flying lower, like a mirror mounted on a aircraft?
Think how much popcorn we could make with something like that!
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Perhaps you could convert old school drive-in movie theater screens into reflectors.
Or better yet, adapt them into some kind of capacitor to store the laser energy until needed.
But you would need to be very careful with your targeting. I seem to remember an experiment in the mid '80s using similar, albeit much less advanced, technology that caused untold damage to at least one network's television relay satellite. The same incident reportedly destroyed or severely damaged several consumer televisions throug
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Nice reference. That took me way, way back...
"wiggler" (Score:2)
President: "Look, North Korea, either you turn the giant kim-il-jong robot around, or we deploy the electron beam laser with wiggler attachment"
Clone of Kim-il Jong: "Bwahahah! We are not afraid of your wiggly little laser! KIMBOT! DEPLOY THE MIRROR SHIELD!"
StarBlazers: (Score:2)
"Fire the wiggle motion gun!"
a related project in danger (Score:2)
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Well, I think thats a bit of a mislabeling, anyway.
An FEL needs inter-bunch coherence in the insertion device.
Therfore, a K factor smaller than one would be required for efficient emission.
This would make the ID an Undulator, and not a Wiggler.
Open targetscope... (Score:2)
Bob and Tom join the Navy: (Score:2)
I take a look at my enormous laser
And my troubles start a-meltin' away (ba-doom bop bop)
I take a look at my enormous laser
And the happy times are comin' to stay (be-doo)
It is a great idea, but.... (Score:2)
In addition, it brings up the question of, how often can it fire? If it can do multiple shots than it might not be as useful as regular bullets. However, if it ha
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Generally, battles are started during increment weather. The reason is to make it harder for an enemy to know what you are up to.
I hear there are also these things called infrared imaging devices. It's been a LONG time since darkness, fog, and smoke were any hindrance to a properly equipped force. Pearl Harbor? Fine weather. The Invasion of Europe? They sweated out one day of foul weather in order to get to the next day of reasonably good weather so they could launch it. And so on.
Perhaps in the time of Napoleon or the Civil War skulking around in fog could give a significant advantage.
For those worried about the money, don't. (Score:2)
Boing build a giant naval laser, but... (Score:2)
...THAT IMAGE is the best they can do depicting it? It looks like it was photoshopped by a 12 year old.
What about vs. inertial bombs? (Score:2)
Do lasers have any effectiveness vs inertial bombs? there are no combustibles to detonate.
Too bad ... (Score:2)
... about all the program cancellations. The FEL is an interesting technology in search of a suitable application.
So far, the only thing it manages to burn through reliably is funds.
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will become the ultimate defence weapon.
And I'm sure the human race will find many unthinkable ways to use it on each other, animals and the landscape of the Earth.
Interesting times.
Indeed.
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I would like to see a laser shoot down a rail gun projectile ^__^
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Hey! And the Navy is working on those, too.
Re:The laser (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well, it's their own fault. If they just worked harder and got a job with a defense contractor, they'd have excellent healthcare !
Military pyromaniacs (Score:3)
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But can it do something useful for business, like burn corporate logos into the surface of the moon?
As for patrolling borders, it might be viable as a game. Add web interfaces to the cameras and lasers and people would PAY to patrol the borders.
Making conflict of any kind profitable is a slippery slope. Next thing you know we'd have politicians advocating slavery, even sex slaves.
That isn't possible, is it???
http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/middle-east/men-should-have-sex-slaves-says-female-kuwait [thenational.ae]
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Add web interfaces to the cameras and lasers and people would PAY to patrol the borders.
The ultimate spawn camping game...
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No, that's at the hospital.
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Corporations are holding out for ability to cause stars to go supernova. There's nothing like seeing "COKE ADDS LIFE" when you look to the night sky.
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We've been there already, many many times. This weapons is a future technology demonstrator for space wars. It has little to no room on planet surface with all the impurities of the air, nasty atmospheric conditions, and generally sucking in comparison to chemical propulsion mass drivers also known as firearms.
This was done to death even on slashdot.
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Re:The laser (Score:4, Insightful)
Fire rapidly is key here. Time to first shot is pretty important, but time to second shot is even more important.
Too often in the prior generations of this device the time to subsequent shots was way too long. Because nobody attacks with only ONE anti-ship missile, and even gunnery sends more rounds down range than can be hit with a slow resetting laser. The power needed for this is enormous, it needs to be instantaneous and repeatable for long periods of time, especially if you intend to make good on your promise of shooting down artillery shells.
With a dispersed battery of HAND LOADED field artillery you can send down range on average 1.5 rounds per minute per gun or better. With 5 to 8 pieces to contend with, you better be prepared to absorb some hits while you skedaddle out of range.
Luckily, no navy has gun boats like those in the past:
From James Grace's "The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal", the Helena is described during its initial firing that night.
"Officially the Helena's fifteen six-inch guns fired at a rate of ten rounds per minute at rapid continuous fire, but the ship had reached seventeen. To Lieutenant Luehman, the shooting resembled fifteen fireflies converging on the same spot, or fifteen streams of liquid fire."
Re:The laser (Score:4, Informative)
Part of the reason why I support this is that it will require the ships to have loads of ultra-caps. That will mean that they will buy LOADS of them and drive the tech. In doing that, it will lower the prices for cars. Basically, I see this as a win-win all around.
Oddly, I have been writing my congress man pushing for us to do x-prizes for beaming and storing energy. The idea is that we can beam it into Afghanistan (or other bases), but also can help a ship that is in a prolonged battle. In fact, one idea would be to have an Aircraft Carrier able to beam energy to nearby destroyers so that they can quickly fire. Win-win-destroy all around
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An old-school rail-fed guided missile cruiser can launch around 5 missiles per second until the magazine runs dry (you can find videos of Chinese missile cruisers showing off). The modern vertical-launch missiles are presumably faster. The Navy builds missile defense plans around groups of such cruisers launching in parallel, which is why the Aegis system needs to be able too track hundreds of targets and so on. As you point out, this is a tall order for any electrically powered device to be used for mis
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Re:The laser (Score:4, Insightful)
Erm. Both your claims cannot have been made by anyone who has had any real contact with ship based weapons. First, in measure of rapid fire, kinetic guns absolutely destroy everything else. One of the main advantages of the anti air gatling CIWS is that it puts up a wall of small projectiles, which can be tracked by radar, which can auto-correct direction of the stream based on target's relative location to the stream. Which can then retarget near-instantly as kinetic gun turret is also light.
Energy is another huge problem on modern ships. Zumwalt-class was long considered for a nuke to power it because gas-turbines are simple not powerful enough to feed a modern AEGIS destroyer/cruiser anymore. Modern fire control radar going on full power trying to burn through interference generated by the target consumes several tens of percent of total ship power output nowadays - this is something you can find on navy's own website (.mil), sourced to their generals. I linked one such source when this topic came on slashdot before. Energy is in EXTREMELY short supply on a non-nuclear powered ship in a combat situation.
And sure, laser can fire for long distance in many conditions. It just won't hit anything meaningful in heavy rain or fog, or even if it does, it will cause minor burns to biological unshielded targets at worst. Good thing it never rains and is never foggy above large masses or water. Even better that there are never large temperature changes over the ocean surfaces causing various optical distortions. Nosiree!
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Foxnews sourced claim contradicts laws of physics. Laser is essentially a homogenous stream of photons fired at certain wavelength. As with all light, it's extremely vulnerable to conditions that either absorb light or refract/reflect light.
I suspect reporter messed something up when sourcing it. Perhaps folks at NAVY were trying to say that FEL laser doesn't lose power OUTPUT in bad weather (due to lens issues and diode issues in high humidity conditions?)
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Different atmospheric conditions will affect different frequency light in different ways. Certain frequencies might cause cause excessive dispersion or thermal blooming, while other frequencies will operate in a window of relatively little interference. While a traditional laser would perform just as well as an FEL were it in the proper window, the fact that the FEL is tunable means you can hit that window regardless of the conditions.
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I predict that the weapon of choice for space conflict will be guided missiles that carry a payload of several hundred depleted uranium flechettes, fired when the missile reaches an appropriate distance from the target.
That's how modern anti-air missiles work (except for cheaper shrapnel material). Most people don't seem to realise it, instead thinking that movie-esque missiles that ram planes down are the reality.
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Weapons of this nature are only useful in proportion to their sensors and command-and-control systems.
The aircraft then just fly five miles up and saturate your defenses with carpet bombing. Or use stealth aircraft. Or use electronic warfare. Or use saturation level artillery from five miles away... Or any combination thereof.
All
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Perhaps you've heard of the Aegis defense system the Navy uses? It's pretty neat. And in naval warfare these days, it's not expected that surface opponents will ever be within line of sight of one another - the battle should be over before they get that close.
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History littered with "ultimate" weapon ... (Score:2)
The laser will become the ultimate defence weapon. Imagine have LASER mounted along your border. They will shoot down anything, instantly. Image roof top boxes in cities that can shoot stff down a mile away. Bombing Baghdad would have been impossible,.
Imagine an enemy with a better laser than can knock out the defensive lasers from beyond their effective range. Imagine an enemy with a technology that can interfere with the defensive lasers target acquisition and aiming. Imagine an enemy with a delivery system (drone ?) that can use nap of the earth flight to avoid being targeted. Imagine more bombs/decoys coming into range than the defensive laser can track, target, fire on and repeat quickly enough.
Interesting times.
Actually more of the same most likely, same human decis
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Bombing Baghdad would have been impossible,.
Interesting times.
Assuming the bombs are detectable. I imagine stealth munitions would be the next logical goal.
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"Bombing Baghdad would have been impossible,."
No, just more difficult. Lasers merely shoot, but they require radar to find targets.
A barrage of EMP weapons and anti-radiation missiles and small UAVs with transponders to mimic aircraft attack radar come to mind as ways to get a foot in the door. Very small UAVs could hide and "hedge hop" in ground clutter.
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Go google "Rods From God". Know you know that bombing Baghdad would not be impossibly at all, just a lot worse for Baghdad.
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Then we do the Zerg rush equivalent of bombing. One 200 lb. bomb doesn't cut it? Oh well, throw ten 20 lb. bombs at them and hope for the best. Isn't that the basic idea behind the MIRV?
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1) missiles aren't cheap
2) ordinance moves very slow compared to lasers, even given recharge
3) reflective surfaces are only reflective for a given RANGE of wavelength, definitely NOT all of them. That's why they mentioned it can fire at any wavelength, duh.
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Mirrors. (Score:2)
Re:didn't this... something did (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/06/power-down-senate-zaps-navys-superlaser-railgun/ [wired.com]
The Senate just drove a stake into the Navy’s high-tech heart. The directed energy and electromagnetic weapons intended to protect the surface ships of the future? Terminated.
The Free Electron Laser and the Electromagnetic Rail Gun are experimental weapons that the Navy hope will one day burn missiles careening toward their ships out of the sky and fire bullets at hypersonic speeds at targets thousands of miles away. Neither will be ready until at least the 2020s, the Navy estimates. But the Senate Armed Services Committee has a better delivery date in mind: never.
The committee approved its version of the fiscal 2012 defense authorization bill on Friday, priced to move at $664.5 billion, some $6.4 billion less than what the Obama administration wanted. The bill “terminates” the Free Electron Laser and the rail gun, a summary released by the committee gleefully reports.
“The determination was that the Free Electron Laser has the highest technical risk in terms of being ultimately able to field on a ship, so we thought the Navy could better concentrate on other laser programs,” explains Rick DeBobes, the chief of staff for the committee. “With the Electromagnetic Rail Gun, the committee felt the technical challenges to developing and fielding the weapon would be daunting, particularly [related to] the power required and the barrel of the gun having limited life.”
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No worries. I'm sure the Chinese will be willing to buy/steal it.
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Chinese prefer battle tested, actually functioning systems, meaning kinetic weapons. Not massively unreliable, energy hungry weapons designed mainly for application in vacuum and optimal for distances where kinetic weapons cease to be viable.
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the barrel of the gun having limited life
I suspect the railgun barrel will have quite a long life, at least compared to whatever it's pointed at.
-
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Come on, people, get a clue!
Indeed.
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When I called my ship a boat, as in going back to the boat, that was acceptable because I was talking to my shipmates. You, a landlubber, are not the proper audience for that slang. The only boats in the navy are what any landlubber would buy, size-wise, and submarines.
Clueless landlubber. Go away. Take a short walk on a long pier, you'll stay dry that way.
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You should leave the talk to the adults who served. We NEVER called the "Big E" a ship. She was always a boat.
CVN-65 U.S.S. Enterprise (1996-2000)
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No, submarines are boats
All modern US hull classifications for submarines include "SS", which stands for "submersible ship".
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Friends had a father on tankers, and one day, driving him to the ship for his next trip, their small son asked if they were going back to grandpa's boat. No, *ship* said grandpa. *Shit* said the kid. *Ship* said grandpa. *Shit* said the kid. *Boat* said grandpa.
No one else gets to call them boats, unless they enjoy being outed as ignorant arrogant landlubbers.
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The owner of a boat, or ship, or personal watercraft, or life vest, can call it whatever the owner wants. The crew can call it whatever they want. Landlubbers can call it whatever they want.
Fuckin' free speech, how does that work?
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I'm pretty sure technology has advanced to the point that aiming is no longer an issue.
WHOA THERE! (Score:3)
I'm pretty sure technology has advanced to the point that aiming is no longer an issue.
Hey! We haven't quite manged to piss off the whole rest of the world yet.
Misses (Score:2)
Being able to "shoot down cruise missiles and artillery shells" assumes that they can aim. We know from the Regan administration and their StarWars program that aiming is often the hardest part.
What can go wrong, would the laser shot miss it target?
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They have boats and we now have a huge laser cannon to deal with them. *evil grin*
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China does.
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Let's see. That was in 2001. And it wasn't a laser.
Or maybe you're talking about the one way back in 1984 that convinced the Soviets we were much closer to a working capability than we were? That also wasn't a laser.
I seem to remember several full up tests that worked. (Admittedly not all of them.) Of course they were hit to kill vehicles.
If what you say is true, it's funny that the Navy also was able to hit a malfunctioning satellite last year with a ship launched missile from an Aegis ship.
They were also
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What coporation(s) manufacture the largest amount of light reflective materials (a.k.a mirrors)?
I don't think there exist a mirror able to reflect (without being destroyed) in all the wave-lengths the wiggler is able to generate.
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Microsoft. But I don't think they sell them unbundled from the smoke.
(Ducking and running from the inevitable Troll mods.)
Re:umm... reflection (Score:5, Insightful)
It's difficult to make a reflective coating that reflects well enough at a broad range of frequencies. The mirrors in the laser usually only work that well at one frequency, and they have cooling systems built into them. They also aren't moving, don't have weight limitations and don't have to deal with weathering and dirt.
It's also hard to make a reflective coating that reflects well enough in all directions that the laser can hit from. Your missile has to be able to home in some way. If you have IR windows for a seeker, that's an area that isn't very reflective.
You just have to get a tiny area burnt through and then the energy from the laser will heat what's behind it so much that it'll blow the rest of the coating off or mechanically disrupt whatever the coating is on.
It can help. A little. And it adds weight and problems to the missile. It's been looked at for some time and found not to be a cure all by any means. It sounds like a good idea, but turns out to not be terribly practical.
Same for the old idea of spinning an incoming missile to distribute the energy. That one is about like pirouetting in front of a shotgun. The energy comes in way faster than a mechanical movement.
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You could apply an ablative coating to the warhead. Of course, that means extra weight.
You could cool the warhead's reflective coating. That means extra weight as well. But if the coolant absorbs the laser's energy and is subsequently expelled through a properly designed nozzle at the rear, you could add that as kinetic energy to the warhead. In fact, if you were really smart and you divided the face of the warhead into segments (no longer mirrors?) and directed each segments' coolant through an appropriat
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At this point, it's still a research and development project.
On the other hand, CIWS and the like are pretty effective. I'm guessing they are looking for something that doesn't have the flight time delay and can engage more targets in a given time. (Of course, just putting more CIWS and ammunition for them on the ship mitigates that last.)
I'm not sure the horizon limitation really matters for defending against incoming threats.
"Will we be blowing the dust off of the Iowa class yet again?"
Actually, that'd be