This article first appeared in AviationWeek.com.
A U.S. Navy plan to test a high-power laser against the small-boat threat to its warships provides the first real opportunity to transition electric lasers from the laboratory to the field, says Northrop Grumman, which has won a $98-million contract for the Maritime Laser Demonstration (MLD).
Within 12–18 months, a prototype laser weapon system is to be installed on a ship and tested against a remotely controlled small boat in a representative at-sea environment. The system will use technology from the Defense Dept.‘s Joint High Power Solid-State Laser (JHPSSL) program, under which Northrop Grumman in March achieved an output of 105 kw. by optically combining the beams from a chain of laser modules.
“This is an opportunity to transition solid-state laser technology to the warfighter,” says Dan Wildt, vice president of directed-energy systems for Northrop Grumman’s Aerospace Systems sector. “We’ve been trying to make the transition for a long time, and we see the Navy being very serious about understanding this capability.“
Since the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in the Yemeni harbor of Aden, the Navy has been looking for an answer to the small-boat threat. The potential threat ranges from tens of jet skis carrying individuals armed with rocket-propelled grenades to handfuls of fast-attack craft carrying short-range cruise missiles. The challenge includes discriminating, identifying and prioritizing the most threatening targets in a littoral environment crowded with waterborne traffic.
A high-energy laser is a promising solution, says Wildt, because it allows a graduated response to the threat. The weapon’s powerful optics can be used to identify a threatening craft, which can then be illuminated with a low-power green laser to send a visual warning to stay away from the warship. If the boat continues to show intent, he says, the high-power laser can be used to attack the motor or hull to disable the craft.
Northrop Grumman is building the prototype, which will combine electric laser module technology from JHPSSL with a purpose-designed beam-control/fire-control system. After land-based testing to ensure safety, the laser weapon will be integrated with the combat control system on a testbed ship for at-sea testing.
The Navy has said it is looking for “tens of kilowatts” of power, and the company’s JHPSSL design approach is based on 15-kw. building blocks, or “benches,” the beams from which are tiled–laid side by side–and their phases controlled so they combine optically into a single beam.
Although the weapon will operate at a wavelength, 1.06 microns, where there is an atmospheric “window” that maximizes propagation and minimizes absorption of the beam, Wildt acknowledges no one has ever fired a high-power solid-state laser in a maritime environment, where aerosols could scatter the beam.
Read the rest of this story, see how some suspect paper could hamper the F-22, learn why some want to paint the Raptor in rainbows and check out NATO’s first Globemaster III from our friends at Aviation Week, exclusively on Military.com.
– Christian
{ 36 comments… read them below or add one }
But can it be retrofit to a shark? Perhaps an ill-tempered, mutated sea bass?
Its all so clear to me now. To defeat the threat of terrorists armed with RPGs and riding jetskis in swarms, we need a $100mil laser, because the laser can be used as a searchlight and also as a weapon, except in fogy, misty or rainy conditions, which rarely happen at sea.
So how long does it take to burn through the hull or motor? Would a tiny hole in the hull even do any damage? It’d have to be below the water-line, right? How doe a surface laser even do that?
And wouldn’t even moderate shielding protect the motor?
I just don’t understand how the laser gets a kill on a small boat. You’d have to ignite the fuel perhaps. An anti-personnel laser would probably be more effective.
death star failed… this would probably too…
btw combining several rays into one seems just like superlaser of the DS…
and anyone can see why US is seen by many as the new “Evil Empire” – maybe not that evil but stupid like Romans in Asterix :P
How will this thing be more, if as, effective as a couple of pintle-mounted Bushmasters or .50 cal. MG’s? $98 million would buy a helluva lot of the lower (but proven) tech weapons.
As an aside, I doubt waterborne hajis will be impressed by the warning feature.
LOL Nonymous!
Brent. Thank you for positing questions instead of just pooh-poohing the idea. Hopefully we will get a discussion going before too many of the weak minds show up and ruin a thread.
Google THEL, MTHEL, Skyguard (among other names). You will find articles, photos and videos of Northrop’s lasers knocking down rockets, mortars, et al in mid flight.
Putting enough energy on a speedboat or jet ski to sink it, and retargetting multiple times in rapid sequence to selectively attack while leaving ‘innocent’ bystanders afloat should be fairly trivial compared to knocking down the targets this technology has already proven capable of attacking. At the ranges the system will probably be used (LOS at sea level is not that far, and close enough to determine intent is a small fraction of that), a powerful laser like the one described would probaly have the added benefit of resulting in fewer prisoners needing care, and fewer snarky commenters banging out idiocy on a laptop from cave in some turd-world country.
The humidity aspect is more challenging. But perhaps an application/adaptation of existing ABL techniques that refocus the laser to a coherent beam at the point of contact to overcome natural atmospheric distortion and dissipation will be applied? Those ‘many’ beams mentioned in the article may facilitate that approach. IN any case, the effective range of a laser in this application is very short compared to the ABL mission.
Personally, I’d be interested if there is any sound effects from a laser superheating the water vapor into steam at the speed of light upon firing.
BTW. A ship, especially one using a propulsion scheme similar to the Zumwalt-class (DD-1000) is about the best possible mobile platfrom for a laser from a power supply perspective.
You WANT the Jihadis to keep coming
The ‘warning feature’ is for the unintentional penetrations of the security perimeter (similar to what is done at checkpoints on land BTW).
SMSgt Mac
Yeah, I’m excited about the solid-state lasers. And I think I understand how they can work well against airborne threats. Rockets and missiles have explosives that can be targeted — or control surfaces that can be destroyed to throw off the flight. So the C-RAM and counter UAV threat makes total sense to me for these laser.
I know the ships are slower and easier to track, but aren’t they also much more survivable? Unless you can burn through the gas tank it won’t ignite. And a hole in the hull won’t cause it to veer off-course or fall out of the sky, like with flying threats.
This is probably just my lack of understanding. Reading the Navy specs, they clearly think a low power laser (10-20kw) can stop the small boat threat. The C-RAM mission seems to require 100kw at the minimum.
My question is simple: How does the laser stop the suicide boat from ramming the ship? Take out the pilot? Hit the fuel tank? Burn out the motor? Detonate any on-board explosives?
The scenario above is guys with missiles in a small boat or guys in jetskis with an RPG. So the laser has to disable the boat and/or weapons before it gets in range. How does it do that?
I spent some years trying to get high speed laser comm to work in boundary conditions. And found that as often as you may curse them, the laws of physics are immutable.
Unless they hit soft flesh (like say eyeballs), the physics of this just don’t work out. Received power decreases by the square of the distance, meaning that at 100m, on a clear day, a kilowatt of power becomes .1 watt. your 10s of kilowatts of emitted power become watts. A reflective surface with heat sinking (or kept wet), can defeat that. Add water vapor, target jinking (something projectiles rarely do), and you have a really expensive binocular/searchlight device with which to watch your gunners do their job.
By the way, in my experience, the power required to drive the laser is around 3 orders of magnitude higher than the radiated power. So in order to get tens of kilowatts of radiation, you would need 10s of megawatts of power. I can see that coming from a chemical laser (though *I* wouldn’t want to fly in a bird so equipped), but how can a shipboard system do that?
I think some hint as to what the power of a 100Kw+ laser represents might help. Check out the pics at http://www.industrial-lasers.com/display_article/210110/39/ARCHI/none/Feat/Cutting-thick-steel-plate
for an idea of what an industrial laser can do when the power is only 1/100th of the Northrop-claimed number (which by the way the more I look at this the more it looks like this is a product of their modular ‘Lightstrike’ program first announced in May).
Now combine the fact that it is in a frequency range that is relatively unaffected by atmosphere and you get an idea of what a weapon like this might be able to do.
I’m thinking a successful program won’t just poke holes, but could eventually also do a Sci-Fi grade ‘slash and burn’. I also wonder how large the cross-section of the beam is at operating ranges. Yikes.
Mr Gallagher, I suspect your immutable power attenuation problem was due to the frequency band where your laser COMM project operated. Perhaps the system was transmitting somewhere in the Mid-IR band?
>>> “Since the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in the Yemeni harbor of Aden, the Navy has been looking for an answer to the small-boat threat.”
Right. And as we all know, the only thing that can stop a speedboat is a high-powered, hundred million dollar laser.
Gimme a %^$#ing break. I’m sure the technology has its uses but this is purely pathetic.
25mm Bushmaster autocannons as usually fitted on the sides of our ships, not to mention the latest upgrade of the 20mm Phalanx can be used to destroy small boats.
At much shorter ranges however. They also don’t lack the ability to be used as a laser dazzler or warning device. Plus there are many areas where this technology could be adapted. CIWS systems for example.
And don’t think that anti-ship missiles aren’t a threat. Iran, North Korea, China, and so on have many different models ranging from the outdated and massive SS-N-2 Styx, to the advanced supersonic SS-N-21 Sunburn. Russia sells their anti-ship missiles everywhere these days.
ReconTeam, you could run straight at a Bushmaster and still have it miss you. :)
They may have gotten the funding through this small boat program but it it works they are going to pint this thing at a LOT of other things. This is a back door cruise missile defense system if I ever saw it. Properly terrifying a few pirates is just a bonus.
They may have gotten the funding through this small boat program but it it works they are going to pint this thing at a LOT of other things. This is a back door cruise missile defense system if I ever saw it. Properly terrifying a few pirates is just a bonus.
RE: And as we all know, the only thing that can stop a speedboat is a high-powered, hundred million dollar laser.
Actually, we have no idea what a production unit will cost. The $98M will fund the program office and contractor organizations to execute the statement of work over the period of performance of the contract. It will fund the development of new and/or modification of test laboratories as required. It will fund the standing up of government principle and responsible test organizations (PTO and RTOs). It will fund range testing, facilities and telemetry/data gathering and processing operations. It will even pay for the utilities, or base power production in program buildings (a big charge if they fire up the laser a lot on land). It will likely pay for the ship and crew for the duration of the sea trails if it gets that far (unless they can piggy back on another program or operation. It will pay for the targets, and the environmental cleanup of the aftermath. It will pay for making the powerpoint slides used to endlessly brief micromanaging Congressfolk and staffers. The list of things that $98M will pay for goes on almost endlessly (like this point). The laser system itself will be only a small part of the total cost.
At the end of the program, the knowledge gained will far exceed the wealth expended. we won;t even have expended ammo.
RE: I’m sure the technology has its uses but this is purely pathetic.
Exactly why would one think this use is ‘pathetic’?
Let’s see what happens. Punch a big hole in one of those zodiacs and it won’t be going very far.
An efficient weapon against a small boat?
No. Bushmasters as noted, or better yet a few software changes to phalanx is a better weapon.
Yes you have the whole ‘deep magazine’ thing but no small ship can put out the power to crank this thing efficiently.
However, lasers can – in theory – be medium-to-close range anti-ship, missile defence, visual range air defence, and all points west. IF you can get them to work, and it’s always easier to start with the small, simple version (the same reason why the modest mortar defence laser progressed from concept to working prototype a lot faster than the bloody 747 ABL death star’o'doom)
I suggest that the most important phrase in the story is: “Wildt acknowledges no one has ever fired a high-power solid-state laser in a maritime environment” – if it’s going to be the next-gen armament for destroyers and cruisers, they’d better do so and get it to work……the justification for trying (in this case gunboat defense) is secondary because if they can’t get it to work the whole laser-armed warship concept goes up in smoke.
Thinking of this as merely the extension of a electronically controlled and sighted ballistic weapon. Then this would dramatically increase the speed and precision of attack, not to mention at low powers, temporarily blind anyone looking in a general direction, providing a strong deterrent.
I think its a winner, but a delivery system able to take advantage of the speed and precision of the weapon is a tall order, not to mention training someone. I’m thinking millisecond laser killing twitch game.
Perhaps the tethering of a traditional ballistic weapon like a high calibre accurate gun, with the laser will provide the best of both worlds.
Possibly. Until we get the technology more mature, you’d have to go with a ballistic/energy mix for any solution because you wouldn’t be able to fully rely on the energy weapon and (for the forseeable future) the ballistic weapon has a faster rate of fire, is less effort to use and is more of a known quantity as far as combat effect.
Which is hardly surprising – we’ve been flinging chunks of metal about by setting fire to things for about a millenium. Battlefield lasers have a lot of ground to make up….
It’s a genuinely new weapons technology as far as practical deployment goes – that’s why I don’t think the argument about ‘useful for this role/not useful for this role’ is a relevant one. It’s like arguing which roles to assign to UAVs rather than manned aircraft during the 70′s and 80′s – when uav’s weren’t yet good at ANY roles.
You’re not confident enough in the fundamentals of the technology to make a decision, or even much of a prediction until you’ve done the groundwork research.
If this system works and the atmospheric optical density variations associated with maritime weather conditions don’t prevent beam propagation to a large extent, it might be a good supplemental weapon. And if it is coupled with laser based acquisition and tracking systems, which have been available to the government for some time, this could be a formidable laser based platform. Only real time “OJT” for the users and the system with show how effective it truly is.
Just my $.02
John Gallager says:
“Received power decreases by the square of the distance, meaning that at 100m, on a clear day, a kilowatt of power becomes .1 watt. your 10s of kilowatts of emitted power become watts. A reflective surface with heat sinking (or kept wet), can defeat that. Add water vapor, target jinking (something projectiles rarely do), and you have a really expensive binocular/searchlight device with which to watch your gunners do their job.”
*********************************
This is dead wrong John. Lasers do not decay with an inverse square law like gravity or electric fields. If you have a spherical light source like a standard light bulb that emits equally in all directions the inverse square law is true to a good approximation. But the whole point of a laser is that you focus the beam and get dramatically reduced spherical spreading. The beam does diverge a little but this is a design parameter that can be adjusted to an extent.
Laser power absorption has an exponential power loss with distance (i.e. beam power drops X% per unit distance) with a small decay constant. It’s a lot less than 1/r^2 losses.
The viability of lasers as weapons is not dependent on power loss through air.
Tesla,
I also wondered if Mr. Gallager was obliquely referring to the inverse square limit, but couldn’t (still can’t) really tell if that is the case. I assumed he wasn’t since even a cursory review of the military laser development will show many examples of relatively low power lasers putting significant energy on targets, and the ABL has a Megawatt laser with a published effective range of ‘hundreds of kilometers’. If he WAS referring to the inverse square limit, I agree: you are absolutely correct in that it does not apply.
SMSgtMac said: “Exactly why would one think this use is ‘pathetic’?”
Because this…
“Since the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in the Yemeni harbor of Aden, the Navy has been looking for an answer to the small-boat threat.”
… states rather directly that for the last 9 years, the Navy hasn’t found an ‘answer’ to the small boat threat.
If that is the raison d’etre for this laser system, it in not just preposterous, it’s ludicrous.
The entire US Navy, with all its ships and submarines and sailors and fighter aircraft and helicopters and bombers and missiles, can’t figure out how to stop a speedboat?
That’s just plain retarded, and the Navy would be wise to stop portraying itself as so helpless to a couple of thugs on a $5,000 skiff.
So, if I read it right, the application of this technology to a weapon system is
// May take some cycles to accomplish
if (AlertOnWatch == True)
{
Detect->SelfDoubt->Report->PonderROE->PermissionToFire->ReadyWeapon->Engage();
}
LOL. And that only shows the ‘engage’ thread. I assume ‘engage’ includes the ‘warn’ phase as well.
It would make an interesting use case diagram when all the human intervention and machine autonomous branches are accounted for.
No probs, Mon! We can always agree to disagree about what is ‘better’ (and what ‘better’ means).
How many attackers from how many directions do you think the current approach can handle on something the size of the USS Cole with a high degree of confidence the attackers cannot saturate the defenses? In any weather condition day or night? Could a mature laser system do as well or better? As Gen Glenn Kent teaches us: Think about the subject as if the enemy always gets the last move. What’s OUR best last move then?
I don’t see this as the main defense against small craft in harbor. It would be a handy addition, though. I think the main reason is to basically test the system out in a low-risk environment, iron out wrinkles…learn how to use it.
I don’t think engines would have to be on full steam to run this laser system. Each laser is in the tens of kilowatts, not the 105kw system demonstrated last year. Put some capacitors onboard, wouldn’t need to run the engines. Just enough juice to fire a couple times. Combine that with other crew, and the small attack boats patrolling the harbor, its good.
Potentially a very good counter to swarm tactics. While we have counters to “3 bums in a boat” no one has any good counters to decentralized strategies. speed and precision could make it very good at that, though the interference from sea spray make me question it.
It is much better as an anti-missile defense. The ocean provides a ready supply of coolant and an essentially unlimited heat sink. There is the question of powering it, but AFAIK the new designs for ship engines call for direct generating capacity, so providing the juice shouldn’t be an issue.
And “ewok” lasers will pass through each other just like flashlight beams would. So no, they aren’t like your pulp science fiction at all.
This is really just a test to see if we can get these things to work. $98M isn’t bad at all if it results in a functional battlefield laser, or even in some significant advance in the technology.
I don’t expect lasers (as weapons) to be truly prevalent on the battlefield for several more decades. There are just too many current advantages that guns have. But once they DO become battlefield ready, watch out. It’ll be a total revolution. I’d rather the US be leading the pack rather than lagging behind.
I’ve seen shore power trip. It isn’t pretty.
@Jon Gallagher
I don’t know about your three orders of magnitude in energy requirements, but this laser is 20-30% efficient from what I’ve read, meaning 100kw will take a 300kw power supply.
Personally I would like to see a youtube video of this 100kw laser vs a watermelon and a maybe a pig carcass at 1 mile range before deciding how effective it would be.
“100 kW is enough to flash-vaporise about 50cm3 of flesh per second”
Found that on the web, not sure how accurate it is.
So if a 10×10 cm beam hit a human target, they could probably dodge out of the way within a half second and sustain a few mm of charred flesh. The psychological effects would probably be much worse than say, a shotgun blast at medium range.
Now if it were a 500kw laser, I bet you’d start to get some sort of explosive reaction, maybe even hydrostatic shock effects, insta-kills.
If you could keep the laser on a terrorist fast boat’s driver for a couple seconds, leaving a dead steaming corpse for the others to look at, I think you’d make some pretty docile prisoners out of them.
Maybe it could be programmed with multiple targets and just light everyone’s head on fire. I think that’d get the intended reaction.
“100 kW is enough to flash-vaporise about 50cm3 of flesh per second”
That doesn’t seem likely to kill a person. Especially a squirming person. Don’t pain reflexes react in a tenth of a second or something like that? Seems unlikely a person would sit still long enough for a lethal effect.
Working with the numbers offered (though I think they’re a gross underestimate)
50cm3 is about 3 cubic inches (I’m old – and use metric only under duress) ‘flash vaporized flesh’ in one second.
a 1 sq inch beam penetrates 3 inches in a second, and an inch in a third of a second.
How long does it take you to REALIZE that YOU are burning up? THEN how long does it take you to get out of the way?