Navy laser roasts incoming drones in mid-air

[Robb]

Source: New Scientist

A video released at the biannual aerospace convention in Farnborough, UK, today, shows a laser mounted on a warship's gun turret obliterating a remotely piloted drone.

Built by Raytheon Missile Systems of Tuscon, Arizona, the 32-kilowatt infrared laser is shown illuminating and heating the wingtip and then the underside of what looks like a radar-seeking drone – until its remote pilot loses control and the aircraft catches fire and plummets into the ocean.

"Three similar drones were also successfully engaged at militarily significant distances by the solid-state laser" in May and June, says Mike Booen, the firm's vice president. "It's a world first over open sea."

(snip)

Such lasers are allowed under the UN protocol on blinding laser weapons because they are not specifically designed as blinding weapons alone.

Read more: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19192-navy-laser-roasts-incoming-drones-in-midair.html

---

The Telegraph has http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7898710/Laser-used-to-shoots-down-planes.html">an article as well. This could be the greatest ship defense system in history if set up to target incoming missiles.

[guruoo]

1. Video

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7898710/Laser-used-to-shoots-down-planes.html

[LongTomH]

2. This may be premature!

I wonder how effective the laser weapon would be against:

• A faster moving, rocket powered weapon like the Exocet, and/or
  
• a missile painted with reflective white or silver paint.
  

[AtheistCrusader]

4. Paint and reflective coatings are useless against high powered lasers.

You just can't make it shiny enough, plus soot will accumulate from things roasted out of the atmosphere itself, and then the formerly-shiny surface will heat.

Faster moving stuff like the exocet is probably a long way off, as a matter of tracking. Using a slightly wider beam, you could perhaps blind it, and then it would be forced to fly last computed path to target, which the ship may be able to evade out of.

Infant stages, this technology will get better.

I bet you could use the radar on an Ageis destroyer to crash a UAV too. If they fired that up in Elliott bay during seafair, hilarity would ensue.

[Aaria]

20. google ss-n-22 sunburn missle. While we were prefecting the warship..........

poor old Russia was figuring out how to defeat the armaments and sink'em.

[hack89]

21. The SS-N-22 is an old weapon

do you really think the Navy hasn't spent a lot of time and money figuring out how to defeat it?

[Aaria]

33. Yea from 04 it's old but it's still doing Mach2 coming in, somthing we haven't had to deal with yet

[hack89]

35. Actually from the 90's

the Navy has had tactics to deal with it for 15 years. The easiest way to defeat them is to find and sink the ship that carries them - something that is relatively easy considering our naval superiority, especially in sensors and uav's.

A combination of preemptive strikes, defense in depth, superior electronic jamming and decoys, well tested ship tactics and new anti-missile systems such as ESSM will give us a fighting chance. It is wrong to view it as one ship versus one missile. It would be one country's military power versus another.

[AtheistCrusader]

24. Combine that with the old 'caspian sea monster' ekranoplane.

The idea of a surface vessel that could enter extreme radar range at 300mph, launch something like the sunburn at you and boogie kept quite a few assholes puckered for decades.

[superconnected]

12. I'm wondering how effective it will be against *us*.

very I suspect. I don't want our government which is out of control - meaning not in our hands, to have these kinds of weapons. Imagine what Cheney would have done with it.

[SnakeEyes]

15. You mean like all those other powerful weapons

that Cheney used on us?

Come on, there is over the top and then there are posts like this that make DU look as ridiculous as possible.

[EFerrari]

27. You mean, like the over the top idea that our troops face RPGs?

Ridiculous!

[ProgressiveProfessor]

3. Those are not standard USN targets though substitutes in early testing is reasonable.

The USN BQM-74E (Chukar), GQM-163 (Coyote), and ADM-141C (ITALD) would be more representative

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BQM-74_Chukar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GQM-163_Coyote
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-141_TALD

[mbperrin]

5. So okay to kill, but not to blind only.

Okie dokie.

Gee, wonder what would happen if we ever spent a nickel on productive uses of technology to actually make people's lives better?

[SDuderstadt]

6. Are you honestly claiming that we....

never spend money on productive uses of technology to make people's lives better?

[Evasporque]

7. hunt squirrels...shoot 'em and cook'em at onetime!!

Now that is progress.

[provis99]

9. what DARPA project ever made anyone's life better?

[Robb]

10. LOL

:thumbsup:

[SDuderstadt]

11. Try the internet for one...

before you go making more stupid statements.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet

[Robb]

19. I assumed the post was ironic

And awesomely so. Hopefully. :D

[SDuderstadt]

26. You might just be right...

if so, my apologies to the author.

[superconnected]

14. +1

[leveymg]

34. The Brain Freeze and Robotic Terminator Hands

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-11/darpa-wants-freeze-traumatic-brain-injury-battlefield-its-tracks

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-02/darpa-orders-terminator-hands-better-future

Building a better future in so many ways . . .

[superconnected]

13. We don't do that in the Trillions level that we do on war.

[mbperrin]

28. It's so insignificant that it doesn't matter.

Petroleum technology is 150 years old - still what we use mostly.

Stem cell technology has been stalled for 30 years, because of big pharma, which still sells us a lot of compounds which occur in nature. And so on.

But a death ray?!! Woo-hoo! Unmanned drones to kill? Yay! We walked on the moon in 1969, and we soon will have no means to take people off the planet - we'll rent seats with the Russians.

[AtheistCrusader]

25. That sort of technology, that is primarily defensive

does make people's lives better. Hell, someday we might use that technology to 'push' ships and cargo into orbit, using pure electrical power, instead of chemical rockets.

[penndragon69]

8. What we need.

What we really need is a Phased Plasma rifle in the 40 watt range.

[onethatcares]

16. how many drones do the Taliban have?

I can't quite get my head around that.

[EFerrari]

17. For the win!

[onethatcares]

22. six guys with box cutters brought the U.S.to this point in history

I'm not really impressed with lazers anymore.

[mbperrin]

29. Precisely.

Thank you.

[superconnected]

32. They didn't do it without a lot of help from bushco.

[daleo]

18. Interesting (and a bit frightening)

One wonders how legit the test was - i.e. how fast was the drone going, was it signaling the ship in any way, was it using any likely counter-measures, were atmospheric conditions especially favorable, how easy would it be to overwhelm the system with cheap decoys, could the energy levels being used be sustained for long, etc.

Anti-missile systems have a way of not working out (Gulf War, Patriot missile, Star Wars), thought they can shoot down a lot of tax dollars.

[bemildred]

23. The interesting question is how long does that laser have to stay on target to work?

It sounds like it works by heating the drone, that can take a while, and there is a tradeoff between time to work and power requirements.

[daleo]

30. The story claimed it was a 32 kilowatt laser

That's seems like a fair bit of power (about 300 100 watt bulbs), but I don't know what a warship can generate. Maybe it's no significant amount for a biggish warship. I imagine someone out there knows.

[bemildred]

36. Well, it seems like the only way to know if this thing will do any good in a real fight.

I mean you know there are going to be evasive tactics (to thwart the aiming, not to outrun light) and rate of fire is going to depend on how long it takes to shoot one thing down. Of course as the other guy points out, only the advanced technology militaries are going to have drones in the first place.

Now if they could shoot down ballistic missiles ...

[Yeahyeah]

31. And it only cost you 800 trillion dollars.