
U.S. Navy awards Lockheed Martin a $150M contract to develop laser weapons - JumpCrisscross
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-02/the-navy-wants-a-laser-to-blow-drones-out-of-the-sky
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trynewideas
Affirmative, Crossbow:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTx_qTwQqjU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTx_qTwQqjU)

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p0wn
get your popcorn ready.

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lsc
Just looking at that thing hitting a non reflective target is going to melt
your eyes.

Are we going to rely on traditional laser goggles that block certain
frequencies? Or like fiber optic diagnostic microscopes, are we going to issue
fully occlusive goggles that display a camera feed?

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elihu
I believe there are international treaties against blinding weapons.

Some weapons get around those kinds of restrictions by having a different
primary purpose; for instance, I believe incendiaries aren't allowed as anti-
personnel weapons, but white phosphorous is allowed for creating a smoke
screen.

I guess if you aren't intentionally trying to blind people that's allowed?

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fapjacks
You can't target personnel with incendiaries (e.g. white phosphorus), but you
can target their _equipment_ with incendiaries. While this normally means
stuff like artillery pieces or crew-served weapons, belts and canteens are
also considered "equipment". There's ways around international law and enough
fog of war on the battlefield that anything short of organized gross violation
isn't going to get brought before a court. Totally agreed that the use of
these laser weapons _could_ obviously and easily blind someone won't matter
because it's not _intended_ to blind someone.

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jMyles
Fuck man. This is the kind of shit that makes me feel guilty about paying
taxes.

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rand_r
What I’ve come to understand by studying history is that countries without a
superior military get subjugated by countries that have one. You can either
play the game or lose without putting up a fight.

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ergothus
And yet, raising an army to be defensive just makes your neighbors arm faster
to try prevent THEIR demise.

I suspect the details end up having a lot more nuance than one or two
sentences can describe.

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andromeduck
I mean diplomacy helps too but nobody is going to listen if you don't have a
stick to back it up with. See Ukraine for example.

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vpribish
that's not much money and there have been many many laser weapon contracts in
the past. why is this news?

oh god. that article is crap. "Star Wars technology"!

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foobar1962
I had a mental image of Dr Evil issuing his demand.

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branko_d
Now, if they could downsize it and kill mosquitoes in mid-air (while keeping
other insects alive), I'd definitely buy that!

(Sorry, just a residual reaction to a mosquito-ridden vacation last summer.)

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bclemens
It exists:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser)

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MagnumOpus
Except it doesn’t, because an ex-Microsoft patent troll - N. Myhrvold - got
hold of the patents for it. And he baldly stated that his firm has no
intention of ever making and selling it.

So now nobody can.

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didgeoridoo
Not even close to true: [https://www.geekwire.com/2015/intellectual-ventures-
laser-mo...](https://www.geekwire.com/2015/intellectual-ventures-laser-
mosquito-zapper-one-step-closer-to-commercialization/)

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debt
I thought it was already deployed:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5qKSKsfUPM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5qKSKsfUPM)

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adventured
Operational test of the LaWS weapon. I believe what they're building is meant
to be a permanent installation laser weapon.

Wikipedia has this additional information:

"Following a review of several ship classes to determine which had available
space, power, and cooling, it was decided that after the Ponce's planned
decommissioning in 2018, the LaWS will be moved to the new amphibious
transport dock ship USS Portland (LPD-27) for indefinite testing, it will
utilise the space and power connections reserved for VLS to house the LaWS
power and control modules while the laser itself will be bolted to the deck.
As its a trial it will not be integrated with the ships Warfare Centre command
& control systems."

"In January 2018 the Navy announced a $150m contract with Lockheed Martin for
the production of two more LaWS units to be delivered 2020; one will be fitted
to USS Arleigh Burke (DDG-51) while the other will be used for land-based
testing. Further contract options could bring its value to $942.8m."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Weapon_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Weapon_System)

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jonplackett
I want to know who has the job of naming these things and coming up with
badass style acronyms that still sort of explain what they do. All weapons
have seem to have cool names so it must be really important to get funded.

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jstarfish
MANPADS leaves a lot to be desired on the masculinity front.

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samnwa
DroneShield has a _much_ cooler solution. Watch the video:
[https://www.droneshield.com/dronegun](https://www.droneshield.com/dronegun).

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ChuckMcM
I am surprised they aren't considering it for the Zumwalt class.

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maxerickson
They've basically abandoned the Zumwalt class and are building lots more
updated Arleigh Burke class destroyers.

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om42
Why are they abandoning the Zumwalt class? Due to cost/delays?

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nradov
The DDG-1000 Zumwalt class was a huge expensive mistake. Those ships only
exist because after the old battleships were decommissioned, the Marine Corps
convinced Congress that the Navy needed new ships to provide gunfire support
during amphibious invasions. But the reality is that modern weapons have
become so lethal that amphibious assaults against a heavily defended beach
would be suicidal anyway even with naval gunfire.

The Zumwalt class is left as a ship without a mission. The guided artillery
shells were cancelled due to cost overruns so there's no ammunition to fire
out of the cannons. They have no area air defense capability and minimal
antisubmarine capability. The smart move would have been to keep the first
ship as a technology demonstrator and test article while cancelling the rest
but instead they went ahead with building three of the stupid things.

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flamedoge
are they any good for arctic patrolling?

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nradov
Well they're not icebreakers.

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chris_va
Reflective chaff costs a lot less than $150M... this seems like it's going
down the Soviet Hind/Stinger Missile path of stupid cost trade-offs.

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jws
Let's see, mass of chaff in line of beam times one minus reflectivity of chaff
at laser frequency times heat of vaporization plus heat of melting plus a bit
more for raising the temperature of the chaff… I'm pretty sure any laser
capable of penetrating an interesting military target is going to zip right
through chaff. Aluminum and silver are only about 95% reflective at visible
light frequencies and you have to figure as soon as the surface starts to go
that value drops in a hurry.

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chris_va
150kW laser, chaff is 98% reflective mylar, that is like sticking a bunch of
plastic in the microwave. Eventually it'll melt, but not fast enough to
justify using a laser over a conventional weapon.

Honestly, just using a smoke source is probably even easier as a shield, and
just let convection protect you.

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IntronExon
Or just have a thin layer of ablative armor designed to maximize laser bloom.
We either need a lot more power behind these beams, better adaptive optics, or
best of all really responsive phase conjugation to overcome realistic
countermeasures.

I’ll take a wall of tungsten carbide, steel and lead over something that can
be defeated by a foggy day. The promises of DEWs are enormous, but we’re not
there yet.

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nabla9
They develop a laser to do job that relatively small caliber autocannon can
do.

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DamnYuppie
Lasers have vastly different external ballistics, meaning they are not
impacted by wind, density altitude, and gravity as much as a bullet would be.
This means they would have a greater range and accuracy.

Benefit of this, to a solider, is there is no difference in elevation between
engaging a target at 20 meters out to say 700 meters. This will enable them to
be far more effective in urban battle fields as they can engage targets far
more quickly and effectively.

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lighthazard
They need line of sight here, don't they? Or are they going to bounce
weaponized lasers off mirrors in space?

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riku_iki
Lasers in questions are for navy air defense, they will have line of sight.

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greedo
I know it's not fashionable to RTFA, but these aren't really intended for air
defense, nor limited to air targets. They won't be much use against high speed
aircraft...

"HELIOS...is designed to track and destroy small, unmanned aerial vehicles or
boats that approach a ship."

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riku_iki
Sure, both boats and UAV will be within line of sight. What is your point in
this discussion? What are you trying to add?

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greedo
You stated incorrectly that these lasers were for air defense.

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riku_iki
So, shooting down UAV is not air defense?

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greedo
Only in the broadest of terms. Naval air defense doesn't worry too much about
UAVs currently. Most UAVs that the USN is facing are small drones that aren't
a serious threat. They're easily handled by Phalanx. When the USN talks about
air defense, they're primarily talking about manned aircraft and anti-ship
cruise missiles. These are handled by Evolved Sea Sparrow and Standard
missiles managed by AEGIS.

Though these lasers are capable of downing small UAVs, they're really intended
to counter small boat swarms (Boghammer type vessels) favored by Iran.

