Navy’s Drone Death Ray Takes Out Targets at Sea
June 1st, 2010Via: Wired:
LaWS
For years, the U.S. Navy has been pursuing a workable ray gun that could provide a leap ahead in ship self-defenses. Now, with a series of tests of a system called the Laser Weapon System, or LaWS), it may be one step closer to that goal.
Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), the service’s technology development arm, announced today that LaWS had “successfully tracked, engaged, and destroyed” a drone in flight, during an over-the-water engagement at San Nicholas Island, Calif.
It’s certainly not the first time lasers have shot down an unmanned aerial vehicle — last year, the Air Force zapped several drones with beam weapons in a series of tests at China Lake, Calif. — but this test brings an additional bit of realism — and an extra technical challenge. Laser beams can lose strength as they move through the moist, salty sea atmosphere above the sea, so the Navy needs directed-energy weapons that can work effectively on ships.
The LaWS is essentially a laser upgrade to the MK 15 Close In Weapon System (CIWS), a.k.a. the Phalanx gun, a radar-guided autocannon that is already installed on Navy surface combatants. According to NAVSEA, the system tested (shown here) fired a laser through a beam director installed on a tracking mount, which in turn was controlled by a Mk 15 CIWS. That’s the basically same system that controls the Phalanx.
So I guess if this weapon can’t manuever or work in a “moist, salty sea atmospere above the sea,” why is the Navy pursuing it? All of their vessels – nuclear powered aircraft carriers and submarines operate in a “moist salty sea atmosphere.” Give me a freaking break.
Another example of the Defense Department spending money they don’t really have in hand to develop another technology that is not related to their primary mission. Also another example of working at things to destroy other people. These projects, like drones, and wars, I hope, will be a thing of the past in the times to come.
Admiral Rickover, surely, is rolling over with this one, if he knows about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover
A person I work with once interviewed Rickover. He was a short man. He sawed the legs off of the interviewer’s chair in the front so that they were physically challenged (lower than him) in the interview.
The Navy, under the command of Obama, should be working in the Gulf – not dicking around with stupid shit like this.
kind of reminds me of “Real Genius”
😉