Navy Will Send Prototype Laser Weapon To Persian Gulf: Adm. Greenert

http://defense.aol.com/2013/04/08/navy-prototype-laser-to-persian-gulf-greenert-video/?icid=trending1

Navy Will Send Prototype Laser Weapon To Persian Gulf: Adm. Greenert
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Published: April 8, 2013

NATIONAL HARBOR: The Navy will send a prototype laser weapon to the troubled Persian Gulf for a roughly year-long test deployment starting "less than a year from now," the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, announced today at the Navy League's annual Sea-Air-Space conference.

The bad news is this isn't some superweapon out of science fiction. The Navy's Laser Weapon System (LaWS) is a fairly modest death ray that, for now, can only kill small boats and drones. Unlike the lasers of Ronald Reagan's Star Wars dreams, nuclear missiles aren't on the menu.

The good news is this isn't science fiction. "We're taking it out there to be an operational weapon," said Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, chief of the Office of Naval Research, said in a briefing after Adm. Greenert's announcement.

Klunder claims the laser has scored 12 straight hits in 12 trials against flying targets, mostly firing from test sites on land but, in three cases, from the deck of an actual Navy warship, the destroyer USS Dewey. As early as this fall, the same prototype laser used in those tests will be installed on the USS Ponce, a former amphibious warfare ship converted to the Navy's first Afloat Forward Staging Base. (Ponce's large deck and copious cargo space, originally meant for transporting Marines, make it well-suited to host experiments in everything from firing lasers to clearing mines).


From Common Dreams this morning:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/04/09-2

US Navy Champions Latest Laser Technology for 'Revolutionizing' War Making
- Jon Queally, staff writer
Published on Tuesday, April 9, 2013 by Common Dreams

The laser system will be deployed in 2014, two years ahead of schedule, aboard the USS Ponce, an amphibious transport ship retrofitted as a waterborne staging base, the Navy said Monday.

Chief of Naval Research Admiral Matthew Klunder said the cost of one blast of "directed energy" could be less than $1.

"Compare that to the hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs to fire a missile, and you can begin to see the merits of this capability," he said in a US Navy statement.

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) and Naval Sea Systems Command successfully tested high-energy lasers against a moving target ship and a remotely piloted drone.

"The future is here," ONR official Peter Morrision said.



unhappycamper comment: Huzzah! One dollar per (not) kill shot. Instead of tons of things that go boom, naval ships must have a cooling system for the laser. Any bets the coolant will go boom also?