THE U.S. NAVY COULD soon take a cue from Hollywood's action-packed scripts and add a new weapon to its arsenal: lasers. The Navy on Thursday awarded Lockheed Martin Corp. a $150 million contract to develop a high-powered laser system. The company will design such a system with hopes of being able to integrate it with a destroyer by 2020. The Helios system, which is short for High Energy Laser and Integrated Optical-dazzler with Surveillance system, is designed to "counter unmanned aerial systems and small boats," according to the company. In short: The technology will have the power to protect U.S. forces by tracking and destroying small drones, missiles or boats that threaten American ships. Bloomberg reports that Rob Afzal, a Lockheed Martin senior fellow, told reporters the deployment of a laser weapon system represents “a watershed moment for directed energy.” “Laser weapons systems have been desired for decades," Afzal said, according to Bloomberg. "One of the missing pieces to actually deploying laser weapons was that we didn’t actually have a laser that was powerful enough and small enough and efficient enough.” Lockheed Martin will deliver two systems to the Navy for testing – one that will be integrated into the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer’s systems and another that will be used for land testing at White Sands Missile Range, the company said. Source: https://www.usnews.com/news/nationa...-martin-150m-contract-to-develop-laser-system ================================================================== Putin must be happy dragging the world to hell. It's been a while you know, like 73 years since the last world war. Baby boomers already leaving the earth to facebook youth. So it was about time anyways to get brand new baby boomer population... Btw, I'm sure those who are playing anti-Americanism here don't have facebook accounts
Lasers were central to the Star Wars (SDI) initiative. 30 years ago. Which should tell you something. Technological progress is a lot slower than the military thinks.
I don't know what the military thinks but that's a different story and this laser system which is apparently paid for is to be working on board only. But I too heard that a country having tons of satellites orbiting the earth for decades has a freakish capacity of automatically locating a fired intercontinental ballistic missile of "any" kind and of engaging it if it cruises at altitudes above certain heights. So apart from the on board laser systems, I believe the star wars system is effective and working. We just don't know it because there hasn't been a nuclear missile taken off heading N. America so far.
well I won't argue with how lethal they are... my old son burnt a small hole through the ceiling... straight through the tiles of the roof with a laser he built using Arduino...just lucky he didn't lose an eye. makes you wonder what happens if it misses... burns a hole down to the bottom of the ocean... or shoots an airliner out of the sky?
relatively puny until you get to the megawatt variety. a measly 64 kilowatts is not decisive for hypersonic missiles or ICBMs that have to survive reentry. Have any specs on MIRV temperature tolerances? OTOH, perfect for conventional missiles and drones and humans.
Naval rail guns and now lasers. I guess we'll see if this is more than just feeding the military/industrial complex.
We don't have to see. A laser cannot feed enough energy into a system to cause destruction unless it can track for a long period of time.
