Laser system goes 2-for-2 in key test - Military News | News From Afghanistan, Iraq And Around The World - Military Times

Laser system goes 2-for-2 in key test

One of the Navy’s first laser weapons got a step closer to the fleet’s arsenal in late May when engineers proved it could find, track and zap targets over the ocean in a test firing off the West Coast.

Dubbed the Laser Weapons System, or LaWS, the weapon destroyed two drones in what sailors would know as a detect-to-engage exercise, partly using familiar sensors already on scores of ships in the fleet as part of their Phalanx Close-In Weapons Systems. Navy engineers hope LaWS will join CIWS on ships in the next six or seven years to become the new go-to safeguard against fast, dangerous anti-ship missiles.

“We’re not interested in destroying Death Stars or anything like that yet,” said Dennis Tressler, Naval Sea Systems Command’s deputy program manager for energy weapons. Still, a laser CIWS would give a ship more accuracy and a theoretically infinite magazine, compared with the smothering but still limited ordnance of today’s Gatling gun version.

LaWS, which was on land, zapped both drones May 24 in a test at San Nicholas Island, Calif. — its first firing over the ocean. In a test last year, the laser destroyed all five unmanned targets at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., but that was in a clear, dry desert environment. Moisture in the atmosphere can disrupt directed energy weapons, which is a central challenge in fielding them aboard ships, Tressler said.

Engineers and weapons planners have dreamed for decades about the benefits of lasers — weapons that theoretically can kill targets at almost the speed of light, never run out of ammunition and cost “pennies per shot” — taking the place of expensive surface-to-air missiles. And advocates say lasers’ potential goes beyond their immediate tactical value: If an enemy knows a warship can just vaporize incoming anti-ship missiles all day, for example, he might not bother to launch them.

There are just as many critics who point out that this technology always seems to be 15 years down the road; that its requirements for power and money are steep; and that basic physics means energy weapons could have problems working in the very humid and cloudy maritime environments where the Navy needs them most.

Tressler acknowledged LaWS was a “good-weather weapon,” and that “bad guys don’t go home; they usually keep shooting.” Although he stressed LaWS is still in its early stages and not yet a formal Navy program, he said planners think warships would field a laser in addition to their existing CIWS guns, not instead of them.

LaWS is “basically off-the-shelf” technology, Tressler said — the weapon combines commercial welding lasers to produce a beam powerful enough to slice through its targets. The laser does not blind a missile’s sensors or overheat its electronics; it cuts through to vital areas like engines and fuel tanks, he said:

“We burn holes.”