Navy Looking at Lasers to Defend Ships From Enemy Aircraft
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By National Defense Staff
Lasers that typically are used in industrial welding could become important weapons to defeat enemy aircraft, officials say.
The Navy recently tested commercial welding lasers and has proven that the beams are capable of knocking small planes out of the sky.
Navy engineers last summer strung together six fiber lasers at China Lake Naval Air Warfare Center, Calif., and shot down five unmanned aerial vehicles at tactically relevant ranges, said Capt. David Kiel, program manager for directed energy and electric weapons at Naval Sea Systems Command.
The unmanned aircraft in the demonstration were made of carbon-fiber composites. Scientists lined up the lasers precisely in a method called “coherent beam combining” to fire on the targets, he said.
Another test was scheduled in May on St. Nicholas Island, Calif. This time it was in a maritime environment with the lasers’ electronics integrated with the MK 15 Phalanx close-in weapons system, a 20mm rapid-fire gun found aboard most Navy ships.
“We believe we’re clearly ready to be a program of record, to go out and integrate these commercial lasers and a beam director onto a close-in weapons system and be able to kill those tactically relevant UAVs for a nickel’s worth of electricity per shot,” Kiel said in an interview. The 100-kilowatt lasers have a wall plug efficiency of 25 percent, he added.
Aboard a ship, the beam director that focuses the light energy on the target would be placed on the side of the close-in weapons system, with the laser installed below deck. When the laser is not being used as a weapon, sailors could employ the beam director as a telescope to identify aircraft in the area, or to catch a fishing boat dropping mines in the water, said Kiel.
“I really think that’s the capability that’s going to be used 24/7,” he said. “Sailors like to see things … It would be a great situational awareness tool.”
All of the Navy’s ships today have enough power to support a 100-kilowatt laser, Kiel said. Any surface combatant large enough to accommodate the close-in weapons system could also carry the laser. If funding is approved to field the system, the team could put a high-fidelity prototype to sea by 2014 and commence production in the 2017 timeframe.