Navy unveils powerful ship-mounted laser weapon

That reminds me wasn't the navy also working on a rail-gun or coil-gun awhile back?

 

From what I understand they have working models, but it eats up the barrel in only a few shots. Very cost ineffective.

 

Well, a true rail gun would have zero barrel wear as the projectile is surrounded by a magnetic field which is used to accelerate a mass to hopefully a noticeable fraction of light speed, which when ones considers the formulae, KE= mass x Velocity. It may blow the mag points, but the barrel has no wear heh

 

I think you're thinking of a coil gun. A Rail Gun requires the projectile to make contact between the two "rails" to complete the circuit and create forward movement.

And yeah from last I heard the military scrapped their rail gun research.

 

probably just on hold till better materials come around. I think besides barrel wear the other main issue was (it was either on a destroyer or cruiser not sure which) but when fired the damn thing pretty much needed all the available power the engine had to give. Because aside from carriers and subs nothing in the U.S. fleet is nuclear powered.

 

I actually took apart economics-bs for a living once.

So, let's see...
5$ per "shot" ?

The cost of a destroyer = A
The cost of mounting a nuclear reactor on that destroyer = B
The cost of the ship's upkeep, reactor included = C
The cost of the weapon system = D
The cost of R&D involved = E
The cost of ship crew's training = F
The cost of ship crew's upkeep = G
The cost of facilities needed to support the ship = H
The cost of upkeep for the facilities needed to support the ship = I
The cost of upkeep for the crew's of the support facilities = J
The cost of nuclear fuel = K

So, assuming that the ship fires the weapon 24/7 through it's use, every minute...

A = Zumwalt Class, 3.450 M $
B = .. assume included in A
?? = C, D, F, G, H, I, J, K
E = billions, divide this for the amount of units you deploy
So, simplify by assuming that the ship will be in use for 30 years and it will fire a shot every hour for 30 years, since you have that reactor running and all and "to reduce the cost of a shot".
30 * 365 * 24 = 262.800 shots during it's career, if fired once per hour through the ship service. Ouch. 13.127$ per shot.
It is still too expensive! Actually, put 20 of them on the ship and fire them every minute, for 30 years. We can always use reactor power to pump sea water over the guns so they'll stay cool. 262.800 shots * 60 * 20 = 315.360.000 shots..
And each shot costs 10.40$ ! Nice!

On the other hand, using this stealth destroyer so that it doesn't get blown out of the water before it can use it's lasers that have a maximum range of up to couple miles, you'd likely in reality get to fire at most a few hundred or few thousand shots.
So, suppose you get to fire only 3000 shots... Each shot would cost 1.150.000$ dollars.
What is the biggest drawback of the laser weapons system at the moment? You basically should put a nuclear reactor on board to get any range to it. Even then you get a few miles at best and the damage is ridiculously low.
So, suppose I make 10 crude destroyers à 100M $, put 10 missiles à 2.000.000$ on each, my fleet will cost me 1.2 billion $. It will have up to hundreds of miles range, if I spread the ships they can cover a very vast area and the range of their weapons allows overlap and they can cover each other.
So, suppose that this laser equipped ship has conventional weapons also, it uses lasers to shoot down some of my missiles and manages to evade most of detection. Eventually, due to sheer numbers I manage to see it and fire 50 missiles at it, sinking it, while losing 9 of my ships. My economic losses are 1.1 billion $, the enemy's economic losses are at least 3.45 billion $.
I lose.
-What? How come?
USA has 100x more money, so if I spent 2% of my military budget on those ships, the US spent like 0.000... % on their ship.

End result? USA could build floating battleships out of gold, armed with solar powered lasers, just for the fun of it.

 

For truly high-tech, you could make a particle a particle beam weapon and fire positrons at the enemy. They are anti-matter particles that annihilate with matter, releasing immense amounts of energy.

 

The downside being that you probably would have to generate the antimatter elsewhere and store it on the ship, and I guarantee you as soon as the captain realizes what he's carrying and what it can do to his own ship, he's going to get rid of it as fast as he can, that means shooting the first thing he sees with antimatter instead of using it on worthwhile targets.

BTW, CERN has said it costs them a few hundred million Swiss francs to produce one billionth of one gram of positrons, quote: "There is no possibility to make antimatter bombs for the same reason you cannot use it to store energy: we can't accumulate enough of it at high enough density. (...) If we could assemble all the antimatter we've ever made at CERN and annihilate it with matter, we would have enough energy to light a single electric light bulb for a few minutes."

Some interesting papers
http://www.engr.psu.edu/antimatter/papers/nasa_anti.pdf

http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/spotlight/SpotlightAandD-en.html

 

Well, you're equating fixed costs as a part of the variable bullet cost. Even without this gun, you'd still have a destroyer. The price of the WEAPON itself is huge counting in all the R&D, development, build, installation, maintenance, etc. But the price of the ammunition? Low.

 

The price of a shot.

It costs X $ to fire a shot with weapon A and it costs Y $ to fire a shot with weapon B.

Essentially, you will maybe want to shoot at your enemy and you will have a budget within which you have to stay.
So, everything from the gate guards and supply trucks on is aimed at being able to fire a shot at the enemy. If I need a nuclear reactor to use my weapon, then it counts towards the cost of a potential shot in combat. Expected lifetime and service time are among variables used to determine the amount of shots that can be fired, as well as the reconnaissance & spotting capacity.

So, in this complex puzzle, things like spy satellites and recons actually reduce the cost of shots fired at the enemy, or if they don't - you shouldn't use them.

I'm just pointing out that you're replacing a proven high performance weapon system with one that - although it uses ship's reactor's energy - probably has minimal combat value and is very expensive. The reason it was accepted in the first place is for "field laboratory" reasons. It is a system that has high potential in the future, especially in orbital and deep space systems, so any knowledge and technical knowledge gained will be worth the money spent on it. Maybe they can even make a nuclear powered ship/land based system that can be used to provide anti-shell and anti-missile shielding to friendly forces.

But, it's not just placing them on ship. The system itself costs money and you could probably use the money on something else just as well. Hence I am not expecting to see a lot of them. I'd probably just put Paladins in their place.

 

Yea, well aware. Just, out of all the cool hitech systems that don't work (yet), I think this is one of the coolest. Suppose you had a space based weapon system capable of manufacturing antimatter - you could put a particle accelerator on it and fire antimatter close to speed of light at targets. The problem with laser is that the explosions on the absorption point actually can work to shield and obscure the target, firing antimatter at the target would act differently - kind of similar to miniature nuclear explosion at the annihilation point.

 

it's a highly specialized weapons system at the moment anyway, I'd expect to see it in use for the coast guard at some point, because disabling a small crafts engines is far more valuable when you care whether the crew of the ship is alive or not in the end. There is a distinct advantage to such specialization however, while it's not always useful it does free up other weapons for more practical uses, why bother firing your AA guns at a damn drone when you've got this laser designed for just that purpose? why waste ammunition on those small craft (that could miss and be a complete waste) when you could burn their hull out with a beam of light? If you miss? All you wasted is a few watts of energy, from a military standpoint that's so preposterously easy to replace it's not even worth considering as lost, unlike a shell or a bullet, that would require you to receive a shipment of such which could take an invaluable amount of time during which you may in fact need those bullets and shells for more valuable targets. Anything that reduces the use of consumables is in that respect, invaluable.

 

One possibility is to find a natural source and import it for use as fuel or ammo.

 

A .50 cal just makes a big hole, costs the govt less than a dollar and is a highly versatile well proven hi endurance weapon systems, that costs little to produce and requires a tech base about 1910 era.

No known cost amount for the laser system but IF it went into mass production I would still expect it to run in the multi-million dollar range with 10x that in upkeep and maintenance, a very high tech base, most like very rare substances will be required, it can only be fired in optimum weather conditions at very slow moving targets at very close range, under a 1000 M and is easily spoofed by a couple dollars worth of oil on a hot surface. It would also require a whole new slew of MOS's which will need to be created along with all the little stuff that goes with it... Trillions of dollars to replace a 3000 dollar weapon that can shoot over 2 miles in any weather conditions, has armor penetration which the laser totally lacks, and is man portable... graft and pork barrel folks, plain and simple and the fact that the Navy is mounting it on a Marine gator ship just shows no one in the Navy wants the damn thing.

 

The Coast Guard uses this;

The Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron (HITRON) is an armed U.S. Coast Guard helicopter squadron specializing in Airborne Use of Force (AUF) and drug-interdiction missions. It is based at Cecil Field in Jacksonville, Florida

The squadron was originally armed with M16A2 rifles and mounted M240G machine guns for warning shots and self-protection. The bolt-action Robar RC-50 .50-caliber rifle was used for disabling fire. The RC-50 has been replaced by a variant of the semiautomatic Barrett M107 .50-caliber rifle with an anti-corrosion finish.[13] It is fitted with an EOTech holographic weapon sight and an Insight Technology laser sight. The M14 Tactical, a version of the standard M14 with a Sage Enhanced Battle Rifle stock and improved muzzle brake, is also used by the squadron.

I doubt that new weapon system is air portable.

 

Any high power laser system will burn out the emitter, eventually. Modern technology isn't so good at passing high power outputs - even with the rarest and highest quality materials, the materials still get worn out rather fast.
So, instead of bullets, you'll need an steady supply of those parts that get worn out and it's not just a simple matter of replacing a battery or reloading it. For example with emitters, the maintenance can be in itself a high-precision operation and require special skills.
Special skills need specially trained people who cost a special amount of dollah.

So, it still costs money to fire the thing - beyond just running the reactor.

 

There are airborne laser systems - but with them there are strict power level restrictions. The design purpose iirc was to create a missile / shell shield area, you'd fly these above enemy area and shoot down any missiles they fire - and in theory you could even try to spot shells in midair and try to make them explode as well.

As to how practical the system is - no idea. As for stopping missiles and shells - I think if you can barely have enough power to run one laser system and not even that at as high power levels as would be preferable.. It would occur to me that the system can quickly become saturated by the sheer amount of 'stuff' the other side is firing.

I think one of the more promising applications is in disabling the guidance systems on missiles. The sensors used by guidance systems are actually very fragile, so you don't need a nuclear reactor to take them out. It would in most circumstances suffice if you could take out the guidance 500-1000m before the missile is at target. With luck, the missile could go haywire. With bad luck, the missile could still hit a slow moving target with sheer inertia.